Blessing of the Beasts, Whitstable

The Blessing of the Beasts is a free community parade on Whitstable beach, where people dress as animals, bring their pets, and celebrate the creatures who share our lives. It was created by Whitstable artist Sadie Hennessy in 2021, and the fifth one took place on Saturday 12 September 2026.

It’s one of the stranger evenings in the town’s calendar, and one of the warmest. Nobody is selling anything, and nobody is quite sure what will happen next. That is most of the charm.

What happens

Everyone meets at the tennis courts at 6pm, and the dress code is simple: come as your best beast. From there the crowd moves down onto the beach. In 2026 the tide was out, so the performances spread across the shingle and onto the mudflats as the light went.

The costumes are the first thing you notice. Most are homemade, and plenty are brilliant: wolves in dark suits and pearls, frogs in crocheted hoods, a parrot arm in arm with a gorilla, cats in crowns. A few real dogs came too, looking faintly unimpressed by it all.

At the heart of the event is the Pet Shrine, a display of handmade icons honouring pets both living and dead. Sadie runs free workshops in the weeks beforehand so that anyone can make one, which is why the shrine is full of the town’s own animals.

The performances

Then the acts begin, introduced from a microphone on the beach. A masked band played through the evening. A group of shrimps in painted cardboard sang beside a groyne. Two fish in aprons put on a show that ended with crumbs flying and the crowd in fits. Prawn dancers leapt across the wet mud, and a troupe of Bush Babies danced on into the dusk.

How it began

The idea came out of the pandemic. Sadie answered an open call from Farnham Maltings for artists to make events that would bring communities back together. She had noticed how much our animals carried us through lockdown, and the daily dog walk especially. The Blessing of the Beasts was her thank-you to them. It was commissioned, and the first parade took place in 2021 with support from Farnham Maltings and the Arts Council.

Five parades in six years

A second parade followed in 2022, paid for by the Lottery Community Fund. In 2023 the funding didn’t come through, and there was no parade. Since 2024 the town has paid for it directly, through Crowdfunder. People who want it to happen chip in towards the production costs, equipment and performers’ fees. The 2026 campaign reached its target at the end of August, a fortnight before the parade.

That’s worth knowing if you enjoyed it. It happens because enough people decide it should.

Is it an old Whitstable tradition?

No, and that’s rather the point. Blessing animals is an old Christian custom, often held around the feast of St Francis of Assisi in early October. Whitstable’s version isn’t a church service, though, and it isn’t a revival of anything. It’s a new tradition, made by a local artist in 2021: a town making its own custom rather than inheriting one.

The 2026 parade in photos

From the costumes to the last of the light. See if you can spot yourself, or your dog. If you’re in one and would like the full-resolution version, drop us a line. If you’d like a photo of you or your child taken down, email us and we’ll remove it straight away.

Photographs © Whitstable.co.uk

Were you there? If you took photographs of the parade, or of your pet in costume, send them to us and we’ll publish the best ones, credited. If you went, or made an icon for the Pet Shrine, do share it with us.

For everything else happening in town, see what’s on in Whitstable →