Stone Age shopping, underground cinema, birds of prey and art in the cave;  a few of the new  events on offer during the Stone Age Festival at Kents Cavern this half term, celebrating the remarkable ancient human and Ice Age animal occupation at Torquay’s caves.

With funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Stone Age Festival is part of Project Digging Deeper, an initiative of the Kents Cavern Foundation, the charity responsible for cave conservation, education and archaeological investigations at Kents Cavern, one of the English Riviera UNESCO Global Geopark’s most important Geosites.    

Elliot Ling, Education Officer at Kents Cavern and project lead said: February half term is a great time to host this Stone Age event and we have a packed programme to bring the Stone Age alive, aimed at people of all ages and abilities.  We are grateful to the National Lottery Heritage Fund for the support they are giving to launch an annual Stone Age Festival.

The Festival runs from Saturday 16^th to Sunday 24^th February with a series of bookable workshop sessions and activities on offer.  Participation in many of the activities is included in the normal cave admission ticket.  On offer are Stone Age craft activities including flag painting, tree cookie pendants design, gatherer-pouch making and clay figure modelling.  Outside the caves we have a Stone Age artefacts handling table, hands-on archaeological digging, shelter building, spear throwing, birds of prey, and a Stone Age trail. Inside the caves is an Ice Age animal quest, flint knapping demonstrations and an interactive rhythm session with the Junkman.    

We have come up with some fantastic daytime and evening workshops and bookable sessions including Stone Age Chef, prehistoric gatherer and musician workshops, caves and cosmos astronomy evening, a Flint Knapping course and even an Art in the Caves masterclass and underground sketching event for watercolour artists of all abilities.

Details of all these events are running and how to book the workshop sessions is all online at www.kents-cavern.co.uk.

  James Hull, general manager at Kents Cavern, said; “Through the Digging Deeper project we have adapted our educational offer into family fun and interactive sessions for all ages, and we’ve added a few innovative sessions and workshops. One is the pop-up underground Cave Cinema when we’ll be screening Ice Age (cert. U) for families, and for those that dare, we’re showing The Descent (cert. 18). The festival is taking place in February and this is to support the area’s ambitions to provide events and activities outside the main season.”    

Nerys Watts, Head of the National Lottery Heritage Fund South West, said: “Kents Cavern is an incredibly important part of our prehistoric history and National Lottery funding is set to make it even more exciting! From revealing stories of the Stone Age and climate change to making the site itself more accessible for everyone, we’re delighted to support these exciting plans for Devon’s heritage.”