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SO...WHAT'S GOING ON? 

The Mad Hatters' Parade is an annual community-built wearable-art parade on the streets of Hudson, NY. Anyone can join our retinue of aspiring artists, agile absurdists, and ambulatory agitators to create an open-source work of mobile performance art. Drawing inspiration from global Carnival masquerades and Hudson’s evolving history as a city of makers, the Mad Hatters’ Parade brings together Hudson’s diverse communities in a shared spectacle of the nonsensical. Hats and headdresses, body-extensions and puppets, and wearable assemblages in any form are welcome. The Parade steps off from the Hudson Area Library at 2 PM and wends its way to a final Grand Sashay at the Hudson Waterfont.

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What is a Mad Hatters' Parade?

Anything you want it to be. ​

  • A convocation of wearable art ~ from Carnival creations to Easter promenades; from rural Wildermann stomps to couture catwalks. 

  • A celebration of Hudson’s evolution as a city of makers... 

  • A looking glass, a phantom toll-both, a wild rumpus...

  • A movement of anti-movements  Dada, Fluxus, Butoh, Punk, …

  • A revel of difference and dissent, nonconformity and neurodiversity. 

  • None of the above, or all of the below….

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What are the Four Pillars of Madhattedness...

We thought you'd never ask!

The Mad Hatters' Parade is a participatory wearable art parade. Join us in your towering hats, your burlesque body extensions, your mischievous puppets, your kinetic architecture, your cacophanous instruments.

The Mad Hatters' Parade is human-powered. Art you can wear, carry, roll, strap on, or otherwise physically animate is welcome. We are a street-level, interactive experience. We don’t wave Imperiously From On High riding floats, fire trucks, or flat-beds. Your only vehicle is yourself.

The Mad Hatters' Parade is hand-made. Making is central to our purpose. We lead workshops to create lightweight, wearable artworks through various Hudson youth programs, as well as in free drop-in Mad Hat Slams for the whole community

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