V4 500 500 500 500 START MILES PEOPLE DREAMS SILKS
Lowestoft SHUTTERSTOCK BEACH OF DREAMS A collaborative 500-mile walk from Lowestoft to Tilbury 26th June - 1st August 2021
Tilbury MARK MASSEY
Harwich SHUTTERSTOCK
KINETIKA DESIGN THAT MOVES
FINISH
Shoeburyness MARK MASSEY JOIN THE CONVERSATION #BeachofDreamsUK
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CONTENTS
INTERACTIVITY
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You can also click on buttons such as the social media links above, and clicking on URLs will take you to the relevant A collaborative 500-mile walk from Lowestoft to Tilbury BEACH OF DREAMS 26th June - 1st August 2021
OVERVIEW SHUTTERSTOCK
Beach of Dreams is an epic journey to discover pennants This is a time of emergencies and the hidden gems of the East Coast of England, illustrating the crises and humans always think inviting collaboration from communities and beautiful coastal more clearly when walking. It is artists along the way in Suffolk, Essex, landscape and its when walking that lost treasures are Felixstowe Pier Southend, and Thurrock. challenges. These spotted, and their value and meaning pennants will be hand painted using natural understood. Walking brings contact Kinetika’s Artistic Director, Ali Pretty, and dyes by the Kinetika Design Studio and form with people and time to talk. Guardian journalist Kevin Rushby are walking spectacular installations during the event. the entire route, joined by artists, writers, scientists, and local residents. Together, Join the walk along the stretch you have The range and scope of people that guided by strong environmental themes and chosen, and you can carry the pennant will be drawn into Beach of Dreams the challenges of our current time, they will inspired by your own photo! is immense: scientists and artists, consider the question “How can we creatively old and young, expert and amateur, reimagine our future?” An installation of all 500 pennants will mark all manner of people will make the beginning of the walk on 26th/27th June, contact, fostering new ideas, Get involved, share a location, and share at sunrise on the beach at Lowestoft, during your dream! First Light Solstice Weekend. The route opinions and partnerships. follows the coast, taking in stunning scenery, Everyone is invited to choose a mile to wild landscapes and seaside towns. Further In this context, and in these times, walk, submit an image of the landscape, installations and events take place along the Beach of Dreams feels like the right a drawing and a few words about your way including Harwich Festival on 10th July thing to do. It is a walk that will bring connection to it and your dream for its future. and the finale at Tilbury Fort on 1st August. vitality and colour to thousands of All words and photos sent in will contribute people, forging new connections and to a new digital story map of the coastal Beach of Dreams is conceived as a national relationships that will develop hope path, reflecting and recording the narrative project that will unfold over two years along of the walk as it unfolds. the UK coastline starting and inspiration when most needed. in summer 2021 and Kevin Rushby, Writer Images submitted by 9th April 2021 will be culminating in 2023, running used as inspiration for the design of 500 silk in parallel with Year of The Coast.
3 WHY ‘BEACH OF DREAMS?’ KEY DATES Beach of Dreams builds on the success APRIL Silk River, 2017 Deadline of Kinetika’s Silk River which worked for Design with ten communities along the Thames 9th A Mile and linked them and their artistic response through a continuous ten-day 142mile journey on foot. Kevin Rushby JUNE joined us and wrote a daily blog. On the 26th First Light day that we walked from Tilbury to East Solstice Tilbury, he encountered the glittering JUNE Weekend, foreshore on the Thames Estuary and Lowestoft named it The Beach of Broken Dreams. MIKE JOHNSTON 27th Now in this time of restriction and stasis, seabirds marinaded in crude oil - all things “Three years ago, near Tilbury, at a time when the countryside has offered I have encountered on the British coast. I experienced something profound. In the itself up for rediscovery, I feel like I want to And somewhere high up in the dunes JULY bleakest setting, on a grey flat day, with a walk, and walk far, finding more beaches among the rare orchids and butterflies, Harwich muddy tide sucking on a scraggy