Associated Programme

The Clifftown Podcast

A fascinating and personable podcast exploring the culture, hidden history and stories of M G Boutler's hometown.

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Creative Letter Exchange

Creative Letter Exchange is for anybody who lives on the Isle of Sheppey who's ever wanted to be a correspondent

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Cloud9 Festival

Cloud9 is a new creative wellbeing festival for Ebbsfleet, Swanscombe and Northfleet. Cloud9 brings together the finest street arts, creative classes and fitness sessions with a twist!

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Medway Estuary Haiflu

Help us to write a poem to celebrate the beauty and history of the Medway Estuary

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HYDRACITY 2021

Hydracity brings artists and public together to investigate London’s watery network, the interlocking ideas & currents that flow in/out the Thames. Hydracity 2021 is an ambitious, timely, transformational programme of work, linked to a novel programme of co-creation, open workshops & public engagement.

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Red Sails Over The Estuary

An exhibition on the history of the Thames sailing barge and its association with Southend.

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Through the Porthole - Ebb & Flow Festival

Through the Porthole will give people the opportunity to decorate their own boat porthole, these are the round windows you find on boats!

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Street Names - Ebb & Flow Festival

This commission explores the origins of the street names along the Chatham Intra, from the bottom of Star Hill to Sun Pier, through a series of black and white photographs.

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Nicola Flower - Ebb & Flow Festival

Nicola Flower's favourite shop in the whole of Medway is Zee Fashions & Fabrics. She's going to draw the women working in the shop and their customers and make a fanzine of their story.

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Salt Sweet - Ebb & Flow Festival

Salt Sweet - listen as submerged stories drawn from the Five Bells & Bath Hard Lanes area of Chatham Intra are layered with river sounds in a sonic rhythm that suggests the washing back and forth of the tides.

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Intra 2121 - Ebb & Flow Festival

Young people’s stories, which imagine the historic Chatham Intra in 100 years’ time, will be seen and heard along the high street. What are their hopes, fears and dreams for the area in 2121?

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Shadow Tales - Gallery of You! - Ebb & Flow Festival

MESS ROOM invited people to strike a pose in April and donate their shadow, to be immortalised as a silhouette and feature on a series of banners for colourful street gallery, “Shadow Tales - Gallery of You!”, which will be displayed along the Old High Street Intra.

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Shadow Tales of Intra - Ebb & Flow Festival

Taking inspiration from the rich history of Old High Street Intra, Shadow Tales will create silhouettes that tell a story and make for intriguing displays in windows and shop fronts.

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Dizzy O Dare Audio Trails - Ebb & Flow Festival

Using your smart phones GPS technology, the new Dizzy O’Dare Audio Trails app will guide you on walks around Chatham Intra, triggering stories, poems, history and art based activities from local artists at specific locations, to inspire you, as you explore the area.

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Photography of the Victorian era - Ebb & Flow Festival

Learn about the very first photographers in the Old High Street Intra area, their studios and images, and who occupies the same addresses today.

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Medway Then and Now - Ebb & Flow Festival

After recreating an aerial photo of Chatham Intra from 1920, writer and photographer Neil Thorne will present the two images together in a triptych with an account of his experience, exhibited in a High Street window.

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Sketching the Ebb & Flow Festival

Capturing the atmosphere of the Ebb & Flow Festival, to report a celebratory and specific moment in time through a series of drawings.

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Medway Dance Network - Ebb & Flow Festival

Medway Dance Network will be exploring gender identity and the benefit of women cross-dressing to gain financial and employment privileges afforded to men during the 1920’s.

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Landscape and Wildlife Photography Workshop - Hoo Marshes

​​Landscape and Wildlife Photography Workshop on Hoo Marshes

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REVEAL

An exhibition and sale of works by artists, Sheila Appleton & Ian E Smith and potters, Richard Baxter & Julie O'Sullivan with jewellery by Joe Spurgeon.

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UP TO YOUR NECK IN MUD

A photographic exhibition by Holly Birtles including images taken from an opera performance based on the Mesolithic findings of the submerged landscape - Doggerland.

