A HUGE Thank You to all those who participated in the 2009 Festival, especially the participants and volunteers (and even the sunshine!) who all helped to make the Festival Carnival Parade such a great success this year. Also a big thanks to the artists, volunteers and students at the Festival Fringe and the Lunchtime Concerts, the many winners of the Schools' Poetry Competition and reviewers for the Kentish Gazette, and the eloquent and entertaining schools' speakers in the first Festival Debate!
Hope to see you again soon!
The Festival Team
The last choir standing is Green Street Blues, who will be opening the concert by The Magnets on Saturday 23 October, 7.30pm at Shirley Hall, The King's School. Green Street Blues is a high-energy, barbershop choir that combines glitz, glamour and great musicality with the sheer joy of singing.
The Top Choir Kent competition is promoted by the Rotary Club of Canterbury.
Throughout the Opening Day the Festival made its presence felt in an uplifting city centre, decorated throughout with Festival banners and bunting. The festivities heralded the start of the Festival to everyone in Canterbury that day – providing everyone with an immediate Festival experience.
There were performances at three sites – Longmarket, Whitefriars and Dane John Gardens – by community arts groups such as Argentine Tango South East, Yamaha Music Steel Band and a troupe of young street dancers from Maidstone, who grabbed attention and entertained onlookers.
The main event of the opening day was the Carnival Parade, a community-produced event now in its third year since its Festival revamp. Building on an ethos of internationalism and community, this year the Carnival Parade was themed ‘Flora and Fauna of the World’, inspiring a forest of colourful, hand-crafted artworks. Crowds lined the streets, with large numbers of people turning out specifically to watch or walk alongside the Parade, led this year by the Lord Mayor, as well as hundreds amassing along the way. This year returning schools and community groups included Querns Road Community Centre and St Peter’s Methodist Primary School, who were joined by Hoath and Chislet Primary Schools. The scale of the event was matched by the sense of something big happening, as the long parade moved through the streets and the drumming rhythms became for that evening the soundtrack to the city. Arriving as the sun set the Dane John Gardens proved a welcoming gathering-point for a finale of music and fireworks from the memorial mound.
   
If you are a pupil or teacher at a school in East Kent, or are part of a local group or community who would like to take part in next year's Festival Carnival Parade - all you need is a bit of energy, lots of enthusiasm and dedication to taking part - please email the Parade co-ordinator Amanda McKean on amanda@canterburyfestival.co.uk or call the Festival Office on 01227 452853.
The inaugural Festival Debate, as part of an expanded Talks and Literature programme, brought together key speakers, schools’ student representatives and other interested groups and individuals to debate what gets labeled ‘Pop Culture’ and whether it is ‘Trash or Treasure’. The subject was ideal to launch the Festival Debate project, since it was cultural, broad enough to be approached from various angles and everyone had something to say about it! The Debate certainly fulfilled its aim to ‘get everyone talking’, both within and outside of the main event. The sixth form students from four schools across Kent made impressive and entertaining presentations on the night, following visits by Festival staff in advance to launch a programme of in-school debating. The hook into the event – soliciting confessions of cultural ‘guilty pleasures’ – was taken up in media coverage of the event and of the Festival in general, through artists’ Q&A in the Kentish Gazette and in particular through BBC Radio Kent’s close involvement with the Debate and the Festival (see below). It also revealed some passionate champions for – and some passionately against – favourite current forms of ‘pop culture’, X Factor being the supreme example! It is planned to run the Festival Debate on a new topic next year, with close involvement of schools’ groups at all levels. If you are interested in being involved, email johnp@canterburyfestival.co.uk or call 01227 452853.
Festival Youth and Community 2008 - see photos, reviews and more from the archive!
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