Nine days of music, comedy, art, dance and literature begin this Saturday as the Streatham Festival gets underway with a big party on the common.

Expect stilt walkers, giant puppets, Robbie the Land Train, Bernie the Embarrassing Dad on a nine-foot high tightrope, The Little Big Dance Tent for those wanting to try their hand at belly-dancing or salsa as well as top notch music coming from the main stage.

Headlining that stage will be south London funk-soul-latin band Size Nine for the second year in a row.

"I'm really excited about it and its going to be brilliant," says lead singer Breezy Lee Althelion, who lives in South Norwood.

"We did it last year and this year it is supposed to be even bigger with more going on.

"All my family live just around the corner so they will all come and I am sure my mum will be doing a few dance moves down the front."

The eight-piece band, the majority of which hail from Croydon and studied at the Brit School, have been together for seven years and release their first album in September.

"It's quite nice to get a full album out and released after so long together," says Breezy.

"We are getting it distributed in America and Canada as well as we are signing with a Canadian label so it really is an exciting time for us.

"We have got a few summer festivals coming up then the album launch and we will see where it takes us over the winter.

"We are doing a publishing deal as well to try and get some of our tunes on television or on adverts.

"With our kind of music it is hard to get chart success as we are not pop really, it's a lot of funk and soul with influences from ska and latin as we have members from Mexico and Colombia."

A Big Day Out, Top of Streatham Common, July 3, 1pm to 6pm, free. Call 020 8835 0754 or visit streathamfestival.com.

Festival highlights this week:

- Reuven Gershon Sings, Five Bells Pub, July 3, 9.30pm, free. The original Buddy Holly from the West End returns with a medley of Buddy hits and classic rock songs.

- Snog, Shag, Marry, Kill, The Hamlet, July 5, 6.30pm, £4. Five young wordsmiths present an evening of spoken word poetry, drama, song and music.

- Festival Film Night, The Odeon Cinema, July 6, 7.30pm, £5. Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, accompanied by a selection of made-in-Streatham short films.

- Meet the Author John Crace, Streatham Library, July 7, 8pm, free. Guardian writer Crace is well-known for his witty Saturday morning Digested Reads column.

- Comedy @ The Waterfront, The Waterfront Bar, July 8, 7pm, £10. Stand-up comedy provided by Andy Zaltzman, Stephano Paolini, Philberto and Rich Wilson.