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The Cinder Path Project

The Cinder Path Project will investigate the successful campaign 50 years ago to stop a major road “The Road To The West” being built along the Cinder Path from Chalkwell to Old Leigh

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A Hoo Catalog

double-face will spend time on Hoo Peninsular, looking, listening, interacting and responding. Their thoughts and actions will be logged via an online space, which will evolve and build throughout the duration of the project.

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The Strand 125

An anniversary celebration of The Strand's 125th year through the sharing of memories and images through a virtual exhibition.

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Tales of the Fanns: Walking & Arts Festival

A series of free walks and activities will occur across the area to reveal unexpected and delightful treasures waiting to be discovered in the Land of the Fanns

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Stone Place Stories

Stone Place Stories uses Google My Maps to bring together, in a digital format, images, stories and art that convey the unique social, economic and environmental history of this small parish.

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Wandering the Wilderness

An Art Exhibition and Grand Tour of the Estuary, with ARTWORKS in both Virtual and Physical Wilderness Waypoints

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Swansula, Relics of Estuarine Magic

Swansula, Relics of Estuarine Magic is an ongoing world building and curatorial project – a fictional archive which frames sculptural, moving image, animated, painted, drawn, poetic, audio and digital artworks as artefacts from the future, excavated from the speculative world of Swansula.

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Conrad to Containers: Barking to Beijing

A participatory walk and ritual that invites us to join the dots and think about the hidden costs of our consumptive lifestyles in the place where Joseph Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness.

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Riverside Soundings - Sound Walk

A unique Riverside Sound Walk to listen to on headphones whilst following a route around Rochester Riverside and The Esplanade.

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Flotsam and Jetsam

For the duration of Estuary 2021 artist-basketmaker Selena Chandler will be in residence along the Thames’ northern edges, making daily walks to gather the debris of consumerist society and the offerings of nature’s resilience.

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Practice Makes Perfect

Focal Point Gallery is delighted to present the first institutional exhibition of new work by Rosa-Johan Uddoh, an interdisciplinary artist working towards radical self-love, inspired by black feminist practice and writing.

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Restorative Drawing with Liz Atkin for Bethlem Gallery

Liz Atkin leads an absorbing and restorative hour of drawing, focused on expressive mark marking techniques. We will take inspiration from the texture, geography and traces of the Thames Estuary.

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IMPEKA presents Confluence #2: Estuary

Four artists investigating and challenging our perception and understanding of space, place and environment – through the means of listening and reflecting on what informs our experiences and interactions with the natural world, as well as with one another?

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The Sound of That Place

The Sound of That Place is a film and audio soundscape of Crossness Nature Reserve, Bexley and the nearby Ridgeway that collages 8 people’s unique perspectives taken through films, photos, narration and interviews as they were invited to walk independently in the area and to respond to their environment.

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PRECARIOUS STRAITS

A group exhibition at TOMA Project Space, a series of workshops and events at The Old Waterworks and a new postal care package commission, posters and writing commissions to accompany the project.

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Rubbish Photos – Southend Beach Rubbish Project

Twelve poster-sized images of ‘beach plastic’ by Imogen Welch on Southend pier and short Cyanotype workshops for families – using rubbish collected on Jubilee Beach.

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Ripping Landscapes

Artist Fiona Spirals has four collage works installed at St James' church, Cooling, on the Hoo Peninsula.

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Cyanotype Workshops with Southend Beach Rubbish Project

Come and join us, on Jubilee Beach in Southend-on-Sea, for some fun, outdoor workshops that combine beach cleaning and cyanotype printing, an early photographic process.

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PRECARIOUS STRAITS – Exhibition

‘Precarious straits ~ survival on Southend’s new coast, Southend-under-Sea’ exhibition will be at the TOMA (The Other MA) Project Space, looking at the speculative economic, political and ecological futures people may have to navigate.

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A Fleeting Field Station near Cliffe

A Fleeting Field Station: A walk through an encounter between ecologies and landscapes of production.

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East India and The Thames - A Trilogy

Three Virtual Tours themed on the East India Company and the River Thames.

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Decoy

Anna Falcini will present daily findings from a site-specific residency at one of the few remaining decoy ponds on the Hoo Peninsula in Kent.

