Explore ways in which walking artists can play a role in forwarding the discussion of our changing climate and mobilise communities to celebrate and protect their coastlines.
Join the Beach of Dreams Artistic Director and Chair WTN’s Arts and Culture task team, Ali Pretty, for an inspirational and informative seminar with a focus on the following questions:
– How can artistic interventions that engage communities in walking with communities create an emotional connection to the landscape/coastline?
– Will this activate groups to take care of themselves and their coastline in order to create healthier, happier and more sustainable communities for future generations?
The seminar will also provide an opportunity for you to learn more about Beach of Dreams, a UK-wide Coastal Arts Festival. From 1 May – 1 June 2025, the national creative programme will invite participants, organisations, artists, writers, scientists and walkers to embark on a month-long environmental exploration and celebration of the UK’s coastlines. Find out how you and/ or your organisation can get involved.
great hi Caroline hi um how is everyone we’ll just kill AIT a few minutes in case anyone else joins how you do yeah I’m I’m yeah busy as ever Al I’ve got to at quarter two I’m afraid because someone’s coming around at quarter two but’ll stay till then yeah just Lots on I don’t know where the time goes is it the end of your Academic Year at the moment there isn’t really an end of the Academic Year anymore that’s all you know that anyone who says that is um I think not an academic it just goes on it’s doesn’t let up at all actually oh de so yeah just bit Relentless H but that’s complaining about a very good job so I shouldn’t really do that it’s relentless yeah and Caroline are you in Scotland I met I think you’ve been before haven’t you I met you once uh a couple of years ago actually there was a walk um from Tilbury oh okay remember we went we went to the World’s End pub and it went along the front and I think it was during covid so they only allowed like four or five people oh okay um I think I met you then um but I haven’t been to any of these um online sessions um before so I think it’s the last one isn’t it um well we might have a a concluding one it’s a last presentation we’ll discuss what what we want to do so are you in um in Essex then uh I’m in Kent so I’m in wital okay excellent all right well um we’ll do D would you like to introduce yourself I thought carolan had been before because it looked familiar yeah no that’s fine hi I’m D I’m a professor of theater studies up at the univers in Glasgow University of Glasgow and I’ve done quite a lot of walking creative walking work over the last I don’t know 12 14 years um in different guises really um both as a researcher and as a creative artist thanks great um Carol are you still there no on mute hi yeah yeah um I’ve just um I know Ellie from The volunteering that Emily and I have done with um t00 and also s with and the possessions as well yeah that’s right good and Joan I also volunteer with kinetica I help mostly with walking but anything else they need help with at times good and um as you’ll know I’m Ally and uh today I’m going to present on um Beach of dreams and I know that some of you do you’ve heard quite a bit of this before but it’s um just saying to Joan that um um I’m going to announce for the first time ever publicly who our commissioned artists are so because we’re not going to announce them properly until September and um so yeah so I’m going to I’m just going to start because somebody else is where’re recording other people might come so I’m going to start and I’m going to share my screen which is this one there we go and also it’s the first time that I’m doing this new beach of Dreams presentation so you’re it’s very good for me oh no that doesn’t work sorry I thought I could get it to full screen without the sidebar oh Dam sorry I’m going to have to find it again now just bear with me right all right is that it yeah yeah you should be able to get it to full screen though uh view are oh here maybe is yeah there we go thank you all right so um so we’ve got people that obviously familiar with um t00 and the walking talkinging making model that um we’ve sort of pioneered or developed say um over the last 10 years so um really uh what I want to start by saying is that uh Beach of Dreams which was piloted in 2021 um is going to become a uk-wide coastal Arts Festival with which involves a lot of walking and um but I was um and I’m very glad that I’ve got some author people in the room because um I want to really make a point that we’ve been developing this uh this way of working um since 2015 in thork so I’m quite clean to sort of locate where it’s come from and that’s and I’m sure the the same as in your work I always find that one project kind of leads to another and informs another so it’s a continued narrative and so um Beach of Dreams has really been grown as you’ll see uh in thork and um and it’s going up from thoro as a small local Festival um to a uk-wide um project which is really exciting for us um so um it’s going to what