Platform

For over forty years Platform has created work - in a myriad of media from live art to writing, music to film, campaigns to reports – that is focused on tackling injustice and climate breakdown.

Platform is internationally recognised as a catalyst for creative change whilst at the same time remaining deeply engaged with London and the Thames Estuary stretching over several decades. They were part of Estuary 2021 and returning to the festival in 2025.

The People will Possess the Wind 

The wind. Tickling down the Medway valley, stroking the grasses and the rooftops. Passing through the gap between Blue Bell Hill and Coldrum, lifting the litter in Rochester and suspending the gulls above Gillingham Reach. Rattling the shrouds in Queenborough Harbour and spilling out into the wide Estuary. The blades of the wind turbines on Kentish Flats turn soporifically. From where does it come this gentle South West wind? From far out in Mid Atlantic? The remains of a storm that buffeted up The Channel and over the South Downs?

The wind. Iron cold, scraped out of the Baltic and flung across Jutland. Tumbling through Heligoland Bight and hurtling over Doggerland. It is howling by the time it slams into Southend. Out in the Estuary the turbine blades spin frantically. Did this North Easterly come from the Baltic? Or was it born deeper back in the expanse of Siberian taiga?

Where do the winds of the Estuary come from? Whose winds are these? Whose energy is it that is captured by the Kentish Flats Wind Farm? Every one’s and no one’s.

Offshore from Herne Bay and Shoeburyness are the thin grey pillars of the Kentish Flats Wind Farm. These turbines generate electricity from the winds of the Estuary for homes and offices across Britain. They are owned by the Swedish multinational, Vattenfall. The profits that come from the sale of energy from the Estuary go to the Swedish state.

What if they were owned by the people who live around the Estuary, by the people who gaze upon those turbines? What if the profits on the sale of energy from the Estuary came to the district councils in South Essex and North Kent and helped pay for schools and roads, social care and the arts?

The People will Possess the Wind is a project created by Platform, utilising sailing boats, film, song and publications, which aims to provoke discussion around who is it that owns the wind farms of the Estuary, what does this mean, and how would it be if they were owned by the people of the Estuary. 

Ownership is only one part of the equation. There are things that we own and there are things that we possess. How would it be if we came to possess the wind farms? If we felt that they were ‘our’ wind farms? Just as it is ‘Our NHS’. How do we become possessed by the wind? How does it become a part of our daily life, our imaginations and our sleeping dreams?