The International Folklore Fiasco

The Folkestone International Folklore Festival sits at the beginning of the Bear's more public archive story.

By the late 1970s, Folkestone's seafront entertainment world was still trying to hold together several different identities at once: folklore festival, coach-party resort, cabaret town, ferry port, pub route, craft market and family seaside attraction. Festival material from this period points towards a town trying to connect the Old High Street, harbour, Rotunda, seafront hotels and performance venues into one coherent visitor experience.

The early Hooden Horse Trials papers are grouped with this wider and more confused promotional scheme by later programme notes, although no complete festival schedule survives.

For a short period, the Bear appears to have been considered part of that offer.

He was not yet the ruined nightclub figure or pub incident regular that appears later in the archive. At this stage he was still being tested as a possible seaside folklore mascot: strange enough to be memorable, simple enough to photograph, and already connected to cabaret rooms, amusement spaces and pub audiences.

This was not universally welcomed.

The Bear had the right outline for a festival mascot: memorable, strange, photographable, good with crowds in small doses, and already connected to the pubs, cabaret rooms and seaside amusement circuit. He was also, according to later notes, "difficult to position within a family programme".

The problem was not that the Bear failed to attract attention.

The problem was that he attracted exactly the wrong kind.

Within the archive, this period marks the first clear misreading of the Bear. He was treated as a mascot when he was closer to an act. He was placed inside civic folklore when he belonged more naturally to the unstable edge of seaside entertainment: half attraction, half cabaret turn, half pub nuisance.

The festival material promised visiting performers, hotel cabaret, local craft stalls, pub events, coach-party entertainment and a family-friendly route between the Old High Street, the harbour, the Rotunda and the seafront hotels.

The Prima Pottery copies place the Bear inside this souvenir economy. The pottery bear appears as a plausible festival keepsake, while later annotations suggest a much less useful shop-floor appearance by the Bear himself.

Hooden Horse material is filed under the customary-performance line; Bear material is filed under publicity, cabaret and venue incidents. Later notes sometimes place both beside the same festival route, but do not settle their relationship.

The International Folklore Festival therefore becomes the first stage in the Bear's decline arc. It places him between the Hooden Horse material, the Rotunda amusement imagery and the later Marine Pavilion / Hotel Burstin cabaret strand.

It is the moment where the Bear is still being promoted, but already slightly out of place.

In later versions of the file, the festival route expands into hotel lounges, coach-party evenings, amusement-arcade sponsorship and pub appearances. The Bear seems to have interpreted each of these as evidence of a long-term engagement.