I've been building
communities since
the dial-up days.

I'm Edd Withers — a community organiser, event producer, and founder based in Canterbury. I make things that bring people together: city-wide shows, grassroots festivals, software for the events industry. The thread running through all of it is the same impulse I had hand-coding HTML at fifteen: if you build it right, people will show up.

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Edd Withers — community organiser and event producer based in Canterbury

What I'm doing now

Current projects

Canterbury City Show

Organiser and producer of Canterbury's flagship community event — bringing the city together through live music, local food, and a whole lot of civic pride.

Events

Complete Guestlist

My company. A unified guest list platform for event organisers, promoters, and door staff — offline-first iOS app with a web portal. The thing I think about at 2am.

Product

Catching Lives

Trustee at Canterbury's homelessness charity. Catching Lives runs the city's only open-access day centre and night shelter — vital, unglamorous, necessary work.

Charity

Abbey School Faversham

School governor and foster parent. Investing in the structures that shape young people's lives — because community starts early.

Education

Where I've been

The longer story

Meta

Community Partner. Shaped community-focused products and helped develop their Community Management Certification — turning lived experience into industry frameworks.

Pride Canterbury & Kent Pride

Founded Canterbury's Pride festival and grew it into a landmark city event. Then co-founded Kent Pride to expand LGBTQ+ celebrations across the county. Proof that community energy, when it finds its moment, scales.

Digital community

Advised the Jo Cox Foundation, Compass, and others on political and community organising through social media. Managed Canterbury's largest neighbourhood groups. The online-to-offline pipeline, before anyone called it that.

Republic Events

Social media strategy for Student Republic and City Sound Project. Student event organising across the south east — learning the mechanics of getting people into rooms together.

Civic roles

Director at Canterbury BID and Canterbury Credit Union. Board-level governance for local economic development — the less visible, more structural side of community building.

The early web

Before "community organiser" was in the vocabulary — there was HTML, phpBB forums, and a dial-up connection. A decade building homepages, moderating forums, and learning that if you make a space where people feel welcome, they'll keep coming back. Everything since has been a variation on that theme.

Worked with

Meta
Jo Cox Foundation
Compass
Catching Lives
Republic Events
Canterbury BID
Pride Canterbury
Facebook

Get in touch

Say hello

I'm always up for a conversation about events, community, or whatever you're building. Drop me a line here or find me on Substack where I write about the things I'm working on.

Thanks — I'll be in touch soon.

edd@eddwithers.com Substack LinkedIn