Been To A Kite Festival?

Walk Into The Kite Cloud And Be Amazed!

What do I mean by Kite Cloud? On a recent visit to a local kite festival, this term just popped into my head. We parked some distance from the festival due to traffic.

On getting out, there it was - a giant region of air filled with fluttering and floating wind creations of all kinds. It looked cloud-like to me!

There it is in the photo.

As we walked onto the jetty, we were up close to many of the kites and could spot every detail. Others lazily meandered on the ends of a few hundred feet of line. Too far up to see the seams in the fabric, the flexing of the spars and other details.

This was just one International kite festival of many that occur around the world. In most cases, they are held once every year. The organizers round up the cream of the local kiting community to show off their best creations and skills. A big kites festival can also attract enthusiasts from many other countries. Various areas of expertise in kite design, construction and flying are put on show. Overseas experts are usually there by invitation, with sponsorship paying their way.

A big festival of kites will attract the local media, which helps to keep the sport popular. A sky full of kites is a very visual experience, naturally! Hence if you ever go to an event like this, expect to see plenty of fancy cameras and maybe even some local TV crews. A few seconds of footage on the local news showing the sky shimmer and shake with color tends to stick in people's minds.

Some International Festivals

This list will get longer over time. One day we might even travel overseas just to cover a big festival! For now, here's a few links to information we've compiled on various international events...

The Bristol International Festival of Kites and Air Creations. Trust the British to come up with a long and faintly pompous title. However, this festival would appear to be worthy of an impressive name like that! The Bristol event also has a long history.

The Niagara International Kite Festival is uniquely situated, straddling the U.S. and Canada in North America, right next to the famous waterfall. There's some interesting kite flying history associated with this location too!

The Adelaide International Kite Festival is easily accessible for us, since we live in that Australian city. Note that clicking this link will take you to the Adelaide events section of this web site. See over there on the left. To get back here, just click the Back button on your browser.

That's it for now!

Last updated: 2 Apr 2008