- The Cape Town International Kite Festival has been promoting mental health awareness for 30 years through its vibrant kite-flying events.
- This year’s Pop-Up Fly Event will take place at Melkbosstrand Beach, featuring local and international kite-flyers.
- The festival continues to break the stigma around mental health by fostering open, non-judgmental conversations.
For the last 30 years, the Cape Town International Kite Festival, Cape Mental Health’s flagship event, has brought #HopeOnAString as colourful kites of all shapes and sizes take to the sky each October to create mental health awareness.
This year, the festival’s annual Pop-Up Fly Event will take place at Melkbosstrand Beach on Sunday 27 October.
It will feature extraordinary local professional kiters such as Mari and Bradley Ware-Lane, Bobby Gathoo, Brian Skinner, and others – as well as a few international surprises.
Patrons are encouraged to come and experience the magnificence of the kites as they support mental health awareness.
Over the past 30 years, the festival activations have played a significant role in allowing people to speak freely, without fear of labels, about their mental health.
The event allows artists, mental health ambassadors, staff, mental health care users, volunteers and everyone to share their stories of pain, healing and recovery.
Every conversation that matters chips away at stigma. The Cape Town International Kite Festival is a stigma-reducing enabler that facilitates non-judgmental and non-discriminatory conversations.
The sky becomes a radiant canvas that symbolises the freedom, creativity and joy of mental well-being, shared by families, friends and communities.
Join Cape Mental Health to raise funds that fuel the vital mission of providing essential, cost-free mental healthcare services and interventions to those who require them most.
“By investing in children and youth, we lay the foundation for the prevention of mental health disorders, empowering young people to unleash their full potential and pursue their dreams,” says Dr Ingrid Daniels, CEO of Cape Mental Health.
The festival has grown from a small one-day event to an international kite-flying event that hosts local, national and international kiters, pop-up flies, community flies, Edukite Competitions, kite-making workshops and achieves over R5 million worth of mental health media exposure and mental health awareness investment.
As the event grew, new elements were added to create greater attraction and increase opportunities for mental health awareness that allows for the inclusion and integration of children, youth and adults with mental disability.
Adjusments made
Several adjustments were made during the Covid-19 pandemic to ensure that the kite festival could proceed, albeit in a different format.
Daniels describes the primary goal as finding a theme each year that facilitates the massive mental health awareness and promotion campaign, ultimately facilitating a pathway that encourages early intervention and mental health support.
explains Daniels.
As part of Cape Mental Health’s aim to uplift less fortunate communities and the most marginalised of people, the festival will once again feature its annual Community Fly at Heideveld Sports Field in October.
Cape Mental Health invites children with intellectual disability from CMH’s Special Education and Care Centres in Heideveld, Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain to join in the fun at the community fly, as well as other Grade R learners and preschools in the Heideveld community.
The festival will also host its EduKite Competition – a kite-decorating and kite-making competition for learners from mainstream primary schools and schools for children with special educational needs, with monetary prizes for the winning teams.
Take your kite to new heights, capture those enchanting moments in photos and videos, and spread messages of inspiration for mental health awareness this October. Share your kite-flying adventure by tagging #HopeOnAString and @CTKiteFest and standing a chance to be featured on the official CTKiteFest social media channels.
For more information visit https://capementalhealth.co.za/HopeOnAString
