To Have and To Hold is a community film project centred around Whelans Garden Ornaments in Blue Town, Sheerness. This family-run business has grown from making paving slabs to become the UK’s largest concrete garden ornament manufacturer. It is woven into the fabric of the local community, with its concrete figures—gnomes, windmills, toadstools, and even Easter Island replicas—visible throughout Sheerness. Their sculptures are both mass produced and act as vessels for deeply individual meanings.
A preview screening of the final film will take place at the Criterion Cinema on the 28th June, combined with an exhibition at Dockyard Church, where Whelans’ finest concrete sculptures will be displayed. Together, these events will create a cultural trail through Sheerness, celebrating local industry and everyday artworks as active contributors to the living heritage of the Estuary. By combining two distinct media— concrete ornaments and digital video—this investigation seeks to think critically about permanence, memory, and the function of art in everyday life.
About the organiser
Moving House Films are Kent-based participatory filmmakers who make community-focused visual investigations into people’s relationships with place. Their work subverts traditional documentary formats, often blending the awkwardness of straight-to-camera interviews with interdisciplinary elements such as movement pieces and live performance. These can take the form of multi- projector screenings in disused spaces, installations, or public interventions.
Engaging with communities is at the heart of what they do. Not only does it provide a platform for regional communities with typically low arts engagement, but it also facilitates encounters with extraordinary local celebrities and untold stories that might otherwise go unnoticed. This participatory approach allows their films to become bold portraits of people in their landscapes, told with compassion and humour.
Their key projects include What Shall We Do With These Buildings? (2022), an award-winning dance-documentary about Soviet architecture in Ukraine. It has screened at festivals internationally and won the Audience Award at Arquiteturas Film Festival. What Will Become of Basildon? (2023?), a community dance- documentary, funded by Creative Basildon (Arts Council CCP), which involved over 300 residents and culminated in a three-day installation in an abandoned cinema. Welcome to the Orchard of England (2025), a heritage film about apple picking in Herefordshire which was funded by the NHLF and premiered at Borderlines Film Festival.
Most recently they were recently commissioned by the Essex Cultural Diversity Project to deliver a participatory film in Diss as shaped by personal and collective memory.
No Booking Required
https://www.thecriterionbluetown.co.uk/
Image: Moving House Films, To Have and To Hold, 2025, Louis Norris
© 2024 Estuary Festival CIC
