Fun for "sassy seniors" at the Festival of Chichester

Always the last Tuesday of the month, for the Festival it falls on Tuesday, June 25 at 12 midday in its usual venue, the Pallant Suite, 7 South Pallant, Chichester. The format is a monthly low-cost lunch-time cabaret club featuring vintage and cabaret entertainment with an immersive edge. The fun includes light afternoon tea, music, a cabaret show and a game of retro bingo. It’s adults only, with tickets £10 from the Festival of Chichester.

As Dawn explains: “It’s a toned-down version of my Chichester Cabaret Club during the daytime and aimed at an older demographic. It has now been going for four months and the update is that it's going very well. I think we're averaging about 50 people every month and we've had some amazing feedback, but the lovely thing is that it's introducing this kind of entertainment to people that might not have enjoyed it before. We're getting people that have never been to this kind of thing before – and you get so much all within two hours. We shut the curtains and we have subtle lighting and it creates a real evening out during the daytime. We've had people come on their own but there are lots of people that come as couples and we also have large groups of ladies who are on their own and come in friendship groups. And I'm really, really proud of our volunteers that run it and the way they really help it all work and everyone gets on. I'm in the process of registering it as a community group. It is not-for-profit. All the money it makes is ploughed back into it. For me it's a real passion project.

“It's the last Tuesday of every month at the Pallant Suite and as I said we get 50 people. We could go up to about 65 or 70 but the point is that it's definitely filling a need. I have been asked if I would go and do something similar in other areas but for the moment I just want to build this one up before I start expanding. It's just something that I absolutely love doing. The original idea was to combat isolation and loneliness in the elderly, but actually the elderly is not a word that I like. I see it as queenagers. The queen was a queenager, wasn’t she! She was amazing right to the end so this is something definitely for the older generation, the people I've worked with for for many, many years but combining my vintage guise and my vaudeville and cabaret and it's very much aimed at an age group that I feel completely passionate about. So really I would say that it is perhaps 70 and up, but if someone who is 65 plus wants to be part of it, then that is also great. It's the people that might feel that they don't have family or a friends network but would enjoy the entertainment; and for certain people for whom getting out in the evening is going to be tricky.”

•This year, the Festival of Chichester is delighted to welcome Kenton Budd as its principal sponsor.