This award-winning production, from the team behind Zog, Tiddler and other Terrific Tales, and Tabby McTat features a trio of top actors and is packed full of puppetry, songs, live music and funky moves.
What starts off as a morning jog becomes quite the misadventure for Stick Man: a dog wants to play fetch with him, a swan builds a nest with him, and he even ends up on a fire! How will Stick Man ever get back to the family tree?
(c) Mark Senior
We are very excited to be presenting this show on Wednesday 8 and Thursday 9 December and to get everyone in the mood, we’ve introduced our Stick Man post box in the main foyer on the ground floor of the building. If you draw a picture of Stick Man – perhaps on a winter adventure – and post it in the box, we will show your drawing on our screens on 8 and 9 December.
Time to get drawing – and don’t forget to put your name on the back so we can credit you!
Don’t forget to book tickets to see the show – click herefor booking.
The Arts Council has just announced their vision for the future of creativity and culture: Let’s Create a country transformed by culture. Bringing us together, happier, healthier. To excite, inspire, delight. To enrich our lives.
All of the above was evident during The Big Draw 2021 event at DLWP on Saturday 30th October, from 1pm – 5pm. The event was open to everyone for free or donation. Over the afternoon we had 110 participants! and some very generous donations. The building was buzzing with creativity! The Big Draw Festival is a worldwide celebration of drawing, which promotes the universal language of drawing as a tool for learning, expression, and invention. Nancy Odufona and I (Sinéid Codd) made a great Lead Artist Team because we both like to work hard and have fun doing so!
We offered an assortment of imaginative activities, accessible for all ages and abilities, across a range of drawing processes – drawing digitally – cutting with scissors – tearing with our hands – drawing with sticks, chalks and pens – papercut collages. Seven is a magic number and that’s how many drawing activities we devised for visitors. All activities related to current exhibitions: Alexi Marshall Cursebreakers; Sharif Persaud Have You Ever Had and Helen Cann’s A Map Of The Sea And The De La Warr Pavilion.
In response to Alexi’s work we invited participants to bring their magic; draw and cut skulls and bones, flaming hearts, personal symbols of love and hope for all of us, and our planet. Digital selfies and colourful masks were made from looking at Sharif’s work, and Helen Cann’s map presented a marvellous opportunity for us to create ‘Making Waves’ – a participatory floor installation using cut and torn monochrome papers. A camera was set up to record the making of the sea throughout the day.
The resulting paper sea installation felt animated! It contained a multitude of expressions in visual form – birds and sea creatures appeared amidst the waves – a poignancy and beauty as well as celebration. When all the visitors had left the building, we got together on the top floor and I choreographed the whole team in a performative tide like sweep-up of the paper sea! We are all looking forward to seeing the resulting film, which will be speeded up to show the making and unmaking!
We had great help from DLWP staff for the day’s set-up and were supported by a marvellous group of volunteers, some of who have been volunteering for 20 years! We were also supported by The Blueprint Collective, one of whom, Ren, set up an excellent digital selfie / portrait activity. Thanks also for the DLWP photographers who roamed throughout the building, catching some magic moments.
Huge thanks to you all and to all the visitors who took part and brought The Big Draw alive!!
In a landmark moment for Sussex, Lewes district is to receive £719,100 in funding from the UK Community Renewal Fund, bringing the total amount of funding for the county secured by business-lead consortium Sussex Modern to over one million pounds. The project will be delivered in Lewes district with a focus on growing quality and sustainable tourism infrastructure around Newhaven and Gatwick as visitor gateways into Sussex and Global Britain.
The successful bid, put together by Sussex Modern in partnership with South Downs National Park Authority, Plumpton College and Lewes District Council will deliver a high-impact boost to Sussex’s visitor economy centred around the core themes of sustainable transport, wine, and cultural tourism. The project will use Lewes district as a pilot to develop evidence for how the entire Sussex region could compete with the likes of Napa Valley, California or Margaret River, Australia, as a world-class wine destination. A pan-Sussex steering group will ensure the research and evidence developed during this pilot is applicable across the wine area of Sussex with a view to making a multi-million-pound UK Shared Prosperity Fund bid in 2022.
