Canterbury Festival - Achievements

Achievements

The festival is considered to be one of the nine organizations to achieve national arts funding from the Arts Council. The festival also has local support and funding. The festival began to gain a relationship with other European natures such as Hungary and Poland. The festival had one year included a celebration of Hungarian culture in the presence of Hungary’s President. Then a year later the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra had played at the festival. These events are some that helped the festival gain the name, Kent’s International Arts Festival. 2009 the festival was asked by Canterbury City Council to “take responsibility for the continuing development of creative writing and live literature events in the district.” Because of that a year round program was set up to meet the challenge of developing creative writing and live literature in the district. This program goes by the name of The Canterbury Laureate. The Canterbury Laureate will be a year round program but there is still an intention to continue have the two week festival each year. In 2010 the festival signed a five year sponsorship with Canterbury Christ Church University.