A fascinating and personable podcast exploring the culture, hidden history and stories of M G Boutler's hometown.
Creative Letter Exchange is for anybody who lives on the Isle of Sheppey who's ever wanted to be a correspondent
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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Help us to write a poem to celebrate the beauty and history of the Medway Estuary
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.
An exhibition on the history of the Thames sailing barge and its association with Southend.
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?
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.
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.
Through the Porthole will give people the opportunity to decorate their own boat porthole, these are the round windows you find on boats!
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.
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.
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.
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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Learn about the very first photographers in the Old High Street Intra area, their studios and images, and who occupies the same addresses today.
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.
Capturing the atmosphere of the Ebb & Flow Festival, to report a celebratory and specific moment in time through a series of drawings.
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.
Landscape and Wildlife Photography Workshop on Hoo Marshes
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.
A photographic exhibition by Holly Birtles including images taken from an opera performance based on the Mesolithic findings of the submerged landscape - Doggerland.
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
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.
An anniversary celebration of The Strand's 125th year through the sharing of memories and images through a virtual exhibition.
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
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.
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 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.
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.
A unique Riverside Sound Walk to listen to on headphones whilst following a route around Rochester Riverside and The Esplanade.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Artist Fiona Spirals has four collage works installed at St James' church, Cooling, on the Hoo Peninsula.
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.
‘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.
A Fleeting Field Station: A walk through an encounter between ecologies and landscapes of production.
Three Virtual Tours themed on the East India Company and the River Thames.
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.
Thurrock Island is a community art project for all ages, exploring the effects of plastic pollution
Canterbury Christ Church University's School of Creative Arts and Industries Student Showcase
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.
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.
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.
An exhibition focusing on the Typography of the seaside – including a guest lecturer talk on 27 May 2021 ending in a private view.
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.
A series of three online workshops playing on the double meaning of cruising—sailing on water & searching for sexual encounters.
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.
Hidden Heroines: the untold stories of the women of the Dockyard is a new temporary exhibition at The Historic Dockyard for Spring 2021
An exhibition reflecting on the construction of female identity in relation to geography, partly inspired by research into the imagery of the Thames Estuary
An outdoor exhibition along the edge of the Thames of work inspired by the estuary, the area, water and the sea.
See artist Bhajan Hunjan’s wonderful installation inspired by nature inside the Exbury Egg.
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.
Join us for a relaxed Sunday evening reading group that will explore Nicola Barker's Thames Gateway Trilogy
A costumed history walk round Queenborough (Isle of Sheppey) with site specific stories and sea shanties.
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
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.
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.
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.
A creative programme featuring new artworks and performances created in response to the rich heritage, forgotten stories and hidden histories of Gravesham riverfront
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.
A site specific music and dance piece; meditating on, and responding to, the landscape of the estuary and the movement of tides.
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.
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.
A series of events inspired by the Thames Estuary, narrating stories about crossing borders, connecting and bridging cultures from land and seas.
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
A group exhibition showcasing the work of eight, emerging Kent based photographers who have been creating a new body of work
...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?
A project that explores the relationship between the hyper-local and the global by focusing on the waterways that connect us
Unique Hydrodetour starting at Dartford Station and leading us out along the Darent River
In this illustrated talk, Ruskin scholar Robert Hewison discusses John Ruskin’s life-long experience of France, its culture, politics and architecture.
The Rising Tide is a walking adventure for live audiences diving into the stories of local people whose lives have been shaped by Estuary.
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.
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.
Two Tree Island is a photographic project, investigating the history of the island from a landfill site to the Nature Reserve it is today.
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’.
Outfall is a research project commissioned by TACO! exploring flows of waste, production and biological matter within London and the Thames Estuary.
A temporary workshop towards curating a wild ‘Museum of Futurology’ about and within the vicinity of Gunners Park and Shoeburyness East Beach.
An exhibition in two Kent locations, Margate and Ramsgate. Bringing you creative responses engaging with environmental and social sustainability.
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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© 2020 Metal and Cement Fields
Metal at Chalkwell Hall
Chalkwell Avenue
Southend-on-Sea
Essex
SS0 8NB
T: +44 (0) 01702 470700
Cement Fields
School of Arts
Jarman Building
The University of Kent
Canterbury CT2 7UG
T: +44 (0) 01227 824350
