Not too long ago I was lucky enough to attend KeeperFest, at Jimmy’s Farm & Wildlife Park to enjoy the fun and community of this festival-style gathering for professional animal keepers. It launched a couple of years ago (in 2023) as a dedicated space for the people who care for animals daily, with a more informal style and setting than the usual formal academic conferences. Rather than being a public-facing zoo festival (which some people could rightly assume it to be), KeeperFest is built around keepers: workshops, talks, trade stands, practical skill sessions, CPD (continuing professional development) opportunities, evening social time and informal swapping of ideas. The event is currently billed as the UK’s only festival dedicated to professional keepers and has run in successive years with organisers emphasising a mix of practical learning, industry updates, and the chance to meet other practitioners from across the country. Despite knowing about KeeperFest for the past couple of years, this is the first one I have been able to attend.

KeeperFest feels like the lovechild of a conference, a hands-on training day, and a weekend festival. Programming typically runs across two days and includes keynote talks, specialist panels, practical masterclasses, and trade stands aimed at animal care professionals. Previous sessions have covered topics such as education and presentation skills, how to manage studbooks, emergency procedures, inspection preparation, enrichment design, and more. These are delivered by a mix of in-house experts, conservationists and external specialists. Organisers also slot in lighter programming and entertainment so attendees have time to socialise and decompress after the formal sessions. During this KeeperFest, I attended a workshop on the importance of providing different lighting types to reptiles, run by Tom Griffiths of Tomaskas. My second workshop was a roundtable discussion with members of UK Animal Care Technicians (UKACT) and other organisations about how we can best support the needs of students through our animal collections. Both were extremely enlightening and I came away feeling empowered and ready to contribute to positive change in both sectors.

There’s a deliberately practical element: workshops where keepers build enrichment devices, practice restraint or animal-first handling scenarios, or learn filmmaking and public engagement skills to improve their institution’s education work. Unfortunately, traditional conferences are often formal, single-track, and geared toward presentations for wide audiences. KeeperFest intentionally blends the festival atmosphere (outdoor site, social evenings, stalls) with focused professional development. This hybrid model matters for several reasons. The relaxed festival vibe lowers barriers for less-experienced keepers to ask questions, try sessions and network, compared with a staid conference room environment. The emphasis on hands-on workshops means knowledge is transferable; keepers can take an enrichment idea or a low-cost restraint technique back to their teams the next week. Finally, keepers from collections large and small, from farms to conservation zoos, can compare notes, this cross-pollination is where operational improvements often start.

One of KeeperFest’s biggest, though sometimes subtle, benefits is informal community building. Keepers work in physically demanding, emotionally intense jobs where workplace cultures and priorities vary. Festivals like KeeperFest create concentrated time for keepers to meet colleagues, swap problem-solving tips, share resource leads, and form mentoring relationships that continue after the event. For early-career keepers this is particularly important: meeting mid- and senior-level keepers allows them to hear about career routes (e.g. study options, how to become a studbook keeper, or step into a curator role) and to see a range of workplaces. For more experienced keepers, it’s a chance to mentor, recruit, and spot innovative approaches they might trial at their own sites. Talks and workshops are structured so attendees can count sessions toward their CPD, essential for maintainable career progression and for meeting standards set by accrediting bodies. Having a central, annual place where keepers learn about new best practices (whether that’s updates to inspection expectations, advances in enrichment design, or emergency response protocols) helps raise consistency of care across the sector.

Moreover, the festival offers access to recognised voices in the field: regulators, zoo associations, conservationists and vets. That means keepers are able to learn directly from people who shape policy or who have deep expertise in conservation or animal welfare. That sort of direct line between policy and practice is rare and valuable. BIAZA (the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums) has promoted KeeperFest as an event of interest to the professional community, highlighting the festival’s role in supporting training and standards. Keepers can construct and test enrichment devices onsite, gaining ideas that can be replicated with limited budgets. KeeperFest isn’t just inward-facing: it fosters outward conservation partnerships. Conservation charities, research organisations and welfare NGOs often attend or present, giving keepers routes into collaborative projects. For smaller collections or individuals passionate about particular species, KeeperFest provides access to networks that otherwise might be difficult to reach. These linkages help move conservation projects forward: keepers can volunteer for fieldwork, contribute data to captive-breeding programmes, or coordinate with in-situ partners.

While formal longitudinal studies of KeeperFest’s impact on practice aren’t yet widely published, early evidence points to measurable outcomes. Attendee feedback praising the blend of learning and social time, reports of immediate changes implemented at home institutions, and increased cross-site collaborations. Wild Welfare reported that KeeperFest 2024 attracted roughly 150 animal care professionals and provided a chance for concentrated networking and knowledge exchange, the kind of critical mass needed to start projects and maintain them beyond a single weekend. About the same number of attendees were present this year across the weekend, with most of those being present for the Saturday only. KeeperFest doesn’t only benefit individual keepers. Institutions gain by having better-trained, more connected staff who can implement modern welfare practices, improve visitor engagement, and design conservation programmes that are practical and evidence-based.

No initiative is without challenges. A few considerations for KeeperFest and similar events include: ensuring ticket pricing and travel logistics don’t exclude keepers from remote or underfunded institutions; striking the right balance between practical workshops and evidence-based content that aligns with current welfare science and regulatory standards; working with accrediting bodies so that sessions are consistently trackable for professional development requirements; and putting in place mechanisms (surveys, case studies, follow-ups) that track how festival-learned practices change animal welfare or institutional processes over time. To me, that last point is the most important and the others are solvable issues: sliding scale tickets, bursaries, partnership with professional societies, and formal evaluation frameworks would all help KeeperFest move from a promising idea to a sustained institution. Can you tell I’m a scientist? All of that came to me on the drive home from what was an extremely fun and engaging hybrid conference.

KeeperFest at Jimmy’s Farm is carving out a niche in the zookeeping professional ecosystem: a recurring, accessible space for hands-on learning, networking and wellbeing. As it grows (and as organisers continue to cooperate with associations, charities and accrediting bodies) KeeperFest could become a central node in the UK and international keeper community: a place where standards are shared, innovations tested, and cross-institutional projects take root. There is no KeeperFest planned for next year but if you’re at a future one, please do make sure you come and say hello!

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