While Sussex is fast becoming the centre of England’s thriving wine scene, it is also home to an abundance of cultural attractions. Sussex Modern links 39 memorable destinations and experiences across Sussex and is the essential cultural directory of art, landscape, and wine for the region. The collective boasts a wealth of contemporary cultural partners who are proud to be a part of the initiative, from the De La Warr Pavilion, Glyndebourneand Towner Eastbourne (the Art Fund Museum of the Year 2020 in arts) to Tillingham, AshlingPark and Rathfinny in wines, many set amongst the breath-taking landscapes of the South Downs National Park; the official Sussex Modern landscape partner, opening the door to destinations including Firle Beacon, Cissbury Ring, Devils Dyke, and Pevensey Bay.
Building on the success of their ‘Join the Dots’ campaign, the team behind Sussex Modern have been developing the leadership around wine tourism in the county. Through the facilitation of advantageous business partnerships, creating initiatives and securing significant funding, they have set a global ambition Sussex tourism.
“With this funding and investment into key areas, local communities will benefit from quality tourism which will be a huge lift for Sussex’s post-pandemic recovery. This a momentous juncture for Sussex tourism and we’ve been working extremely hard to build this evidence-based bid. We hope that this win will lay the groundwork for future significant funding”
“The Lewes district has a cultural significance that needs promoting far more broadly than has been achieved to date. This funding can unlock that potential, creating a host of new opportunities for sustainable travel, business growth, employment, and training. My hope is that the award will put a new era of net zero-tourism in reach, and I greatly look forward to working with our partners to achieve that”
“Sussex has one of the largest collections of vineyards in the UK that produce some of the finest wines in the country, from Stopham to Wiston in my constituency of Arundle & South Downs right across to Oxney and Tillingham in Rye. These businesses have a central role to play in delivering on Global Britain’s international ambition, and this funding will help to develop an evidence base to ensure that the expansion in tourism is supported by net-zero and sustainable transport”
Andrew Griffith MP, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Great British Wine.
“This funding announcement is very exciting and dovetails with the National Park’s wider goals of providing outstanding experiences for communities and visitors, supported by high-quality access and sustainable transport networks. We want to establish the South Downs as an exemplar in sustainable tourism and this funding brings us one step closer to that goal. Our amazing visitor destinations and hospitality venues are part of what makes the South Downs National Park so special and it’s great to see this boost after such a difficult year for the tourism industry”
Kat Beer, Sustainable Tourism Lead for the National Park.
“This funding is hugely exciting and presents a terrific opportunity to develop sustainable transport, wine, and cultural tourism in Sussex. We look forward to working with South Downs National Park Authority, Sussex Modern, and organisations across the region to develop the business case for expansion, build an investment plan, and connect with Plumpton’s alumni around the world to create an evidence piece for future investment”
By developing highly visible bookable art and wine itineraries, supporting business development within local hospitality sectors and rolling out sustainable transport pilots, the Community Renewal Fund will build on existing investment and undoubtedly put Sussex on the global map for tourism.
Art in Romney Marsh is excited to present the work of artists that have made an outstanding contribution to British Contemporary Art History. Breathing Out aims to celebrate and honour their legacy and with kind permission from respective estate representatives, we are able to present their images as large scale billboard installations in the churchyards. We are grateful to the church guardians and to Arts Council England for supporting us to achieve our ambitions. The work of these artists challenges notions of a fixed cultural identity using photography/lens based media as a tool for exploring the dynamics of private and public, personal and political, past and present. Each artist we are exhibiting has significantly contributed to the development and use of photography and film as a method of exploring the complexities of reality. The lens has historically been identified as the vehicle for truth and objectivity. These artists have expanded upon those fixed perceptions to develop the medium and explore and experiment with the conventions of documentary and portrait photography using exciting and exploratory methodologies.