shoreline, like that one near Tilbury. It feels like an there is often a wavy line of dried seaweed, 10th Festival I came across a beach filled with marvels opportunity that needs to be grasped. like a hastily scribbled message from the and treasure. It was the place where sea, warning us of even higher tides to London had dumped its Blitz debris on top The beach is always the place where come. Kevin Rushby JULY of a Victorian tip which was itself on top human life is exposed, with all its frailties, 26th of a Georgian dump, and so on back to ambitions and dreams. Voyages begin and On this first iteration of Beach of T100 the Romans. I was totally unprepared for end here. Clothes are removed to expose Dreams, walking 500 miles down AUGUST Dreaming it. No one had warned me. I’d strayed from the hard-won six-pack, or the beer belly. the East Coast, as we emerge blinking the path and was watching my feet when Novels are started and finally finished. into sunlight from a winter of COVID 1st I began to zigzag between the strange Children and dogs have fun, but restrictions and enter into a post Brexit objects that were sticking out from the sometimes, tragically, drown. On beaches Britain, we hope to discover the gems shingle and sand. we find sublime panoramas, but also all that lie along our fragmented foreshore JULY the rubbish that we had thrown away and and have time and space to reflect, draw Gently extracting a complete 19th century hoped never to see again. With a brutal breath and imagine how we go forward 31st Finale weekend glass bottle from under a broken WWII disregard for human sensitivities, the from here. AUGUST at Grays wireless set and a vicious thistle, I reflected sands bear witness to our mistakes: and Tilbury that you just never know where joy and the dead dolphin in a broken fishing net, Kevin’s Silk River blog page: 1st salvation are coming from. Beauty and the empty container with the skull and http://www.silkriver.co.uk/ hope can crop up in the unlikeliest of places. crossbones sticker, and the stricken uk-walk-blog/
4 ART MEETS SCIENCE
Beach of Dreams will work with our lead environmental partner Cefas (Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science) to look behind the headlines and slogans and to work with artists, environmental organisations, scientists, academics and coastal communities in East of England to better understand the wide variety of climate change issues that are of vital significance to each of our partner communities.
With the guidance of Cefas and our selected partners we have identified specific themes within the overarching narrative.
5 BEACH OF DREAMS Southend pier
SUFFOLK MARK MASSEY Tilbury
ESSEX MARK MASSEY
6 A collaborative 500-mile walk from Lowestoft to Tilbury BEACH OF DREAMS 26th June - 1st August 2021 Graffiti wall, Thurrock Orford Ness 500 500 500 500 MARK MASSEY MILES PEOPLE DREAMS SILKS GET INVOLVED SHUTTERSTOCK We have mapped a 500 - mile coastal route from Lowestoft to Tilbury and we are seeking 500 people to become champions of our precious landscape for future generations.
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SELECT MILE TAKE TWO PHOTOS Choose one mile of the walk Walk your mile and take two (see page 9) and photos sent in piers, posts, graffiti, sheds, near to you, or one that you photographs to show the area: will be added to your map pin. huts, buoys, ropes, floats, have a deep connection with, then one wide shot and one detail nets, baskets, birds. reserve it online. Find the walk shot. The wide shot should Need some inspiration? map on our website to find your show a view that gives context Look at the ground beneath Take a close-up photograph one-mile marker, then click the of where you are. your feet and at the landscape What intrigues you? What do marker to reveal a booking link: and seascape you are walking you see? Patterns, textures, beachofdreams.co.uk The close up photo will be used in. What can you see? Sea, markings, colours, shapes, as inspiration for a silk pennant coast, sand, pebbles, rocks, lines, light and dark, shadows, made by Kinetika Design shells, flora and fauna, meeting reflections, distortions, Studio, unique to that one mile of land and sea, dunes, boats, movement, scattering, stretch. Images for silks should seaside furniture, facades, overlapping, harmony and be submitted before 9th April seating, coastal structures, discord, erosion and decay.