is Beach of dreams so be dreams our ambition is to engage hundreds of thousands of people journeying along the UK Coastline uh you know where we can on foot and where we can’t by boat and possibly there will be obviously some online participation as well but it it’s it’s a journey and as I said it’s an ongoing Journey that’s been developed um for the last few years but it’ll be take place place over a concentrated month the month of May which is the national month of walking in the UK and um it will be accompanied by an interdiscipl interdisciplinary Arts and Science um program um which will involve artistic invent interventions which is what we’re concerned with as walking artists uh lots of coastal walks uh organized by groups organizations individuals lots of Journeys by boat and particularly around bits of the coastline that we can’t walk like Northwest Scotland um participatory outdoor Arts activity we’re partnering with quite a lot of UK festivals and we want to love to include more talks film screenings literature to kind of so time times in which we can think about what it is that we’re doing and um what uh we are hoping to do and and why we’re doing it so we um I passionately believe that artists um and artistic interventions uh working with communities and in particular in this case uh through walking um generates an emotional connection to each other but also to the environment through which we uh walk now my question we’re going to have a discussion on this after I finished um uh is will this does this can this emotional enhance emotional connection to landscape can that possibly activate groups to to become committed to taking care of their own communities themselves their health and well-being um take care of their Coastline in this instance um and work together towards a healthier happier and more sustainable Community for future Generations you know I.E taking into account our current uh you know landscape which is you know not only um climate emergency but many other um sort of Brokenness of our of our communities so can this MTO M action make a difference answers at the end or you can ask me questions as we go along so so I’m just going to take you back to uh where it all began uh and in terms of for me I wasn’t a walking artist um before I got to thork I I was aspiring to be a walker when I got to thork and uh some rumor had it that I would be leading walks and so the public health department invited me uh to walk around Thor and start a festival so actually that was in two 20 2015 our first festival and we’re very proud to let you know D since you’re all the way in Scotland that tomorrow we are having our 10th anniversary and we’re having the big pla flag parade and we got over 150 flags that we’ve made over the last 10 years um with the communities that have made them uh walking into the afro food festival and it coincides with with Rend rush so um that’s thought that was a nice welcoming photo so the model is we call it walking talking and making and uh now we run an annual program um um and we combine these three different strands of activity um to create a kind of Rich experience it’s not just going on a walk and your kind of weekend off it’s um it’s more than that as we know as artists so what’s uh my first lesson that I learned when I was invited to walk around thork uh was that it is a brilliant tool for uh engaging communities and U getting to know um getting to know literally mild by not mile your local environments so and it’s quite interesting I’m just going to note that some of the um discussion we had earlier on the seminar when we were talking with Charlie uh Fox from marsill we were talking about voyerism and uh and I think we had a debate what actually is it you know artists can also engage communities and and be part of it integrated into it so in this instance it was quite lucky because I knew nothing about thoric when I was invited and so I uh said well I’ll have to ask the communities where we’re going to walk and um this man Peter Woodard said well miss pretty there’s 162 miles of footpath and where are you going to walk and I was like quite amazed because here we are this photograph is um under the Dartford Bridge which is the M25 intersection and we all know that if there aori is stuck on that bridge the whole thing is gridlock it’s the a13 M25 and um everything else um which is a Jungle of concrete so you might be quite surprised that you could walk 100 miles and so um off I went I was sent off to the communities and uh I said well where should we go you tell me 10 miles in your area where we should go and um so they did and this man Peter he mapped our first walk and we walked 10 miles a day for 10 days and that was for me like an exercise in total listening because I really didn’t know where I was and you know wasn’t familiar with these communities but also it was an opport for um people in thct who would might normally just do their regular foot foot paths but to to walk that after they’ done their first 10 miles I oh it’s quite good I might go on another one and so they got to walk in different areas and the upshot of that