Welcome to This Coastal Town Reimagined: 200 Years Of Change!
For adults of all ages. If you are a resident, worker, regular visitor, or if you just love Felixstowe, this is for you! Join us for a fun morning or afternoon with your friends and neighbours, time-travelling into the future of this coastal town.
FREE – but booking is essential as places are limited
A chance to explore 200 years of change in Felixstowe!
🚢The port was founded in 1875. Looking back 150 years, we can see the changes it made in this town. In 50 years, how will we look back on this time with all the changes we know are coming, including new developments and shifts in climate?
🌞Felixstowe is a place that radiates healthful living and wellbeing. The land and sea support livelihoods, leisure and blooming biodiversity. The port, the largest in England, provides crucial national infrastructure and contributes to a healthy local economy. In the summer holidaymakers flock here.
🌬️But things are always changing here and in the wider world. In May, we invited local residents to chat about the futures we want. In July, we shared what we discovered with three creative practitioners from the region: Mimi Doncaster and Frazer Merrick, and Kirsty Tallent. Together we created an immersive future fiction. That is the basis of the event we are inviting you to here. Come and work on the future together! ⏳
⏰We start with a timeline of Felixstowe since the port was founded in 1875 and an invitation to add events of historic or personal significance.
Then we choose our time-travelling characters. Will you start as a young person, or an elder? What does your character care about? ✨
We will travel all the way to 2075, the year the Multispecies Port of Felixstowe opens.
This event is hosted by The Alex Brasserie, with views of the sea and a cafe bar where you can buy any refreshments around the event. Please tell us about any access needs you may have.
Participants need no prior knowledge or experience to join this event. However, if you are unsure about sustainable futures and are someone who likes to come prepared, we think these links offer a good starting point: What is climate change? A really simple guide, from the BBC, and Sustainable Development Goals from the UN.
Ruth Catlow is co-founder and director of Furtherfield and an artist and organiser interested in how different creative processes can unleash community imaginations to open up new more mutualistic futures in places.
Prof Ann Light is a researcher studying to what extent people can be transformed by encounters with the arts.
Please note that the event is being included in a research project on the effect of immersive experiences. A researcher will be there to observe the event. Although the researcher will not be observing individuals, there is an opportunity on the day for you to decide if you wish to be part of the research or not. If you would like to know more about the research project before the event, please email Professor Ann Light at the University of Sussex (ann.light@sussex.ac.uk) and she will send you an information sheet.
This event has been co-devised by Ruth Catlow, Mimi Doncaster, Ann Light, Frazer Merrick, and Kirsty Tallent. Thanks to Hamilton MAS for hosting the co-creation workshop and to Cuppa for hosting the community conversation that inspired and informed our work.
🙋Please contact Ruth by email ruth.catlow@furtherfield.org if you have any questions, or come early to talk to us.
Saturday 11th November
A Free All Day Event in Finsbury Park
Future Machine creates rituals for when the future comes. It will next appear in Finsbury Park on Saturday 11th November 2023.
When the Future Comes is a series of artist’s interventions each witnessed by a mysterious and mystical device – the Future Machine, led by Rachel Jacobs. A newly formed ritual or special occasion will emerge as the Future Machine appears in Oxfordshire, Nottingham, Cumbria, Somerset and London every year – until 2050 the year scientists predict will be a watershed for more extreme climate and environmental change.
From 10.00 am
Future Machine will meander around the park, meeting people along the way.
11.00 am
Join Future Machine and artists Esi Eshun & Rachel Jacobs for a guided walk to seven trees.
Gather outside Furtherfield Gallery (by the playground, close to the lake at the top of the hill).
From 2.00pm
Meet Future Machine and speak to the future at Furtherfield Commons (between the Seven Sisters Road & Finsbury Park Gates).
Celebrate the weather with musicians from around the world and take part in family activities including drumming and dancing.
Listen to live West African fusion music performed by the group, Zantogola!
Supported using public funding by Arts Council England, Furtherfield, Horizon (University of Nottingham) and in-kind support from Primary and the British Antarctic Survey
3 October 2019 – 5 January 2020, Daily. Free Entry
The roar of an airplane is a familiar sound for many parts of west London, home to one of the busiest airports in the world and the subject of a new exhibition, Air Matters at Watermans Arts Centre in Brentford, just a few miles away from Heathrow.
Echoing the experience of hearing an aircraft in action, sound itself plays an integral part in the show and leads with The Substitute (2019) by Hermione Spriggs and Laura Cooper. Through overhead speakers outside the main entrance, visitors are greeted by an authoritative voice musing on the fate of local flocks in an airspace strictly controlled by humans and their contraptions, intermittently reciting names of affected birds like a tribute, and ultimately urging listeners to “work with nature” which sets a critical tone.
