T100

 A New Story for Thurrock

Ali Pretty

You cannot take away someone’s story without giving them a new one. It is not enough to challenge an old narrative. Change only happens when you replace it with another.

George Monbiot

Thurrock 100 Festival (T100) is an annual walking, talking and making festival that encourages multiple stories to surface in Thurrock, a borough in Essex, England. Thurrock is relatively unknown, as a recently formed borough in 1998. Lying on the north banks of the River Thames in Essex, it boasts 239 listed buildings, 15 scheduled monuments, 6 conservation areas and 23 ancient woodlands. The arts organisation Kinetika founded the festival in 2015, and through collaboration with a wide range of local partners,[1] it has become increasingly locally led and has brought people together and connected them to each other’s places and spaces. Over the last six years we’ve travelled on a journey with a growing team of local volunteers, one year spontaneously building the theme for the next, all the time drawing more people in through a range of arts and shared conversations.

There are many artistic endeavours that have floundered on Thurrock's gravelly shores, but the arrival of Kinetika, like a Viking war party fully armed and looking for action was not to be one of them.

 Mark Allinson, Thurrock Council Arts Manager

What began as a 100-mile marathon across the borough, has developed into a festival that starts and ends in Thurrock and stretches along and across the estuary, into Southend and over to Kent. The concept of T100 is very simple. The festival takes place in towns and villages across the area over 3 weeks each summer; a series of walks connects all the events together. Local groups devise a programme of walks and community-led activities in response to the theme selected for the year. Leading up to the festival, activities are undertaken in libraries, schools and community spaces and have included writing, drawing, cooking, painting, researching, dancing and acting. The results add colour to the walks, which have incorporated heritage talks, shared community meals, outdoor theatre, silk flags reflecting local stories, singing and even the making and performing of an animated 12-foot-tall Tilbury Docker puppet designed by local high school students. The magic of T100 is its simplicity as a framework.  It enables groups to come up with their own ideas, develop them as separate projects, then showcase and share them to the wider community as part of the ten-day festival.

My favourite thing about T100 is that it is based on a simple idea - to ask local people to share their thoughts about the place where they live, and in particular the way each year that question is asked with a different focus including favourite locations, stories, recipes, and the communities that live in Thurrock 

Jacci Todd, lead artist, Kinetika

2015: 100 Miles

The inaugural Thurrock 100 was a walking festival that built on the success of the project Beat the Street (2014). It was commissioned by the Public Health team at Thurrock Council in collaboration with CVS, 19 community forums and Kinetika. The aim was to create a festival to build a lasting legacy from Beat the Street. The council wanted to raise awareness of the places people could walk in Thurrock and to set a challenge for year one that would begin a culture of walking. Peter Woodward, from the Thurrock Nomads Running Club devised ten routes of ten miles each, which included some of the borough’s most interesting places. Working with 9 schools and local people, Kinetika artists made 10 x 4m illustrated silk flags to take on the walks.

Although a challenging distance over ten days, a great feeling of camaraderie built up and it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. For me, the greatest reward was hearing so many people remark ‘This is lovely, I have lived here for 25 years and I never knew this existed. 

Peter Woodward, Thurrock Nomads Running Club

By July 2015, all our routes were online, and printed into maps for each days’ walking. With our flags rigged onto telescopic fishing rods and led by Peter, we set off from South Ockendon. More than 1,500 people took part, including students from Gateway Academy, East Tilbury, Bulphan and Horndon primary schools, and individuals aged from 5 to 75 years who walked distances ranging from half a mile to 100 miles over the ten days of the festival. 

On day 1, we carried one flag, and each subsequent day we added another. We were welcomed in different ways by schools and communities. Walkers and non-walkers alike joined us as we trekked through small farming villages of Horndon-on-the Hill and Orsett, got our silk caught on telephone cables outside the Bata town of East Tilbury, tramped through the ‘cathedral of consumerism,’ Lakeside shopping centre, paraded around High House Production Park, ran through Fobbing and Stanford-Le-Hope, climbed over Langdon Hills and hiked back down to the river with 1500 teenagers from Gateway Academy to be chased by wild horses across Tilbury Marshes. Finally, we walked the mile-long graffiti sea wall into Grays, where hundreds joined us for a procession into the local festival Village Beach.

Those that became involved in the project were extremely proud to showcase their artwork across the borough. We also saw the benefits of participants becoming fitter, losing weight, reducing medication and making connections.

Kristina Jackson, Chief Executive Officer, Thurrock CVS

2016: Thurrock 100 Stories

For our next festival, we set out to get underneath the facts and figures about Thurrock, from its monuments to ancient woodlands, and find out how local people felt about 100 places across the borough. We captured them in words and illustrations enabling locals and visitors to see this mysterious, misjudged place differently.