was that people learned that there was much more than they ever thought in their local area and that led us onto our second uh festiv um Festival which was uh where the talking I suppose comes in um which was in 2016 and so so we decided to map as many stories of Thor as we could and um and appreciate so it’s an exercise in in Sharing knowledge and we had a lot of Heritage groups uh working with 20 schools U so was intergenerational and we created um 100 flags and um 100 uh stories so our methodology is really to when we’re planning a walk is we usually frame the walk around a question or a theme and uh we kind of do the devising of the walks with the local communities um and then we collect we draw and write and we draw our stories onto silks and then we kind of do the Public Presentation which is when the people who’ve kind of collected the stories present to a wider audience so that’s kind of the the the cycle of in our walking model uh and um we also have a strand as well as the silk flags of making so um we’ve done a lot of different kinds of making um of work and this one in particular was 2018 which was t00 recipes we were very keen to collect um stories from different communities t uh very diverse and it’s not easy it’s not a comfortably diverse place and um so we wanted to kind of get to to as many people as possible to share their stories so we um collected recipes and we asked people where their recipes had come from who’ given them when they’d last eaten that and we drew the ingredients um for that made out the recipes and then we did Screen Printing and made them into tablecloths and we carried these tablecloths um 200 miles all the way down the EST and over to sheepy and all the way back and Joan was one of the people who did the 200 miles with me um and uh we shared a lot of food and a lot of stories but we’ve done all sorts of other things as well um so these three strands kind of weave quite well together and they also mean that different kinds of people people people who don’t like walking get involved in the making and uh you know people who walk get surprised at themselves Jan’s quite surprised at herself I think he’ve done so many different things on all of the different walks and she Joan um I’m we met in 2017 as a walk leader for the Ramblers in barking and dagenham and now she’s at many things in t00 um so one step one walk leads the next and so I see that we’ve been building a narrative over the last decade made and a big leap up from our local walks with Salt River in 2017 uh we were invited to reimagine India and uh I was there was a kind of call out for for projects and I happened to be very connected in kotta and I was thinking you know my experience in thoric has been that it’s like in fact somebody said to me it’s like being in the backstage of London so when you go along the zester it’s like your you youve got all the services that it takes to kind of feed and build and run a city and then I thought oh that’s kind of similar in kolkotta and they’re both connected by this River so why don’t we s of map these communities on the edge of London uh 10 of them and why don’t we twin them with a a place in West Bal so there were some very obvious examples like Q Gardens is connected to the botanic gardens and there’s still an existing relationship between scientists um um and some and you know Graves end wasn’t so much Beni but it was seek so we were talking about Indian diaspora uh and we we s of made um some some connections some of which were historic and then some which became new and um when I originally started thinking about walking as an artist the thing I was most in interested in was about how we could have an unfolding conversation by walking in uh continuous continuous days of walking and how we might in in you know introduce a provocation around a theme on the days of walking so you might have well you have the local people but in this case we were looking what what what is it that makes um living by the river is that is that a thing you know you live by the river and what does that mean and so we were having a conversation about the river and then we were also having a conversation that that River uh was a trading River connecting uh India and Britain and so we were looking at that that was our particular theme um and it also is for me about um well we can share that conversation this was really important in this project because when we were walking the the temps obviously we weren’t able to walk with all the artists that we did work with in India but we were able to share the stories every day online and so you can reach reach your audience and your other participants and so obviously digital evolves very quickly all the time and it’s a fantastic tool to widen your and deepen your stories and your conversation and so with that in mind uh we were we uh I worked with Kevin rashby who’s um Guardian journalist and who I’d met on a a master class and I thought I was looking for a a sort of novelist or a author um and they kept saying no I’m not interested in doing all this stuff with Community um but when I um got back in touch with