SAVE-THE-DATE: Sunday May 18th, 2025
We are excited to bring our 8th Annual Cattywampus Parade & Block Party to Suttree Landing Park! This year’s theme is OUR JOY IS POWERFUL.
Cattywampus’s people-powered Parade & Block Party has become an annual tradition in Knoxville over the past 7 years. It brings together diverse and intergenerational cross-sections of our community to play, create, and build relationships with one another, while using the visual and performing arts as tools to help tell our stories and vision what futures we might create together.
Community members of all ages are invited to make giant puppets, masks, costumes, and other art and come together to parade as one. The parade is free and open to all!
Scroll down for info about the theme, how to register, upcoming workshops, parade art making resources, and more.
We are grateful to all of the community partners who’ve collaborated with us over the years to make each parade year unique, including the Big Ears Festival, who co-hosted in 2022 and 2023, alongside musical guests the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Aurora Nealand & the Royal Roses, RAM, 79rs Gang, and others.
In May 2024, we brought our 2024 Parade to Bike Walk Knox’s Open Streets event on Central Ave in Happy Holler in partnership with SOCM. Learn more about this parade in the video below:
ABOUT THE PARADE THEME
2025 Parade Theme: Our Joy is Powerful
At Cattywampus, we believe joymaking, play, and celebration are tools for cultivating resilience in these increasingly challenging times we’re moving into and through. When we tap into what brings us joy, it reminds us of what we love about being alive. It connects us to one another and reminds us of our power.
This parade season, we invite you to join us in conjuring our collective joy as a community and using it as fuel to practice audacious acts of imagination as we move into the future together. Let delight, play, and celebration inspire you as you make your giant puppets, costumes, and other people-powered creations and then come together with us to parade as one on Sunday, May 18th.
HOW TO GET INVOLVED
Sign-up to be in the parade! This parade is open to the entire community. Individuals, families, schools, neighborhood groups, and organizations are all encouraged to participate. We are looking for folks to make masks, puppets, and costumes, as well as dancers and stiltwalkers. You are welcome to create your own entry or form your own parade crew and make something together. We’ll also have extra art available to carry if you simply want to join in the parade itself. All participants must register (It’s free!).
Make Art! Cattywampus will be hosting a variety of art making workshops and open studio days leading up to the Parade. Learn about upcoming Workshops & Open Studio Days on our Events Page. You can also visit our “Resources” page to access our free Giant Puppet Making & Parade Art Manual, images, templates, and other instructions to get inspired.
For questions or info about how to get your school, organization or community group involved in the 2025 parade, please use the contact form here or email Rachel Milford at cattywampuspuppetcouncil@gmail.com.
PARADE PROGRAMMING
Although the parade itself is a one-day event, the programming leading up to it begins months in advance. Each parade season, Cattywampus hosts:
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Youth Art Residencies at 10 different community partner sites. Our 2025 youth community partner sites included Centro Hispano’s after-school programs at Belle Morris Elementary, Norwood Elementary, West View Elementary, Lonsdale Elementary & Pellissippi State Community College; Boys & Girls Club sites at Vestal, Montgomery Village, & North Ridge Crossing; and the Shora Foundation. Over the course of 2-3 months, Cattywampus teaching artists and youth interns support students at these sites in designing and creating their own giant puppets and parade art inspired by the year’s parade theme. As the culmination of this project, students then form their own parade crews and have the opportunity to share their creations with the community.
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A paid Youth Intern Squad that pairs local high schoolers with our Youth Art Residency sites throughout the community.
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Giant Puppet Making Workshops and Open Studio Days for organizations, schools, neighborhood groups, and other individuals who want to learn how to make art and organize their own parade crew. Check our events calendar, sign up for our mailing list, and follow us on Instagram to find out when our next workshop is!
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The Knox Honkers & Bangers, a new, raucous, hot pink, and inclusive community brass band Cattywampus piloted in 2023. This band is open to all! Join us!
THANK YOU TO OUR 2025 SPONSORS AND PARTNERS
This project is funded in part through grants from the Tennessee Arts Commission, as well as through the UTK CURCI program and the Arts & Culture Alliance.