All the artworks are exhibited outside and produced at large scale. Current restrictions and need for extra safety measures has created a new set of challenges. At the heart of Art in Romney Marsh is the desire to support visitors to enjoy Romney Marsh and its medieval churches through an imaginative artist-led exploration.
The AiRM visual arts festival benefits greatly by the close proximity of the churches, the sites are within a tranquil, magical and unspoilt 10 mile radius that spans across Denge marsh and Walland marsh. This area of marshland can be easily accessed by train, steam railway, road and bicycle, perfect for a day or weekend of relaxing and exploring.
Art in Romney Marsh is a registered charity and has ambitions to increase its profile on the marsh by continuing to provide creative opportunities, initiate artists residencies, build its community educational programme and to continue to work with local arts organisations such as Creative Folkestone, UCA Canterbury and Open School East, Margate. This year, we are able to support student participation by offering an internship and commission marketing and publicity
Designs. Our organisation supports environmental sustainability and low impact approaches to encourage local people to explore natural resources, gain creative skills and enjoy this unique and generous landscape.
Festival Dates:
18th, 19th, 25th and 26th September 2021
2nd, 3rd, 9th and 10th October 2021
Opening times:
13:00 – 17:00
Festival Locations:
St George’s Church, Ivychurch
St Clement’s Church, Old Romney
St Mary’s, St Mary in the Marsh,
St Augustine, Brookland,
Thomas à Becket, Fairfield
Support and thanks:
We are grateful to the National Heritage Lottery for funding to enable us to implement recovery strategies, to Kent County Council for funding us to work with consultants from Social Enterprise Kent. We want to thank Arts Council England for supporting this project and allowing us the chance to rise to the challenges we set ourselves this year. We see Breathing Out as a transition project that will help us to build our resilience and to continue as an important contributor to Kent’s growing coastal, cultural successes.
This is our final session here. Extending and elongating the borders of the building, we walk to meet the sea, taking the building memory to the sea with our bodies and our mirrors. Our paths across the lawn and down the glittery white stone stairs.
Our circular mirrors reflect and carve the afternoon light.
The tide is going out and we catch glimpses of this ebbing away through out hand held portals. How they have become part of us.
Our feet get wet as we immerse the mirrors in the salty water.
The salt creates a new film across the glass, and they take on the appearance of underwater moons and flowers…
During this residency, the DLWP became a fantastic creative Lab, allowing us to create portals and membranes to travel through, forming new connections and language as we immersed ourselves in the body of this building and the inhabiting sculptures. Our voices took space through the camera lens of our phones, sound walks, messaging, listening and translations in space. Rich conversations evolved from rooftop to lawn and beyond… new questions surfaced. How does this building breath? How does it shift in time? Where does it believe its borders are? And we ask the same questions of ourselves…
Gasworks presents the first solo exhibition in London by Belfast-based artist Bassam Al-Sabah; IAM ERROR, from 21 July to 19 September 2021. His work embraces the shape-shifting potential of computer-animated worlds, creating fantasy dreamscapes in which personal mythology, historical trauma and queer possibility intersect. Al-Sabah’s exhibition centres on a new animation film displayed in an immersive environment, combining fantasy erotica and body horror to explore questions of identity and masculinity in action-adventure video games.
In previous works, Al-Sabah reflected on geographical dislocation through reference to Japanese anime cartoons broadcast throughout the Middle East during his childhood. Packed with imagery of warfare, anime cartoons and video game culture take on a heightened political significance within Al-Sabah’s practice, whose family was exiled from Baghdad after the Iraq War.
The exhibition at Gasworks explores the construction of masculinity in action-adventure video games. Presented in an immersive cinematic environment, l-Sabah’s newly commissioned CGI films confront the armouring of the male body in gaming culture by queering its military ethos from within.