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Thurrock Island 2021: Bryony and the Big Beach Clean Up

Thurrock Island is a community art project for all ages, exploring the effects of plastic pollution

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Canterbury Christ Church University’s Degree Showcase

Canterbury Christ Church University's School of Creative Arts and Industries Student Showcase

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Same River Twice

Taking its inspiration from Heraclitus’ proverb, 'No man ever steps in the in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man,’ this writing workshop considers how the estuarine landscape might inspire new poetry and prose.

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Breaching the Boundary

This exhibition will explore the estuary’s role not only in a historical/militaristic sense, but also as a borderline, as a frontier in ongoing conflicts such as climate change and development.

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In the Process of Knitting A Netting

A spoken word piece for four voices, activated live by local participants near/on the beach at around sunset over eight evenings in Margate and Whitstable.

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The Graphic Language of the Seaside Exhibition

An exhibition focusing on the Typography of the seaside – including a guest lecturer talk on 27 May 2021 ending in a private view.

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The Great Tide: Flooding, Landscape and Memory

In this programme Patrick Bernard discusses 'The Great Tide' with writer and social historian Ken Worpole; Edward Platt, author of 'The Great Flood'; and Anne Johnson, a storyteller who runs Everyday Magic, a London-based charity which sends storytellers into state primary schools, and who lived on Canvey Island at the time of the flood.

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Cruising the Estuary

A series of three online workshops playing on the double meaning of cruising—sailing on water & searching for sexual encounters.

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Rising from the Ashes – The Restoration of the Dockyard Church

Join architects Hugh Broughton and Martin Ashley along with Trust Director Will Palin at this online event to discuss the reimagining of Dockyard Church and their approaches to delivering a historically sensitive yet dynamic solution to revitalising the church to it's former exterior grandeur coupled with a vibrant contemporary interior.

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Hidden Heroines: the untold stories of the women of the Dockyard

Hidden Heroines: the untold stories of the women of the Dockyard is a new temporary exhibition at The Historic Dockyard for Spring 2021

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Río y Mar (River and Sea)

An exhibition reflecting on the construction of female identity in relation to geography, partly inspired by research into the imagery of the Thames Estuary

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Art on the Rails

An outdoor exhibition along the edge of the Thames of work inspired by the estuary, the area, water and the sea.

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Nature inside the famous Exbury Egg | new installation by artist Bhajan Hunjan

See artist Bhajan Hunjan’s wonderful installation inspired by nature inside the Exbury Egg.

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Estuary Imaginarium: Tidal treasures from the Thames

Estuary Imaginarium is an alternative guide and activity book to enjoy along the Estuary. Suitable for all ages, it invites you to collect objects and materials, find accidental assemblages, document the overlooked and discarded, think about what is washed up or washed away, uncover stories and histories from the Thames.

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An Estuary Reading Group

Join us for a relaxed Sunday evening reading group that will explore Nicola Barker's Thames Gateway Trilogy

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Galleons Coffins & Drunken Sailors

A costumed history walk round Queenborough (Isle of Sheppey) with site specific stories and sea shanties.

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Thames Run: Source to Sea

Thames Run: Source to Sea is a live artwork and durational run/performance to be undertaken by the artist following the length of the River Thames from source to sea

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Lower Halstow - Landscape Photography Workshop

Whether you have a DSLR camera or smartphone, this workshop is suitable for photographers of all abilities. We shall walk along the Medway shoreline, where the boats, wrecks and little jetty create some fantastic photographic opportunities.

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Walk, Talk, Draw

Nicole Mollett will lead a walking drawing workshop around the town of Sheerness. The tour will explore some of the town's hidden footpaths, back alleyways and the iconic seawall.

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Gravesham Estuary Fringe Festival 2021

Gravesham Arts Salon has reached out to artists and creatives across all genres throughout the borough to be part of the Gravesham Estuary Fringe Festival.

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SILTings

A creative programme featuring new artworks and performances created in response to the rich heritage, forgotten stories and hidden histories of Gravesham riverfront

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Trail of the Blue Porcupine – towards the Watery (H)edges of Gravesend

This exploratory Hydrodetour walk launches from Gravesend’s unique art centre LV21. In a homage to former and contemporary fauna of the marshy landscapes we join the Trail of The Blue Porcupine: A collaboration by Poet James M'Kay and artist Sarah Sparkes.

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Under Big Skies

A site specific music and dance piece; meditating on, and responding to, the landscape of the estuary and the movement of tides.