Thurrock 100 (2016) was 10 days of walks ranging from 1 mile to 12, from gentle evening rambles to more strenuous weekend hikes, with 21 walks of different lengths, durations and difficulty, plus two walks especially for schools. In all, over 1,700 people took part in the walks over the 10 days.

Thurrock 100 Stories ended with a colourful mass performance by over 100 Thurrock schoolchildren from across the borough as part of a vibrant finale choreographed by one of the UK’s pre-eminent mass dance leaders, Jeanefer Jean-Charles, and her team. 50 people who had walked from Tilbury Fort to Coalhouse Fort and the Thurrock Marching Band joined the performers in the final event of the walking festival. An audience of 400 people watched the performance in the sweltering Coalhouse Fort.

If someone had said to me, “Right, you’ve got to get strangers talking to each-other by coming together and making things, and getting healthy at the same time.” I wouldn’t have a clue where to start. Yet Thurrock 100 has done that beautifully. I went on one of the walks, and I’ll never forget about the inventor of the Vincent motorcycle, the man making counterfeit half crowns, and why the local pub hangs hot cross buns outside at Easter. 

Deb Stewart, portfolio holder for Communities

2017: Thurrock 100 Tales

The 2017 walking festival took place in a number of locations around Thurrock, with the exciting addition of specially dramatized stories performed by the Complete Commedia Company. Fabulous costumes for the performances were designed by Kinetika and students of South Essex College on the Costume Construction Degree, based at High House Production Park. All the stories were taken from Thurrock 100 Stories (2016), a book we created as part of the 2016 festival. Amongst others, there were tales of Forgers, Shoemakers and what happened at Cash’s Well, all told in the irreverent comedy style of La Commedia dell’Arte, with a very Thurrock flavour. The Artistic Director of the company, Bernadette Wakeling, called the performance ‘the realisation of an aspiration’: 

 I have always wanted to make theatre about my home that is relevant, current but most of all, entertaining. Most importantly, it must be brilliant theatre. What we’ve done to the stories of Thurrock 100 Tales, is utterly faithful but totally irreverent. The historians would shudder at the liberties we’ve taken.

Bernadette Wakeling, Artistic Director, Complete Commedia Company

Additionally, a series of promenade performances took actors and audiences around Horndon, Grays, Chafford Gorge, Lakeside, Coalhouse Fort, Langdon Hills and finally to East Tilbury to share the story of the global Bata Shoe factory that connected Thurrock directly to the rest of the world.

2018/2019: Welcome to the Kitchen Table

By now we’d reached many more communities throughout the process of engaging them in T100, but this was post the summer of 2016, and we could not ignore the fact that Thurrock voted overwhelmingly by (70.26%) to leave the EU, and there were still many hidden voices that we needed to hear. Was it possible to engage Thurrock communities in a conversation with each other across such huge divides?

We set the task to each of the volunteers to research their walks on the theme of 100 Thurrock Recipes and curate routes that allowed participants to gain access to different communities through meeting the proprietors and chefs of many diverse cafes, to hear their stories and taste their food. Ultimately, a team of 16 volunteer walk leaders, working with a total of 26 diverse food businesses, delivered 14 specially curated walks ranging from 2 to 5 miles across the Local Authority areas of Southend, Castle Point, Thurrock, Gravesend and Dartford.

Following paths that took in the area’s varied food cultures, the specially curated set of walks were led by volunteers well-versed in the geography and history of the routes. They offered opportunities to discover and share foods from the rich diversity of peoples from around the world as well as local delicacies. One example of this was work with the Hindu Association who led a beautiful walk along the seaside and hosted an Indian food festival in Southchurch Park. One of the last walks in Tilbury coincided with Chilean arts organisation Teatro Container, who were cooking a community feast in La Cocina Publica. La Cocina Publica (the Public Kitchen) is a mobile kitchen built inside a shipping container – it was an eventful day, and hundreds of people came to watch and take part.

Over two years, through our theme Welcome to The Kitchen Table, we developed many new relationships, expanding our reach to Eastern European and West African communities in particular. We visited schools, community centres, churches, cafes and even people’s kitchens, we invited individuals to write and draw recipes that reminded them of home. In return, they visited our studios to transform their drawings into prints, which we then sewed into tablecloths and folded into our backpacks. These accompanied us on our 15-day continuous journey in 2019, which we framed as a contemporary pilgrimage, and, over 200 miles and many shared meals, opened up a conversation amongst the community.