The centrepiece is a 28-minute-long animation projected on to a large curved screen. It features a collection of cinematic sequences from an imaginary game in which the hero’s body is constantly in flux, undergoing metamorphoses as a result of his encounter with other lifeforms, whose physical touch makes him vulnerable to change, threatening his identity and selfhood.
Combining fantasy erotica and body horror, Al-Sabah’s films celebrate the hero’s growth and transformation in all its literalness, as his body sprouts and blends into its surroundings, among writhing flowers and tentacular creatures. The tactile, hyperrealistic quality of the footage contrasts with the immersive architecture of the film installation, which engulfs the viewer to induce a sense of disembodiment.
The show is punctuated by digitally sculpted objects that explore the materiality of organic decay, extending the eerie atmosphere of Al-Sabah’s animations into the gallery space.
Bassam Al-Sabah, I AM ERROR, 2021. Video HD, 28 min. Film still. Commissioned by Gasworks, in partnership with De La Warr Pavilion, with the generous support of the Freelands Foundation.
Bassam Al-Sabah’s exhibition is part of the Freelands Gasworks Partnership.
Gasworks commissions are supported by Catherine Petitgas and Gasworks Exhibitions Supporters.
Free admission. Address: Gasworks, 155 Vauxhall St, London SE11 5RH
Please visit gasworks.org.uk to see our covid safety measures.
Bassam Al-Sabah, I AM ERROR, 2021. Video HD, 28 min. Film still. Commissioned by Gasworks, in partnership with De La Warr Pavilion, with the generous support of the Freelands Foundation.
About Bassam Al-Sabah
Bassam Al-Sabah lives and works in Belfast and Dublin. He graduated from IADT Dún Laoghaire in 2016, and was awarded the RHA Graduate Studio Award (2016-2017) and the Temple Bar Gallery Residency Award (2018-2019). Recent exhibitions include RTÉ Illuminations (2020); Solstice Arts Centre, Navan (2019); The LAB, Dublin (2018); and Eight Gallery, Dublin (2017).
Al-Sabah is the fifth artist to take part in the Freelands Gasworks Partnership, a programme for emerging UK artists based outside of London. Made possible thanks to a generous grant from the Freelands Foundation, the programme combines a three-month residency with a solo exhibition, commissioned by Gasworks in partnership with the De La Warr, where a second instalment of the show will be presented in 2022.
Bassam Al-Sabah, I AM ERROR, 2021. Video HD, 28 min. Film still. Commissioned by Gasworks, in partnership with De La Warr Pavilion, with the generous support of the Freelands Foundation.
About Gasworks
For over twenty years Gasworks has played a unique role in the contemporary visual arts sector by working at the intersection between UK and international practices and debates. It does this by providing studios for London-based artists; commissioning emerging UK-based and international artists to present their first major exhibitions in London; and developing a highly-respected international residencies programme, mainly working with artists based outside Europe and North America. All programmes are accompanied by events and participatory workshops that engage local and international audiences with artists and their work.
Gasworks is also the hub of Triangle Network, an international network of small-scale arts organisations and projects that support and disseminate the work of emerging artists through artist-led workshops, residencies, exhibitions and outreach events. Gasworks and Triangle Network are registered as a charity in the UK under ‘Triangle Arts Trust’ and all their activities are free to the public.
Bassam Al-Sabah, I AM ERROR, 2021. Video HD, 28 min. Film still. Commissioned by Gasworks, in partnership with De La Warr Pavilion, with the generous support of the Freelands Foundation.
Movement within the acoustic ecology of the building, and its architectural spaces. Its body and its hollows.
At one end of the gallery, we stop at a large mounted plaster sculpture .
From one side it reminds B of a huge sea shell, or ear.
We put our ears against it and listen, only to discover a mesmerizing echo as we whisper to each other…
We climb the stairs to the roof, stopping at certain points to stand still, close our eyes and listen.
Easier to detect and discover the layers of sound and the distant voices.