The audio installation is reminiscent of public announcements at airports, a strategy that continues into the foyer with Frequency (2019) by Louise K Wilson. It features intimate anecdotes of air travel through resonance devices on a skylight roof where planes might fly by at any moment. Speaking softly akin to ASMR, one person wonders about the destinations of travellers, while another recalls vivid memories of flights that seem traumatic, bouncing back and forth between excitement and anxiety.
The theme reaches its crescendo inside the gallery, with a mixture of ambient sounds reverberating across the space from Ascending Composition I (For Planes) (2019) by Kate Carr, an atmospheric concoction of incidental noises recorded around Heathrow including birds, markets, and trains on tracks. With pocket-sized media players attached to deconstructed speakers on strings of fabric, the installation documents an intervention that already took place when the work itself flew up on balloons blasting whispers from the ground, a small but meaningful gesture challenging the sonic waves of jumbo jets that dominate the surrounding sky and soundscape.
This act of defiance flows into Skyport (2019) by Magz Hall, a mixed media installation with a set of frequency scanners emitting an unsettling static. The title refers to a pirate radio station based along a Heathrow flightpath in the 1970s, illustrated with archival images and texts from an attempt to reclaim airwaves colonised by traffic control and engine noise. The work emulates this spirit with an LCD screen broadcasting airport channels as visual wavelengths, the contents of which are protected as classified information in UK law, consequently questioning ownership, access, and authority over radio frequencies.
The symphony of sounds become unavoidable throughout, and there is a possibility that it might grow vexing for some, perhaps more so for the people that work here who may not have a choice but to hear it again and again. Yet, as irksome as that might be, it is a crucial part of what makes this show effective. The audible pieces collectively transform the spaces into simulations of airport lounges and peripheral towns, simultaneously mimicking and counteracting oppressive noises from airplanes and terminals that have become inevitable in contemporary life, irrespective of its value and/or harm.
Beyond aural tendencies, the exhibition reaches further by considering scale and movement. The sheer volume of Capsule (2019) by Nick Ferguson is an imposing presence in the gallery with a wooden sculpture modelled after the wheel bay of a Boeing 777, floating a few inches off the ground and hovering over visitors. Shown alongside printed images of microscopic substances found in a real plane, it orchestrates a juxtaposition between the enormity of a flying machine and the imperceptible residue it accumulates, revealing traces from the many places it has been including sand, spores, and bacteria.
A map nearby, Heathrow (Volumetric Airspace Structures) (2019) by Matthew Flintham, takes the viewer back to west London with a bird’s eye view of the airport complex. Presented on a table that might be used for urban planning, military operation, or board games, it illustrates the topography of the area highlighting a vast infrastructure beneath large sections of controlled airspace, seemingly encroaching on everything else which becomes almost invisible or insignificant.
Navigating the show functions as an exercise of remembrance in many ways, bringing to mind a number of issues that have been at the forefront of public discourse in recent years: from the role of aviation on climate change, to its impact on local communities and ecosystems around airports. And it comes, as if on cue, at a period of heightened environmental concern, propelled most prominently by the Extinction Rebellion movement and climate activist Greta Thunberg, ringing the alarm on the perils of flying.
The controversial Heathrow Airport Expansion also comes through in this context, caught between government plans for future economic growth, and the ongoing resistance from neighbouring residents with campaigns like Stop Heathrow Expansion, No Third Runway Coalition, and Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise.
It conjures up conflicting perspectives that unpack a classic dilemma for a society in flux. On one hand, the flight industry is evidently harmful because of its pollution to the planet and the unfair toll on local hosts. Yet, on the other, it is part of a system that facilitates international trade, freedom of movement, and cultural exchanges, each one increasingly more accessible to broader people beyond a privileged few who will always have it. And while it has serious problems that must be addressed, some of which are rightly pointed out here, a world without it entirely is at risk of descent into tribalism and isolationism.
With so much at stake at this particular time and place, the exhibition feels important for its worthwhile attempt in raising these pertinent questions through art, successfully using Heathrow as a case study for matters that undoubtedly have wider implications.
Like the rumble of a plane and many works in this show, the politics of flying will become inescapable as air travel is projected to almost double in size by 2036, despite recent backlash from flight shaming, the rise of staycation, and a spotlight on frequent flyers. The solutions to its unintended consequences are not as straightforward as it might seem, and will likely require a nuanced approach combining systemic changes, paradigm shifts, technological developments, and personal adjustments, all of which cannot come soon enough.
Air Matters: Learning From Heathrow is at Watermans Arts Centre until 5 January 2020. Curated by Nicholas Ferguson in collaboration with Klio Krajewska. Supported by Arts Council England, Forma, London Borough of Hounslow, Kingston School of Art, and Richmond University.
Featured main image: Kate Carr. Image 11. NF. Ascending Composition 1 (For planes). Mixed media, 2019. Included in Air Matters: Learning from Heathrow. 3 October – 5 January 2019.
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