Kevin he was like oh that sounds amazing um I’ll I’ll write a daily blog and so that’s what he did and on day eight uh he took we walked from Tilbury uh to East Tilbury and we came across uh this part of the EST um which is between Tilbury and East Tilbury and a particularly scruffy bit of TS EST um but on this day late September 2017 it was shining and Kevin rushed up in great excitement and was like Ally what is this beach why is it so shiny so I was like well it’s shiny because this is all U bits of broken glass and why is that and he said I said well because uh you know don’t you know Thor are dump they dump lots of things here all the time and this particular D is the from the Blitz from 1945 and uh as the tide eats up at the foreshore it loosens the mud and the the bits of glass and bottles and Ceramics plates wash up and so he wrote that evening what dreams were shattered when the bomb went off this is the beach of Broken Dreams so sometime later I was like that’s the line of my next walk it’s a bit of a gift of a line but where is the beach of dreams so so I was like what because it was very this started in 2016 just after we voted to leave and Thor was one of the highest places to vote to leave and I just felt well we’re just so fragmented uh in our communities and we’ve got this kind of broken foreshore all those fragments lying on our foreshore but what H would happen if you picked up each one of these glistening shiny gems and each one of them uh contains Something Beautiful whether it’s within ourselves with within our communities or on our landscape and what would happen if you pick them up and put them together uh to create a different kind of vision for the future and with that we started Beach of dreams and we invited people to um sign up for one a local mile on a 500 Mile Stretch of the east coast and to stand on that M stand on the particular bit and look and think about what was beneath their feet and think about well what is it that connects me here to this particular spot on this particular M and why am I connected to it and whether that’s because of my family connections or historical connections or a place of beauty or a place of loss um you know people would find a connection and we asked them to write about that and then we asked them to look out as far as they could see on the horizon and imagine the future before this mile for their great great great great grandchildren uh and write about that and so this is a model that we’ve been developing since 2021 and the model that we’re going to take forward into uh a national um call to action and what’s going to be additional in 2025 we’re going to go and what are you going to do about it and uh I’ll invite people to to make a pledge um and we use this downloadable resource pack where people can send us their answers the forms and the drawings and then from that uh we create uh the silk penants that have become synonymous with Beach of dreams so each one of these is somebody’s dream um and um we’ve got 620 and this will be the national call out for organizations that want to get involved um and create more ever to an Ever evolving artwork and an Ever evolving collection of dreams and pledges so we’d like to get to at least a thousand um and these um I was hoping we might have some International guests because I think this model could very much be echoed in any Coastline on the world in the world um and um I wanted to S talk just a little bit about the the silk um because I think it’s the thread that that connects all of these things together so when we were journeying up the hugly uh in Kolkata before that time I used to work on mass-produced Chinese silk but obviously when we were going out the hogly I was thinking might cause a bit of a problem if I’m working in Chinese silk um so and korak my partner at the time was like we’re going up to mashad Ali and I like that’s just miles away it’s way too far away to walk oh we’ll get a boat we’ll get a boat but anyway the soap Weavers up here so we were like oh okay that’s different then and so we worked with this Village in um in midad uh since then so ever since then they they wo the silk for us for silk River and um they had to weave it especially because they were had the quality had lessened and they were sneaking in Korean nylon every now and then and so we were like no no no has to be 100% silk because it won’t work and so it was such beautiful silk that then ever since then to this day we are only working on Mach band silk and we import it and we distribute it and we have transformed the lives of the families 14 families in that Village and we’ve got still a long way to go in terms of thinking about how we can improve the conditions get women more involved um but we’ve made a start and so we kind of think that this is really um a thread that that will connect everything together um and um as into Beach of dreams so uh that was the uh installation on in Loft uh which was a very beautiful day when people came back um so what we did is we after we produced these silks in our studio in lockdown and then we started walking for 500 miles and we would