There is music playing on the lawn outside . With his eyes closed, B can also hear the swell of the sea rising up and down, watery sound waves. H says he feels his eyes bouncing off the ground as the music gets louder. The sounds alter the light behind my eyelids…
We walk to the other side of the roof.
Here the overlapping sound is a rhythmic conversation between the sound of rain and car tyres.
It feels harsher here. B says. ‘Like the pace of life and expectation’.
A return to the gallery space. It sounds padded, buttered, soft…
8 round mirrors and our phone cameras. Our movement now becomes a reflected choreography, more playful, focussed. A deeper inquiry.
In the gallery, onlookers move around us, giving us space. We can’t invite them to join in, to play because of the distancing and object touching restrictions, and so today they remain as fleeting witnesses.
We are immersed in a process of dislocation in order to relocate, until it is time to surface…
Words by Nicole Zaaroura. Keep up with Nicole’s blog here, for updates from behind the artist’s eyes.
Credit: Hasan KafayaCredit: Hasan KafayaCredit: Basil Jaber AlsheikhCredit: Basil Jaber Alsheikh
Partners from across the South East have launched a brand-new support programme to aid the recovery of the South East’s visitor economy, which directly responds to the impact that the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the region.
This new programme is being delivered by a consortium of partners that represent the tourism and hospitality industry across the region and comprises of colleagues from Visit Kent, Visit Essex, East Sussex County Council, Sussex Modern, and Southend-on-Sea Borough Council.
The Visitor Economy is a considerable engine of growth for the SELEP region, worth over £8.6bn, supporting more than 177,000 jobs as of 2015. Visit Britain’s forecast for 2020 predicted a 64% decline in domestic leisure day trips within the UK and a 73% decline in international visits when compared to 2019, contributing to a significant impact on the country’s tourism and hospitality sector as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The programme will provide funding of between £1,000 and £3,000 per project, for a minimum of 150 businesses across the SELEP region and will crucially inject small visitor economy businesses with the financial investment they need in order to respond to changed conditions across the marketplace.
The funding grants – which cover 100% of the costs and require no match funding from businesses – will focus on driving innovation and helping organisations to adapt or diversify their model to meet new trends and consumer behaviours in a post-Covid world.
Examples of the types of projects that would be considered for this funding include – but are not limited to – changes in operations in order to continue functioning in some capacity during restrictions (e.g., online booking software or online, virtual experiences), adaptations to increase visitor capacity (e.g., investment in outdoor spaces) or adaptations to improve consumer confidence (e.g., equipment needed to deliver an exciting new visitor experience).
Applications will open from 9am on 15 July 2021, running until 11:59pm on 18 July 2021. Businesses are encouraged to start looking at the funding criteria and preparing applications from now, in order to ensure that this fund is the right fit for them.
Sussex Modern steering group member and Director & CEO of the De La Warr Pavilion, Stewart Drew said:
‘It’s been extremely tough for businesses in the visitor economy over the past year. The new Revi-VE fund aims to give a much needed boost to the sector, helping businesses innovate and adapt to support their recovery going forward. We are delighted to be working with partners across the SELEP region on this vital project.’
South East LEP Chair, Christian Brodie said:
“We must get behind our visitor economy organisations and businesses – that is why we are really excited to launch this fund today. At South East LEP we understand the value the visitor economy plays for our area, not just in terms of jobs and employment but the undeniable value that this sector brings to our communities, and our well-being. This fund is launching at just the right time as other monies begin to wind down and in the last push ready for reopening. We know there is so much resilience and innovation in this industry and we want to do all that we can to support those who need it most.”
With its core focus on the tourism and hospitality industry, Revi-VE is one of three flagship packages launching in order to support micro, small, and medium businesses (under 250 employees) within this region. Two further packages, which focus on start-ups (the Starting and Succeeding in Business COVID-19 Recovery Fund) and digital businesses (the Adapting with Digital COVID-19 Recovery Fund) will also be launching this month.
For more information on the Revi-VE – South East Visitor Economy Fund, and to find out whether your business is eligible, please visit their website by clicking here.
