Port and Seaside Towns

In amongst the sweeping SSSI nature reserves and the monumental industrial architecture of energy and logistics, the estuary coastline is punctuated with historic port towns and lively seaside resorts. 

Estuary 2021 will animate the wharfs, piers, high streets and venues of key estuary towns including Southend-on-Sea, Chatham, Northfleet and Gravesend.

Programme announced to date includes:

Sadie Hennessy’s Golden Years, inspired by the pop culture collections of Peter Blake (who grew up locally and attended art school in Gravesend, where he started his own pop culture collection), will see a series of shop windows along Gravesend High Street filled with people’s own collections of memorabilia and ephemera, accompanied by a gold ice cream van broadcasting the stories behind those collections. 

Gravesham based Cohesion Plus, culturally diverse producers of community festivals and melas, and advocates for increased diversity within the arts, are making a new film about identity, race and diversity for Estuary 2021. The film will explore Gravesham's diverse communities, looking at how people get pigeon-holed, and the multiple, unexpected, and rich identities that people hold.

Bob and Roberta Smith will create a pavilion in Chatham, an open air gallery, where everyone is invited to ‘take a line for a walk’, adding to a new work of art that is created collectively over the 23 days of the festival, exploring how we can Draw Hope, and together find solutions for the big questions and issues of our time.