give um D this is your mile mile 47 tell us your story and it was um really powerful in the collection of the stories and um so you know we got back to uh East Tilbury Beach is still broken and I was like now up we go off we go to Scotland uh to walk from Edinburgh to glasg go to cop and demand that these dreams are heard and it was really so I’m very pleased that the the big idea was formed in Scotland of course uh with these climate activists and um pilgrims that are come from over Europe but like they could see you know that there there was a real connection even when we went into Glasgow to Georgia Square even though these people weren’t the people that carried their Flags there was a concept that these are people’s dreams and um that they could see that this was a really good emotional engagement tool and so they were like well why didn’t you do this elsewhere Ali so I was like okay well let’s do it um nationally so that’s what we’ve been building up to do for the last few years and last we last year we were in Moran Bay not 21 23 uh and we made another 120 silks and engaged more people and um and then finally we’ve been successful um to get an an Arts Council National Grant uh to to ramp this right up um and so so part of the ramping it up is to invite small organizations um so last time it was individuals who adopted AAR but I already wanted it to be organizations um people are perhaps participate U more easily with an organization and also then we can get a Conn a national network of organizations either arts or environmental uh that are getting active and by working with organizations you secure a legacy so um hopefully once they’ve been through Beach GS in 2025 there will be this network and and there’ll be a legacy of a kind of joined up uh UK can you imagine and um so there is a an entry fee which is £210 including vat and for that um you get to your own your very own silk pennant you get to make your pledge which is shared on our digital platform you get to attend monthly seminars uh each seminars on a a different environmental theme and we’re going to invite keynote speakers and some of the people in the regions where those themes are pertinent and you get to organize your own Coastal walk and be connected to hundreds of others so um hoping that we’ll get hundreds of members we’ve got about 20 at the moment yeah quite a good uptake from F in particular in Scotland um and quite a lot on the Southeast but you know as of Monday we’re going on a massive recruitment campaign um and so the silks we see as the uh National commission uh and from which eight other commissions will um be created and so we’re going to be having a national artist residency with those commissioned artists um in Moran Bay in July and the idea is that while everybody has their own practice we I would like to see it that it’s a collection of works that it becomes a collective body so there is interconnection between the artists and between the regions and and the work and that is already um beginning to happen as I will explain so we’re starting and this is hot off the press Jan’s going to be writing our notes um we’re starting in dork of course on the 3D of May 25 and we’re working with Rah Raman uh who’s a British Bengali fashion designer and textile artist and I have to confess that uh the original 500 Beach of dream silks were um put up in Seafood in the Southeast coast in in September and they were left up uncared for and battered by wind and rain and they were shredded um largely so we’ve had to um remake a new set um but luckily we had the design so um but we had the idea of actually making something from uh the shredded silks and to repurpose it and um so we’re going to be working with um Ray’s got his own sewing group called Inspire uh which is South Asian women based in East London and we’re partnering with our sewing group or based in our studio cor kite Spirit who are basic on the temps and then we’re going to work with uh 10 other SE groups along the estery and we’re making these small boat structures and there’s 12 panels and we’re going to use embroidery from different um different Traditions um different Bengali Traditions but different Traditions from around the world and we’re going to go for walks with the the sewing groups at different parts of the river and we’re going to be using that landscape for conversation and to design the detail on each one of those panels and we’re also going to be making a large carnivalesque costume and we’ll be exploring further the use of natural dieses um and then on the 10th of May we’ve got Jason Singh um and uh did you know Jason Jason’s work no he I haven’t worked with him he’s a sound artist and um beatboxer DJ but um of late he’s been doing the last few years he’s been doing these deep listening walks in the environment and he’s been um tuning into to the sound of um in micro landscap apes and recording those sounds um and then mixing them up sometimes DJing them sometimes installations and um he’s going to be working on cwin Bay uh three days in cwin Bay and with a community company called tape who do digital media and filming and