Organisers of this year’s Blackheath fireworks display have added a stage to showcase local talent as tickets go on sale for the revived event.

The People’s Stage will act as a precursor to Lewisham Council’s People’s Day festival, which will return to Mountsfield Park in Catford next year. The stage will “celebrate the incredible local talent from across the borough”, organisers say.

“The People’s Stage is a chance to celebrate our creativity, talent and the community that makes Lewisham, Lewisham. We’re inviting local performers, artists, musicians, dancers, community groups, and organisations to help shape this year’s Blackheath Fireworks and shine a spotlight on the amazing diversity of our borough,” Rotimi Skyers, the borough’s cabinet member for culture, said.

“This is about giving Lewisham’s talent a platform and bringing our people together.”

As well as the fireworks display and People’s Stage, there will be a funfair, Massaoke mass karaoke, a Lords of Lightning show, the Big Belly comedy club, a funfair and music from UK garage stars DJ Luck & MC Neat and Brandon Block.

Tickets for the event, on November 7, start from £16 for over-16s with family packages from £40. They are available from blackheathfireworks.com.

The display returned as a paid-for event last year after a five-year gap. Free displays had been jointly held by Lewisham and Greenwich councils since the late 1980s, but Greenwich pulled its funding in 2010 and the last free display was held by Lewisham in 2019.

In July, Skyers said it was unlikely that a free event would return and that a privately-run event would come at no cost to the council.

Lewisham councillors will hear a licence application for the  display on Tuesday evening, seeking to allow a 40,000 capacity and to move the display to a larger site facing Talbot Place.

There have 17 objections, including from residents complaining about the heath being fenced off for a “markedly different” event to the council-run displays of the past and raising concerns about how crowds were managed last year. 

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