7 A collaborative 500-mile walk from Lowestoft to Tilbury BEACH OF DREAMS 26th June - 1st August 2021
WRITE THREE SHORT PARAGRAPHS (OPTIONAL) CREATE A LINE ABOUT YOUR SELECTED MILE DRAWING FROM SHAPES IN In 300 words or fewer, describe: 4 YOUR CLOSE-UP PHOTO 3 • What drew you to this particular square foot of the beach/land? Describe what you see. • Print out your photograph • What connects you to this mile, who do you share it with? What are your memories? • Using a pencil make a tracing of the lines, • What are your dreams for this place? Imagine what would you like it to be for your great, patterns, textures, marks, that you see. great, great grandchildren in circa 2100. • Go over it in a thick marker pen, • Give your writing a title. abstracting, simplifying, exaggerating • Submit your words (see page 9), and they will be added to your map pin. the pattern. • Photograph or scan your drawing. • Submit your design by 9th April (see p9) and it will be used as inspiration for the special silk pennant being created to represent your mile. Shells at Shoeburyness made dear friends along the way, as we I had wanted to walk to the end of the bar at have drawn, written, printed and painted Shoeburyness ever since I’d set foot on East our response to this dramatic, changing Beach about three years ago. We’d checked landscape. Individuals come and go, we are a the tide on this chilly November morning and transient community, connected by this place. followed rivulets of receding water as it lured us as far as we dare go. Surprisingly the I imagine these shells, now nestled together, sun emerged and pierced through the limpet will be washed apart as the next tide comes covered concrete pillars reflecting on the in, fragmenting further. Each day they are wet shiny cracked mud, revealing clusters rearranged by the elements, and will gradually of cockle shells, embedded in soggy sand, be broken down into tiny particles that one washed up on top of each other, cracked, day will transform into grains of sand on the broken, fragmented. beach for excited children to scoop them up in their little hands tossing them back out to Since working in Thurrock, I’ve walked many sea in delight. times, the miles that stretch and wind down Zoom sessions led by the artists and river from Purfleet-on-Thames to this point That is, if the beach is still there. artistic director Ali Pretty will be at the mouth of the estuary, where the available to demonstrate this process. Thames meets the North Sea. I’ve met and Ali Pretty Meeting links will be shared with everyone who has selected a mile of the walk, and registered their details via the website.
8 A collaborative 500-mile walk from Lowestoft to Tilbury BEACH OF DREAMS 26th June - 1st August 2021 Wallasea Island SHUTTERSTOCK 5 6 7
SUBMIT YOUR WORK OVER TO US WALK Everyone taking part will be • We will transfer WITH US emailed a link to an online form them onto the We invite you to where all images and words should map on the Beach carry your dream be submitted. Please use this of Dreams webpage – as a silk pennant, method if you can, so we can keep (beachofdreams.co.uk). walking with us on track of the entries more easily. your mile during A reminder of what to send: • We will transform the festival. Leigh-on-Sea your design onto
• Two colour photos – one of your silk, choosing a shade MARK MASSEY mile, one close-up. of colour suggested • Three short paragraphs. Your by your photo. description of place. Your memories. Your dreams. • (Optional) Your finished black and white line drawing.
9 INSPIRATION
A few examples of natural shapes and textures that can inspire your designs - these are the kinds of things to look out for on your initial walk - as well as some examples of how they can translate into patterns for your pennant. Plus a selection of the natural dyes that Kinetika have been experimenting with for the silk flags.
10 INSPIRATION STEP-BY-STEPS SHOWING HOW TWO FLAGS WENT FROM PHOTO TO FLAG...
Ali Pretty’s photograph of her original inspiration at Covehithe Beach, Suffolk; two stages of the line drawing in progress; and the wax pattern being applied to the silk.
The drawing that Kinetika made, based on Elizabeth Lynch’s original photograph of Maggi Hambling’s Aldeburgh Scallop (inset); tranforming the drawing into a pattern on the flag, and finally waxing the silk.
11 A collaborative 500-mile walk from Lowestoft to Tilbury BEACH OF DREAMS 26th June - 1st August 2021 Mersea Island
Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th June SCHEDULE Lowestoft First Light The walk itself is broken down into 35 stages. Solstice Weekend Use this guide to find out which day includes your mile.
MARK MASSEY
Haleswor h Lowesto
Aldeburgh
Halesworh Southwold
Orord
Southwold Aldeburgh SHUTTERSTOCK WALK 1: Sunday 27th June WALK 2: Monday 28th June WALK 3: Tuesday 29th June WALK 4: Wednesday 30th June WALK 5: Thursday 1st July Lowestoft Euroscope to Southwold Lighthouse to Halesworth Town Park Aldeburgh Moot Hall Orford Ness local walk Southwold Lighthouse Halesworth Town Park to Aldeburgh Moot Hall to Orford Ferry 4 miles 16 miles 10 miles 21 miles 16 miles A short walk around one We’ll be setting off from Lowestoft A walk by the River Blyth – first Quiet paths and lanes through rural A day close to the Alde estuary, first of the most remarkable nature in the early morning and walking its estuary, to the village of Suffolk, then through Walberswick inland to the famous Snape Maltings, reserves in England, Orford Ness. to Southwold mostly by the Blythburgh, and then the inland Nature Reserve, Dunwich, Minsmere then through Iken and the sea wall Access only by ferry from Orford; 12 Suffolk Coastal Path. river all the way to Halesworth. and Thorpeness. Plus Sizewell! by the Sudbourne Marshes. entrance fee payable.