they’re already working on uh a pilot for a feature film called below the waves so I’m sensing that there might be some underwater recordings that are going to be happening there um and um so yeah so that’s in Cowin Bay and um he’s also um I think he’s going to get involved in some other aspects of the project which I’ll talk about later um and then in the Northeast we’re working in South Shields on Sand Haven Beach uh with a partner called stronger Shores and they are concerned with um how they can use nature to protect the coastline and and uh they’re very they’re engaging lots of communities already but what they really want us to engage with is the fishing Community we’re working with Tessa who’s a fantastic photographer and Sara who’s a walking artist and writer um and they’re going to be working quite in quite a micro level uh with the the fishing Community there looking at their practice and the future of of fishing and uh here’s else and um creating photograph graphic stories and leading walks there and that’s on the 11th of May and then why is it got stuck we up um then we’re off to Northern oh not Northern Ireland Northern Ireland and um we are going to be working with beat uh Carnival um who are based in Belfast but are going to be prioritizing um their work um along the County Down Coast um and they are going to be doing a new piece of work called our siren song uh which is going to be a new song will become the beat to Dream song working with communities along that Coastline and also creating some new puppets and a big procession along the beach um resulting in big bonfires which is a tradition where you you you can burn on you know in the end of the year you burn you burn the things you want to get rid of and we’re going to burn the things that we should stop doing um so they’ll have some um mega event on the beach on the 17th of May uh uh then uh we’re zipping back over to F in Scotland and on the 24th of May around about that we’ll be the culmination of their 10day walk they’re going to be walking for 10 days along the five Coastal path and today going to be walking with Julie Brook and Julie’s Been creating some extraordinary work um with fire and water and rock uh in ory Jura and she’s now spending the summer in the outer herdes but she also works internationally in the pool Japan uh some of the recent places she’s worked and um I’m not sure how big a piece she’ll she’ll be doing but um the five coast and countries I trust are really Keen for her to work more in the industrial area of the five Coast path um around Don Ferlin orot um so um to kind of work against it in that landscape and um she says she doesn’t know what she’s doing because she doesn’t know until she walks it she’s absolutely understand and she talked a lot I went to a talk with hers recently about when she’s in the landscape and so moving her rocks around and setting up a studio underneath a cave she feels that’s when she feels most in her element and the work kind of makes itself and I love that concept and I’ve asked her to kind of think about you know what does it mean to be in our element and for each of us that’s probably a a different thing for me I was totally in my element walking 500 Miles um for the for the beach of dreams and I would like to to explore that concept because perhaps if we spent more of Our Lives being in our element we’d be happier um so yep and then um we have Hastings and um we’re working with Anders larten who I am going to meet next weekend very exciting he’s a very radical play write and um he’s just written his first novel called uh three burials and he looks at um migration uh people landing on the foreshore in the uh small boats and um Hastings is a place of shipwrecks so there’s been a lot of Broken Dreams um on that um for sure so we’re going to be working uh walking uh with Refugee and Asylum Seeker communities um and others who um live in Hastings but possibly don’t ever access a beach there’s been a lot of regen um gentrification in Hastings which means the the beach becomes um a place that isn’t accessible but also before that there’s um being you know high amount of crime drug dealing that kind of thing on the beach so it’s about how how you that Coastline becomes accessible um and the stories against that backdrop so he’s going to be um finding the the people talking to people and then writing a kind of beach of Dreams tales for Hastings based inspired by the Canterbury Tales and then that will be a three-day walk uh hearing those Tales from local performers probably or local people who have thought about how they present their work in that kind of way so very interesting there and then we go to Great Yarmouth for the finale event with out there Arts um who are Bas in great Y and have an annual festival called out there and um do a lot of international circus work and we’re going to be working with a French company called cim moo who are based in set in the south of France and we’re going to be they will install themselves uh on the beach for a week it’s May half term and they work with families and communities to build these phenomenal structures