Crawley Mela Association / Crawley Mela

Crawley Mela is proudly sponsored by:

Home page - Welcome to Crawley Mela 2008

Introduction

Over the past five years the Crawley Mela Association (CIMA) has built the Mela Festival into the largest single event in Crawley, with audiences consistently greater than 10,000 people over three days. 2007 was no exception.

But the Mela weekend isn't the only thing we do as a community association. In fact, CIMA is a year around effort and sponsors multicultural outreach events, fundraisers, socials, the Childrens' Parade, and the artist in residency programme at local schools. All this takes a massive amount of work throughout the year.

In 2008, we're planning to take a break from festival organizing after 5 years of increasing success and artistic growth. But CIMA will be hard at work anyway. We plan to:
1. Recharge our creative batteries - spend the year developing our main and community stage programmes to make them better and more varied than ever for 2009.
2. Develop our youth team, start a youth forum and hold a major youth event in June.
3. Build the School and Community Outreach activities into a regular and valued community service.
4. Complete our registration as a Charity.
5. Build our general membership - this means you! - into a major part of the association.
6. Expand our network of communities and local sponsors to ensure we meet our aim of being comprehensive and self-sufficient.
7. Increase our interworking with local health and social agencies and Crawley Active Life to make sure valuable healthcare information is accessible for all local communities.
8. Hold an outdoor fundraiser in July 2008 to promote our vision for the association and for the return of the Mela festival in 2009.

In short, our aim is to be the multicultural umbrella organization for Crawley Borough. And we'd like you to join us. Sign up on the Forum and give us your ideas for things you'd like to see.

Warm regards,

the Mela Association

Browse this website for details, news, progress reports on the developing plans for community events and the Mela Season, programme details, helpful hints on parking, locations of stalls and workshops, special offers and links to our bands and acts' websites.

Stalls and Pitches

There will be minor changes to the ratecard for 2008 but most rates remain essentially unchanged from 2006/2007. We also expect to have significantly more space for retail and activity pitches this year. See the 2007 Ratecard and booking information on the Stalls and Charities page.