Beach of Dreams is a UK-wide Coastal Arts Festival
A major interdisciplinary creative programme will see ambitious new participatory art commissions, creative walks and events taking place across the coasts of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, and digitally, from 1 May – 1 June 2025.
Beach of Dreams is a platform for celebrating, reflecting and imagining new possible climate futures for our coastlines and planet. The festival takes place outdoors and in public spaces and is free to attend –– everyone is welcome.
How can we creatively reimagine our future?
We aim to engage hundreds of thousands across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in a major interdisciplinary, outdoor and digital creative programme that fosters a deeper connection with our communities, coastline and planet. Through participatory art, creative walks, and activations, Beach of Dreams invites audiences to explore the unique role of art and environmental science in the climate conversation, offering a hopeful perspective on the future of our coasts and planet.
Beach of Dreams invites you to walk together, share stories, learn about our coastlines, imagine possible futures and work collectively towards positive change.
The Creative Programme
The Beach of Dreams programme features a dynamic and evolving national artwork by Kinetika: the installation of hundreds of naturally dyed silk pennants. Designed to be mobile, each pennant tells a story, representing an individual’s dream intricately tied to a specific part of our beloved coastline. Together, these dreams form a national tapestry of hope and inspiration for our shared future.
Incorporating the silks and in response, the festival will also feature eight new ambitious artistic commissions, by artists working in diverse disciplines ranging from sound to dance, along different stretches of the UK coastline. These commissions will actively engage local communities, inspiring new works that reflect their unique coastal environments. The full programme will be announced in September 2024.
Join the network around the UK
You are invited to join Beach of Dreams from now up until the festival in May 2025. We are looking to establish a network of connections and activity as part of the wider creative programme along the UK’s coastlines among environmental, wellness, and community-focused organisations. Uniting around shared concerns for the future of our coastlines and amplifying engagement in creative climate action we hope to facilitate skill-sharing across regions and empower local initiatives to contribute to a global dialogue.
Our legacy
Beach of Dreams aims to place the experience of our audiences, and the legacy of our programme on the people we worked with, at the heart of everything we do.
Our aim is for the coastline across the UK and Ireland to be adopted by those communities who live and work there, inviting them to make a pledge for climate action to enable future generations to experience healthy and sustainable lives.
The public will take part in a range of creative activities to help them to think through the complex challenges of climate change and to articulate their thoughts. Pledges and stories from across the UK and Ireland will be shared across digital platforms and used to influence decision-makers at a local and national level.
The History of Beach of Dreams
Beach of Dreams began in July 2021 as a 500-mile creative walk from Lowestoft to Tilbury initiated by arts organisation Kinetika, led by artistic director Ali Pretty in partnership with Rosa Productions.
We invited individuals to adopt a mile, to photograph/draw and write about their connection to their mile of coastline, and then to look out to the horizon as far as they could see and imagine how this mile might be for their great, great, great grandchildren. The images were translated onto 500 hand-painted, handwoven naturally dyed silk pennants that were installed at various beach locations en route and carried all the way by participants. Their stories and dreams of the future were shared on an online Story Map.
BAY LINES – BEACH OF DREAMS
Kinetika and Rosa Productions were commissioned by Morecambe Bay Partnership to create ‘Bay Lines’ – Beach of Dreams in Morecambe Bay. This participatory programme saw the creation of a further collection of 120 naturally dyed silk pennants, and a series of beautifully presented digital stories inspired by the coastline from Fleetwood to Walney Island.
Image Credits: Mike Johnston, Tessa Bunney and Ali Pretty, unless otherwise stated.
Presented by Kinetika
Kinetika is an internationally renowned female-led company with a 25-year track record of combining world-class bespoke designs on large-scale hand-painted silks with community projects to produce spectacular outdoor events that engage diverse audiences wherever they work.
Founded by artist Ali Pretty in 1997, inspired by her training in carnival arts in Trinidad and India, Kinetika now has an unrivalled reputation for working with local communities on projects that change the way people feel about where they live. Based in Purfleet since 2014, Kinetika delivers activity both at ‘home’ in Thurrock and ‘away’ across the UK and abroad.
Kinetika with The Thank You Dance at The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Pageant, June 2022 (c) Matt Crossick/PA Wire