and U we’re going to be attaching silks uh to uh to the structures and we’re going to have a massive procession onto the beach and um projections and other things and this is uh director Joe McIntosh it’s never small when you’re working with Joe so we’re going to be bringing communities from harit great yth and Orford Nest together because we’re doing a bit of work with historic England to collect stories from them so that’s the finale in May but we have a International finale finale in wouth in September uh September the 20th um and this is working with the international commission with G chandin who I’ve been working with recently in in Bengaluru he’s they’ve got a center for movement Arts there and uh he a lot of his work is inspired by the martial arts form of Kari Patu which is from uh Kerala South India and they do a lot of um stick work so so he he’s been looking at the theme of um displacement uh population displacement it was inspired by um by the sad fact when when U Prime Minister Modi president Modi said to all the people the migrant workers during covid go home and the only way they could go home was to walk and it was the biggest of movement of people it’s bigger than partition uh of people that were walking home hundreds of miles um and many sort of died on the way um so he created a piece of jaha that we worked on and now we’re going to develop that piece the concept of of climate migration um and um the sticks that they they use this stick work and so ji was like well what could I do if I stuck one of your silks on the end of one of these sticks and his move his dances are amazing so he does has done some really fantastic choreography um movement based work um so we should have a thousand silks by then and we’re working also with a uk- based choreographer Charlene low working with lots of local um movement groups uh in Waymouth some might be martial arts some might be football teams um and there’s also going to be an iteration of this um beforehand in wesworth because you all know that London has a beach not but on Earth is going to be the London Bor of culture so we’re going to be doing this this piece um both in London and in Waymouth and in Bengaluru and in Goa so um it’s and and what’s happened in terms of trying to develop uh the this has gone to the British Council um we don’t know if we’re successful it will happen in the UK even if we’re not successful but in the pulling together the British Council bid um J was saying oh I’ve got these really massive drums from Kerala but I don’t think I’ll able to get them on the plane so maybe we could record them and I said well we’ll need to have a sound uh soundscape maybe you should have a chat with Jason so I introduced J to Jason and you know absolutely fantastic so you know I can see that already there’s a dialogue um going on between this team of artists I’m really hopeful that we’ll um create um quite an impact on the people who we work with and on ourselves and the communities that interact with it so that’s my pitch um and um I’m really hoping that uh will get a lot of uptake uh nationally uh at least and maybe sometime internationally so that’s the plan and I’m really happy to um hear your uh questions thoughts responses uh to that that’s amazing Ally It’s So ambitious and large I know don’t know how you’ve done it know how I’m going to survive it that’s for sure but anyway it’s amazing it’s quite a short time isn’t it like May 25 um anyway it’s brilliant I just love the scale of it and that it’s connecting all these communities to Coast lines and seas um um and it’s very inspiring so it’s and it’s nice to hear all the different range of artists and practices and you know they’re not all like walking artists in a way are they they’re sort of bringing different art forms into that walking space and some are so yeah it’s really great when wish you all the best with that it’s fantastic I look forward to seeing how it unfolds it together in its complex trajectories I guess it’s all trajectories that do interconnect and cross over and new connections are made so lovely well done exciting well I’ve got to hear anyway let’s yeah it’s um you can imagine that it’s kind of like 247 in your head so I have to keep going for walks to calm myself down you yeah I know I can imagine it’s brilliantly big but it’s great thank I mean thanks for sharing that it’s so lovely to hear all about it also lovely to hear I guess like projects don’t just start do they they emerge Lera so it’s nice I’ve heard the sort of lead up story of you know years before that to get to this point as well so think forget that so thanks for sharing that too great well I I hope that um you know walking artists will get involved and kind of do their own thing within the framework so I really tried hard when we were thinking about it to to think how can people have their own ownership of their miles and their work and their own expression of it but how you then hold it all together as a as a thing um yeah so I hope that works and I’d really like to you know reach groups that don’t interact with artists but artists to reach groups that they