Scrolling through Instagram on a Friday evening, I came across the Festival of Cats page, their bio describes it as ‘A weekend of arts and events celebrating cats’.
Intrigued, I got in touch with the Festival of Cats founder Jemma Channing who was happy to delve more into this fantastic feline festival…
Can you inform readers about your plans for the Festival of Cats 2022?
Festival of Cats takes place from March 24th – 27th 2022 and will feature art exhibitions, events, poetry readings and workshops in and around Margate, all focused on the theme of cats!
When did you get the idea for this festival and how has the feedback been for this?
We first ran the festival in 2018 alongside the Turner Contemporary exhibition “Journeys with The Waste Land”, T. S. Eliot is famous for writing The Waste Land in Margate, but he also wrote “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” which is the basis of the musical Cats.
We wanted to celebrate this little bit of history with a fun festival of events in Margate, all on the theme of cats. We’ll have poetry readings from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, alongside exhibitions of local artists and photographers, as well as fundraising for Missing Cats and Strays in Thanet.
The last festival was a great success, with 100s of people taking part in activities. It was great to hear how happy it made people, and this is something we want to achieve again. Especially now, through lockdown I think we all realised how important our pets are, and how therapeutic spending time with an animal can be.
How can local artists and volunteers enquire to be a part of Festival of Cats 2022?
We would love to get as many people involved as possible. Our open call for artists will be opening in January 2022 and anyone who is interested in running an event or volunteering can let us know by getting in touch through our social media pages.
For local readers wanting to keep up to date with the Festival of Cats, how can they?
You can see photos of the previous festival and keep up to date with the 2022 festival by visiting our social media pages. We are on Instagram @festival_of_cats and Facebook @festivalofcats.
What do you enjoy most about living in Thanet?
We love living near the sea, being surrounded by nature and how beautiful the area is. The community is wonderful in Thanet, and there is always something going on for people to get involved in. You can see some of the best sunsets in the world in Thanet, we feel very lucky to live here.