Estuary Festival is thrilled to have been awarded a grant from the Essex County Council Arts and Culture Fund to develop a new project on Canvey Island. Over the course of this year Estuary festival will host an artist residency on Canvey Island working closely with local people, RSPB Canvey Wick, Buglife and local community partners. 

Korean diaspora artist duo Breakwater will devise artist-led guided sensory walks to support wider engagement with the Canvey Wick nature reserve, investigating appreciation of the natural environment and engagement with creative activities. Breakwater explores social practice around climate justice and migrants’ lived experience, centring spiritual knowledge and the wider resonances of landscape. Working with qualified art psychotherapist and practising Essex-based artist Emma Mills, three guided walks will take place with participants from the local community including people referred by mental health services and local students.
 
The walks will develop new responses to community and place and will be documented in a new guide and journal co-produced with participants. 
 
For more information about the walks please contact [email protected]

We very much look forward to sharing this work with you as it evolves!

Thank you to the Essex County Council Arts and Cultural Fund for supporting this work.

The Essex County Council Arts and Cultural fund has been designed to help organisations and  practitioners to deliver a broad and exciting range of work and activity to engage with and bring residents together.

The arts, cultural and creative projects supported by the Essex County Council Arts and Cultural Fund, will contribute to the Levelling UP Essex Strategy and play an integral part in enabling the objectives of Essex County Council's wider objectives as set out in Everyone’s Essex. 

Image: View across estuary water and a single moored boat towards the Occidental jetty. Photo by Jonathan Juniper.