you know hadn’t maybe worked with and walked with before so and Joan wow I’m almost speechless it sounds even more exciting than I expect was expecting it to be so well done it’s fantastic and you know I always have enjoyed the combination of walking that I’m familiar with art which I don’t know so much about but this is all different forms of Art in all different places so I think it’s going to be great I hope to be involved in some respect I expect you’ll be very involved then yeah but I’d like to say that Joan is coming to the world Trail Network Conference in Ottawa so we’ll be representing Thor and Ottawa so hopefully we’ll we’ll rub off some magic um over that yeah thank you um I was gonna ask you are they um are the walks themselves just kind of the moment of the Walk are they kind of ephemeral or are they are the walks recorded in any way are the roots recorded or the conversations that happen at certain places are they marked in any way or or does the walk just kind of away afterwards um well there’ll be a massive ramping up of um social media and digital platforms so in Beach of Dreams 2021 we had the daily blog from Kevin and I’m going to be interested to see how it works this time because his involvement and the daily blog was really drove the narrative because everybody was like on tentor hooks got who’s he going to write about today and um you know it would come out you know after been writing away drinking his beer on in his camper van he he publish it at midnight he could never go to bed and then everybody was like it’s out it’s out who’s going to you know so it meant that people who’d walked on day one who didn’t make it to day 35 were just like were hooked like it was a so and I we W necessary B to to do same thing in just a s consecutive way bye D see you soon um uh but I think there will be you know so there were there eight Regional Partners will be doing um their own walks and some of them a 10 days or whatever so I think the social that will kind of happen in the same way but and then we also got um digital micro commissions they’re called so that we’ll be making a film in each one of those eight places short film which is uh by and with the community uh that is being engaged so for example the sewing groups in Thor we’re going to have 12 sewing sessions which are going to be like sewing circles where the different groups come together and we’re going to do a kind of theme of a conversation maybe around where those groups come from um in every session and then we’d record that so we want to get the voice from the inside um as well and so that will be cut together and then so those digital films are probably being screen screened you know during the festival online and then there’ll be a sort of documentary that gets cut all together um so I now I’m sure there’ll be photographs and uh this time Kevin says we’re writing a book so we’re doing a book Ali so this time um Kevin’s going to do 10 blogs at different points of the year so probably like one one a month so we can see the unfolding of that um so it’s Beach ofd dreams.org um there’s uh a platform I’m doing a post every day 366 days from June the 1st um and they’re not very long posts but I’m just trying I didn’t record when I went um to Salt River and I was like really regretted it so even if it’s like I’ve had a really crap day you know it’s just like the the journeys or I’m now on this beach and just to try and connect it and then Syra who’s not here she she’s she’s going to be posting some of the stories of 2021 and then we’ll be posting what people do like if they’re doing lipics or different actions on the beach we’ll be trying to basically shine a spotlight on the positive things that people are doing around the coastline and connect that up to um um a wider story so yeah yeah Carol you still there do you want to say anything maybe it’s not yeah any other questions hi Ally it’s Carol hi Carol yes I just had to tell him you to mute a bit a minute I’m we’re really excited about the textile element of it next year okay great yeah loves textille she’s been bringing she brought some of that into her illustration degree course as well yeah so quite excited for that would you be able to come to the studio to do that do you think yeah we might be able to yeah hopefully fingers crossed yeah um well yes I think it’ll kick off in October all right and Joan actually Jan’s leading a walk on the 21st of July but we can post about that on you know if you I know you might we probably wouldn’t be a to do the walk but we’re going to walk from Rive aren’t we Jones to starting at Tower Hill and crossing the river and going into R hiive yeah so I think Ray’s um group and the South Asian women are going to come some of them come with us on that okay and then we’ll devise another one along the EST um that kite Spirit can can come so yeah no it’s it’s it’s good um it’s good and it’s thank you for being here um my Elite audience so um I feel that I can pitch it now to others so um yeah good I think is there anything else at this point or we um so it’s recording I’m going to stop the recording and then we’ll um