Sunrose Arts Festival 2025,

About the event

Our festival, taking place 30th August in Canterbury City Centre, will be host to a variety of events supporting many different artistic disciplines. Our events are family friendly, open to the general public, and easy to access.

Sunrose Arts Festival is all about creating opportunities for the community to engage with art, as well as building their creative careers. 

The ethos of the festival aligned with my own beliefs of supporting local communities to come together and celebrate music, poetry, theatre and arts.
 

Sanctuary Visual Arts Exhibition: Sanctuary showcases five visual artists’ work in an outdoor exhibition. The works range from print, to fabric, to lino, and many more. We also have a community exhibition at Sanctuary for the Sunrose attendees to showcase their creations over the weekend.

Sunrose Book Fair and Art Market: This is our most popular attraction at the festival. The community sells their artworks, be it clay, jewellery, prints, books etc, gaining 100% commission for their artwork. It’s a wonderful bubbling space for the community to get involved and put themselves out there!

Workshops: We have a variety of workshops over the weekend that can span film, music, poetry, theatre etc. Local workshop facilitators or artists who want to build into facilitators come and share what they do, make a plan, and run an hour-long workshop. We also get lead artists from across the UK to come down and facilitate their experience and process.

Poetry boat tours: Working with the Canterbury Punting Company, we have poetry boat tours that run through the city. These boat tours have two poets / storytellers on each of them, sharing their work and engaging with the river Stour.   

Exposure Main Stage: Exposure is in the Dane John Gardens band stand, with music from local artists throughout the day. This main stage is open to all performers, and was incredibly popular at last year’s festival!

UTTERANCE worldwide poetry grand slam final: Utterance Worldwide is a poetry slam we run every month from January, with every winner getting a slot to compete at the Utterance Grand Slam Final. This is the last event of the weekend, bringing together all of the artists to crown our Utterance Grand Slam Champion for 2025! Poets will be performing from across the world, with our 2023 winner performing from Zimbabwe! It’s an incredible event for bringing world class talent to Canterbury’s doorstep. 

The Creative Circle: This is an open space of drawing, painting and sketching in the gardens, with the creations being showcased in the Sanctuary Art Exhibition!

Why should you sponsor?

By sponsoring Sunrose Arts Festival 2025, you are actively supporting the local community to break down barriers, create jobs, and celebrate eachother in a safe and welcoming space. 

In 2023, there were an estimated 8,900 jobs within Kent, accounting for 1.4% of all jobs. This is below the national average of 2.5%. The number of creative jobs has fallen by 6.9% in Kent over the last five years.

- Kent Analytics Statistical Bulletin, January 2025

Where's the art gone?

In Kent and Canterbury, creative events have decreased siginificantly since Covid-19. These creative opportunities not only develop creatives, but help with mental health, morale, and a feeling of enjoyment and engagement in the local community. 

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

• Sunrose values diversity and inclusivity in arts and culture, striving to represent our community's creative talents. We commit to preventing discrimination and promoting equality, adhering to Equality Act 2010 and our core values. Prejudice and lack of representation can negatively impact access, which is why our lead artists ensure a diverse range of audiences feel welcomed and represented, while also experiencing high quality art.
• As for relevance, we have involved people who are LGBTQIA+, people of the global majority, neurodivergent and have access needs' insight into our project, what events they'd like to see/ will inspire the community, and will be working with advisors to ensure we reach communities with protected characteristics.
• Mental health & neurodivergences: In Canterbury, where the suicide rate is 10.3 per 100,000 (Office for National Statistics 2020), surpassing the national average, Sunrose provides an avenue for individuals to express and address struggles creatively, aiming to contribute to lower suicide rates. We have chill zones with sensory aids and art supplies, encourage attendees to draw and write, and make a safe space to share their works.

Financial barriers

Canterbury, Thanet, Dover and Swale are in the most deprived in England (Indices of Deprivation 2019), hence our local advisors to each area sharing opportunities to those communities. We've done research/surveys on the best way to tackle cost barriers, which has resulted in all ticket prices (free to £5), a 'pay it on' system for people to buy tickets so others can attend for free, and also a concession ticket option of £2 to our ticketed events. 

Alice Gretton

I have been running events in Canterbury/Kent since 2018, graduating from UKC in 2021 with an arts degree.  I continued my events virtually through Covid, which connected me to artists across the world and inspired my use of digital innovation in this project. After Covid, I have been developing new events to ignite the creative community in Kent. From working as producer at Nationally acclaimed festival UniSlam, and producing festivals and events at Creative Folkestone, I have built a strong network of talented and aspiring creatives from across the UK and Kent, and started Sunrose Arts CIC with the intention of continuing to build this community, making a home for creatives to access.

I live and breathe the arts in Kent, and am dedicated to creating these opportunities for others that I have been so grateful to receive. I have connections to BBC Radio Kent, BBC Southeast, and various local organisations including Canterbury BID, Fruitworks Coworking, University of Kent, Christchurch University, Canterbury Cathedral, Waterstones, Canterbury Punting Company, and many more. Other the years we have built connections across Kent including Swale, Folkestone, Thanet and Dover, who will spread the word about our festival as advisors. The community supports our cause, celebrating the work we are doing and building a loyal, passionate community to help these audiences access our works. I truly believe we can make an incredible impact on the community and have the knowledge, expertise and support to do this.

Contact the Organizer Contact the Organizer