Welcoming Kenton Budd as new Festival of Chichester principal sponsor

The festival will offer five weeks of fun stretching from walks to talks, exhibitions to plays, from music to theatre, running from Saturday, June 15 to Sunday, July 21. Tickets online: www.thenovium.org/boxoffice; email: [email protected]; box office: 01243 816525.

Kenton is delighted to be part of it: “To be the principal sponsor is fantastic. We have been involved in a minor way in the last few years but to be principal sponsor is great. It makes you feel part of it. It is good for the company. It is good exposure but the festival is something that we care about and it's something that makes us feel good – to be able to mix our business with what the festival is doing. It just feels like a natural partnership.”

A member of the National Association of Estate Agents and a licensed agent, Kenton has been an estate agent in Chichester since 1993 – one of the longest-serving in the city.

“On a personal level I have always enjoyed the arts and music and that's why I've always lived in Chichester. I've never moved. And that's why so many people move to Chichester. You know in an estate agency why people are wanting to move and a lot of people that come here are artists and musicians and authors. We know from our demographic what people are wanting and what a lot of people are wanting is culture.

"You could say that culture sounds a bit pompous but it just adds so much to the richness of living in Chichester. There are so many things that you can do here. We are next to the harbour and we are close to the Downs but in the centre of Chichester there is so much going on. You've got the art trail and you've got the theatre; you've got all the events going on at Goodwood that draw so many people in.

“And you have got the Festival of Chichester which is something that involves so many people. There are so many people that have a skill that they might not use full time whether as a musician or as a poet but they are clearly very talented and that's what's so great about the festival – not all these people can find an audience, but they do through the festival.

"It is such a rich festival and so many people are involved with it. I have been doing my job in Chichester for 30 years and this is just Chichester. The Festival of Chichester is exactly what it says it is.

“My basic job is to help people move but what I get out of it is the people that I meet and that has become more and more enjoyable the older I've got and the longer I've been in estate agency. I think of all the wonderful people that I have met and I think I ought to write start writing my memoirs though I'm not sure how many people would read them! But there really are some fascinating people in Chichester.”

Inevitably Kenton’s job gives him a key insight into the city of Chichester: “There is a lot of wealth and there is no getting away from that. A lot of people move to Chichester in retirement and they do have deep pockets though I do think someone could sort the roads out a bit with so many potholes! And there are often new housing developments. In some ways you want to stay stop. But the fact is that commercially people have got to have new houses. And the fact is that the cultural parts of Chichester, the centre of Chichester remains unchanged.”

Kenton’s involvement the festival builds on his own musical activities of a few years ago: “I went to drama school in my late teens and studied musical theatre at Guildford School of Acting. That was my passion at the time and it became a hobby, an enjoyment that followed through into my 20s and then family and work and other things took over. I'm a keen cyclist and I sail in the harbour.”

He doesn't sing so much anymore, but becoming principal sponsor for the Festival of Chichester certainly taps into that artistic and musical leaning, he says.

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