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Estuary Stories

Join us for Natasha Davis' Estuary Stories, an online performance film recorded in the secret corners of Chatham and the dockyard, to encounter moments of laughter, loss, kindness and new beginnings, shared by your neighbours – old and new.

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Scratch Memories of the Thames

On this online workshop, participants will be invited to create digital stories and animations based on their experiences and memories of the Thames using simple coding.

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Tales of Lands and Seas

A series of events inspired by the Thames Estuary, narrating stories about crossing borders, connecting and bridging cultures from land and seas.

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T100 Dreaming

With a series of specially curated walks, T100 Dreaming invites communities to come together to share their dreams, creatively re-imagining a better future as we emerge into a post–Covid world. T100 Dreaming will celebrate the sense of community spirit that the pandemic heightened as we dream of a more cohesive, creative and sustainable future

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Art, Society, Nature Photographic Residency

A group exhibition showcasing the work of eight, emerging Kent based photographers who have been creating a new body of work

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and what would you say? – Virtual Film Screening

...and what would you say? is an experimental short combining spoken word and film to explore the idea: what if our stretch of coastline could talk to us?

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Exchanged Tides

A project that explores the relationship between the hyper-local and the global by focusing on the waterways that connect us

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Darent Valley Confluences to Gravesend

Unique Hydrodetour starting at Dartford Station and leading us out along the Darent River

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‘The Enraptured Tourist’: Ruskin and France Talk

In this illustrated talk, Ruskin scholar Robert Hewison discusses John Ruskin’s life-long experience of France, its culture, politics and architecture.

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The Rising Tide: A Story Trail

The Rising Tide is a walking adventure for live audiences diving into the stories of local people whose lives have been shaped by Estuary.

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Landfill Audio Report

Landfill Audio Report is a collaborative artistic research project, excavating the significance of a former landfill site on the Thames at East Tilbury which is gradually leaking into the river as the tide erodes the riverbanks.

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Rainham Marshes/Rainham Barges

This unique Hydrodetour artist-led walk and performance starts from Rainham Station, leading us out along the London Loop pathway to the Concrete Barges at Coldharbour Point.

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Two Tree Island

Two Tree Island is a photographic project, investigating the history of the island from a landfill site to the Nature Reserve it is today.

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Fogged Mirror

Fogged Mirror is a film accompanied by spoken performance, weaving a narrative from myth and history. It draws on the ‘miracle of the black leg’.

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Outfall

Outfall is a research project commissioned by TACO! exploring flows of waste, production and biological matter within London and the Thames Estuary.

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Subterranean Cosmic Dreaming Part 2: Creating a Museum of Futurology

A temporary workshop towards curating a wild ‘Museum of Futurology’ about and within the vicinity of Gunners Park and Shoeburyness East Beach.

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A Refracted View

An exhibition in two Kent locations, Margate and Ramsgate. Bringing you creative responses engaging with environmental and social sustainability.

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Beach of Dreams

A collaborative 500-mile walk from Lowestoft to Tilbury

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Tilbury Bridge Walkway of Memories

Tilbury Bridge Walkway of Memories is an outdoor art and sound installation conceived by Artist EVEWRIGHT. It is the first site-specific art and sound installation to be held at the Port of Tilbury in Essex and the UK dedicated to people of the Windrush Generation.

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Estuary 2021 is made possible by

Principal Partners

Creative_Estuary_New_1   ace

Major Partners

ecc uok thurrock thames_gateway selep medway  thames estuary   ebbsfleet    Ebbsfleet mayor locatekent kentcc gravesham uoe bas_coun   south_coun Here for Culture

Commissioning Partners

book_fest community_fund heritage_fund creative_coast bexleysalford fpg lesnes Essex2020Logo The Old Waterworks Logo UCA1

Festival Partners

arts_human uni_south uni_oxford uni_glas send_pier pla opp_se henley Flowers Gallery logoc2c roh southeastern Thamesmead2 Peabody2 BowArts3 raddison uber arriva Canterbury Dartford Faversham Swale1 Thanet Visit c2c1 Chat

Festival Supporters

essex_diversity SouthEssex1 UniversityCentre1 Churches International Exeter Wales Ramm Artist Grand