Kendal Poetry Festival 23rd-26th June
One of the reasons why this blog has been particularly quiet (ok, silent) since the New Year is that I am a co-director of Kendal Poetry Festival (along with Clare Shaw) and we found out that we got full funding from the Arts Council at the beginning of the year. It is no exaggeration to say that the festival this year has taken up a huge amount of time and energy. This is my fifth festival, and I can tell anyone interested that it doesn’t really get any easier! Especially as we keep having new and exciting ideas…
Our First Hybrid Festival
This year will be the first year the festival has gone hybrid. Accessibility is incredibly important to us, and we knew that we couldn’t go back to the days of only in-person access. If you can attend in person, we will be in the beautiful town of Kendal, mainly at the Brewery Arts Centre, but also at venues across town, including Kendal Library, Space2Create and Outside-In. If you are attending online, we will be using Zoom. We will have a Live Captioner in attendance for all of our Main Readings, and where there is no Live Captioner, we will screenshare poems and be using AI captions. We also have a dedicated Zoom host for every event, who will be ensuring our online audiences feel part of the whole event.
New and Expanded Programme
This year we are running a Children’s Poetry Day, where primary and secondary schools have the chance to come to the Brewery to work with the brilliant Matt Abbott. There are still plenty of places left for a morning or afternoon workshop with Matt – if you are a teacher of year 6,7,8 or 9, you can book a ticket, or get in touch to find out how you can get involved.
We would love you to come and be part of the 2022 festival
Whether you join us in-person or online, we will be really happy to see you! This year more than ever, feels like an experiment – there have not been many fully hybrid poetry festivals so far, and we really want to show that it can be done. There are lots of ways you can support us – the most effective and meaningful for us to come and be part of our audience, and the second most important thing you can do is help us spread the word about the festival!
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