Beach of Dreams

Talks and Debates

Walk Listen Create Café: Threads for Tomorrow

Walk Listen Create

Online, via Zoom

Free Event

About

Join walking artist and Beach of Dreams Artistic Director Ali Pretty in a conversation spanning continents, with textile artists Rachna Toshniwal, Elspeth ‘Billie’ Penfold, and Rahemur Rahman, as they explore the intersection of art, waste, and environmental storytelling.

Hosted by Beach of Dreams and Walk Listen Create, in collaboration with World Trails Network, this café invites trail enthusiasts and walking artists to consider the question: What tales does our waste tell? Through weaving and embroidery, the artists reimagine their coastlines using materials collected from shorelines across India and the UK.

We'll explore the connection in weaving together threads, some of which are from waste materials to re-imagine the future of our coastlines, specifically to ask ask What Does Our Waste Tell? and to think carefully about the materials we use, in everyday life and in our choice of fashion.

Rachna Toshniwal will be introducing Weaving Interconnections, a community art project conceived as a large-scale tapestry installation woven using waste materials collected along the coastline of Saraal beach, Alibaug, India. She writes: “By design, this project is about inclusivity and engagement – weaving (quite literally) our connection with the lived environment (nature, people, garbage) into a tapestry – bringing together the many threads that intersect within an ecosystem of a local shoreline; with the ultimate goal of using art to sensitize, initiate and activate change in response to the ecological crises we find ourselves in today.”

Elspeth ‘Billie’ Penfold is working with adults with learning disabilities from East Kent Mencap weaving, poetry reading and walking on a project called Weave and Read around Herne Bay, UK to coincide with Beach of Dreams.

Rahemur ‘Ray’ Rahman has been commissioned to embroider together of 500 Beach of Dreams Silks, damaged in storms along the South Coast in 2023. In this ambitious project, Ray is collaborating closely with eight sewing groups based along the Thames Estuary, including the Whitechapel Sewing Group Inspire and resident Kinetika Studios sewing group, Kite Spirit.

Date & Times

Tue 25 March, 18:00

Explore Thames Estuary stories

Address

Online, via Zoom

What3Words:

Booking information

Book Here

Related Events

Contact Information

Walk Listen Create

Website