This 15-day walk from our home in Purfleet down to Southend, over to the Isle of Sheppey, up the Hoo Peninsula, all the way to Gravesend and back to Tilbury was a mission to meet new people and see the places that we already know from a fresh perspective, starting a conversation that might change the way we think about the future. We began in the footsteps of many who have gone before, along the sea wall down to St. Clements’ Church in West Thurrock. Sunday revealed secrets of Purfleet, once famous for pyramids of juicy apples and the Mardyke Valley where our water comes from at Davy Down Riverside Park. 

Monday, we were at Lakeside Shopping Centre for Spanish paella. Tuesday, we sauntered through the pretty village of Orsett and along to a barbecue hosted by the Community Hub at Chadwell St. Mary. Wednesday, Winnie Nyamu and Melvin Ndebele led us across fields of wheat in West Tilbury for tea and home-made cakes at St. Catherine’s Church in East Tilbury, where Les Morgan blessed us with a song. Phil Easteal led Friday’s feel good walk around Canvey Island. Saturday, we visited the vegetable gardens at Hadleigh Tearooms before processing in with flags to the Global Village arena at the Village Green festival in Chalkwell Park. Sunday was a shared picnic in Southchurch Park in Southend borough with Nina’s vegetarian samosas and Attila’s goulash thanks to Southend’s Hindu and Hungarian Associations. 

Week two signalled the first river crossing, courtesy of Neil Woodbridge and the Thames Estuary Yacht Club. By the time we reached the old lightship, now arts space LV21 in Gravesend, we’d clocked up 198 miles. A rainbow appeared on the ferry crossing back over to Tilbury. What a home-coming this was, as we reunited for Tilbury Carnival, dancing in the streets with Twirlers, Irish dancers, Sea Cadets, bouncy puppets and brass bands, singing with choirs, skanking to the reggae tunes down at the Cruise Terminal, chomping on Romanian pastries as the whole journey completed with an emotional finale that brought the community together for one last dance.

The image of an elderly woman at her front door, smiling and waving as the carnival passed by lingers in the memory. Little did we know that social isolation was just around the corner. Now more than ever we need outdoor arts on the doorsteps of our communities. T100 is a product that is more relevant than ever at a time when people have been apart. 

Jeanefer Jean-Charles, Choreographer, 2016/18/19

2020: T100 Calling

2020 marked a significant moment of global change due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and T100 was no exception. The festival took place in September, under the UK government’s “Rule of Six”, which limited outdoor gatherings to six people. The theme was T100 Calling - a call to action for communities to come together to creatively re-imagine our future. We invited people to explore local challenges, and seek solutions, working with communities to collectively design and make beautiful large-scale mandalas, inspired by visiting Scottish artist Therese Muskus.  

Starting at East Beach, Shoeburyness and ending in Purfleet-On-Thames, we walked the Thames Estuary – bringing communities together to reflect on issues including climate change, plastic waste, reclaiming public spaces, bio-diversity, growing sustainable communities, health and well-being – whilst collaboratively making beautiful pieces of art from locally collected materials. 

2021: T100 Dreaming

We are now entering into our seventh year, launching the new theme T100 Dreaming. Feedback from our participants evidences how they have become part of and have shaped this journey. Already, we have begun to create a new story for Thurrock, and within the overarching narrative of these disparate communities there is room for many voices to be heard as we look towards the future. 2020 resulted in 7 active hubs in 7 different communities, made up of local leaders, local artists and community organisations. Each one is now in the process of planning the creation of a mini-manifesto to be presented this Summer, taking different forms, a poem, a dance, a dialogue, a sea shanty, a new calypso, Tilbury is the Place For Me[2]. Out of this we will pull together a borough wide celebration in 2022, T100 The Dream.

We have had a chance to meet and work with very talented people from Asia, Europe and South America. Our dream is for these projects to help bring communities together where our diversities can be appreciated. We realize now how much we can achieve if we work together.

Winnie Nyamu and Melvin Ndebele

From 2023 we plan to make T100 an independent organisation that produces an annual festival to celebrate the people of Thurrock, showcasing talent, resourcefulness, resilience, and diversity and working together to collectively imagine a healthy, future-proof, creative community.

Notes

[1]  Partners include Thurrock Council, Thurrock CVS, The Complete Commedia Company, Thurrock International Celebration of Culture (TICC), Tilbury On The Thames Trust, Port of Tilbury, One Community Trust, Royal Opera House (ROH) Thurrock Trailblazers, High House Production Park and Purfleet Centre Regeneration Ltd (PCRL) 

[2] This is a reference to the famous calypso London is the Place for Me sung by Aldwyn Roberts, AKA Lord Kitchener, on arrival at Tilbury Docks in 1948 on the HMT Empire Windrush.