The Yarmouth Springs Eternal exhibition is now open! Our Yarmouth Springs Eternal community group came up with lots of creative ideas for Kaavous Clayton from originalprojects; (our project partner) to curate into an inspiring exhibition celebrating connecting with the natural world. Some of the group have also been putting in extra time in to support with the installing, painting and constructing in the venue to help the show come to life, which is hugely appreciated!
You can now visit the show at PRIMEYARC in Market Gates Shopping Centre, Great Yarmouth. It’s free to visit daily from Mondays-Saturday 12pm to 5:30pm and Sundays 12pm to 4pm up until Sunday 20th June. Please note: this Saturday 22nd May is only open to our Conference ticket holders, apologies for any inconvenience.
The show includes a sound piece by Bill Vine, originally commissioned by Norfolk & Norwich Festival’s Creative Individual Norfolk fund. You can also catch Bill and I, and the other NNF funding awardees, talking about our projects at the live streamed event on Thursday. Jacques Nimki invisible plant drawings are growing organically around the space to hunt and find like a nature walk. You can join both Bill and Jacques on a bookable walk around town in June, exploring local sound and plants respectively.
Company Drinks (image credit_Genevieve Rudd)
If all that walking has built up a thirst, Company Drinks have an honesty fridge of foraged community-made drinks from their East London based social enterprise. Great Yarmouth is a town surrounded by liquid of another kind – rivers, seas and broads – so it felt fitting to invite James Aldridge to showcase a piece from his Queer River project that explores the link between identity and blue spaces.
To close the show at the Summer Solstice weekend, Jason Evans will be hosting a series of Photowalks on Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th June, whilst displaying some facilitated photography in the exhibition from The Garden Gate Project in Margate.
Alongside these artists, you can find informative displays from Climate Museum UK, sharing the impacts of the climate crisis and what we can do to reverse the damage. There will be growing, living and evolving displays. Audiences are invited to bring along a small bunch of locally (and responsibly!) picked flowers, as part of the Theatre of Posies display. When you bring your posie along, you’ll be asked to pop them in a decorated jar of water and we’ll then arrange them in the space.
James Aldridge (image credit_Genevieve Rudd)
As well as things to see, there are also a series of arts & nature events coming up in June. You can find all of these events listed in our latest newsletter and below, along with how you can take part.
We hope to see you there!
Arts & Nature Events
Yarmouth Springs Eternal Conference
LIMITED AVAILABILITY
The Yarmouth Springs Eternal conference will explore relationships, perceptions and experiences of connecting with the natural world through the arts. It’ll feature presentations from the featured exhibition artists and a Q&A. During the conference, we’ll also explore establishing a network of artists working with nature and parts of the day will be live-streamed online.
Listen in closer to the sonic landscape of Great Yarmouth on a sound walk led by Bill Vine. The walks will allow time for both meditative listening and an opportunity to learn more about the local environment
An opportunity to join artist Jacques Nimki for a walk around Great Yarmouth town centre. Explore the urban landscape, through an interaction with plants that are often overlooked, inhabiting places that are usually neglected or unexplored
Wed, 9 June 2021 14:00 – 15:30| Booking link(open to general public) 16:00 – 17:30 |Booking linkLIMITED AVAILABILITY (open to educators working with Primary age children)
#MyJam: Culture Sharing Lab
This inclusive introductory session is intended as open-source conversation-starter to identify and explore shared interests in the radical nature of fermentation, slow living, holistic health and resourcefulness
Genevieve Rudd invites you to discover the magic of Cyanotype ‘blueprint’ photography, based on drawings and found objects in outdoor locations around town
Wed, 16 June 2021
Summer Solstice Photography Walk with Jason Evans
These fun, informal sessions are designed to expand your experience of photography ideas and techniques, responding to project exhibition.
Walking and looking with a medium format film camera, participants will create a record of unexpected nature and organic surprises in Great Yarmouth over the Summer Solstice weekend.
Participants can bring their own photography kit (camera or camera phone). No previous experience is necessary to take part.
We’d like you to explore the spaces around you – your garden, the path outside your house or a local park – and gather together a small posie of flowers to be part of the exhibition.
Bring your posie to the exhibition. On arrival, you’ll be invited to write a short note about where you collected them. Then, place your arrangement in the dedicated display.
Remember to pick responsibly!
#MyJam: Culture Sharing Lab
Do you grow edibles in your garden or allotment? Into jamming, preserving or lacto-fermenting? Avid about brewing or sourdough baking? Are you an expert home composter?
We’re inviting you to bring your knowledge, tips and tricks to share with others at #MyJam. Tell us about what your jam is on our form!
Yarmouth Springs Eternal community pamphlet made from a workshop with Red Herring Press (image credit_Genevieve Rudd)
Theatre of Posies (image credit_Genevieve Rudd)
Exhibition space cyanotype prints from a community walk_workshop with Genevieve Rudd, and Company Drinks (image credit_Genevieve Rudd)
All events are taking place at PRIMEYARC, Market Gates Shopping Centre, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, NR30 2BG and are planned to follow and adhere to COVID-19 guidelines. Information on accessibility guidance is available on the event links
Kaavous Clayton of originalprojects;, who are a partner on the Yarmouth Springs Eternal project and will be hosting the exhibition at PRIMEYARC, a space they manage for creative communal collaborations in the former Debenhams in Market gates Shopping Centre, shares some of his thoughts about Yarmouth Springs Eternal and the curation of the exhibition.
Optimistic Antidote
Kaavous Clayton at a Yarmouth Springs Eternal session (image credit_Becky Demmen)
After a year of not being able to do what we do, Yarmouth Springs Eternal has felt like an optimistic antidote to being shut away from people and not being to collaborate in any way that has felt meaningful (online experiences just don’t quite do it for me). It has been so nice to see the group that Genevieve has been working with come into PRIMEYARC to work with artists in the landscape of Great Yarmouth.
In the back of my mind thoughts have been swirling about the exhibition. Genevieve and I started talking about possible artists at some point last year, thinking about people who work to connect nature with communities, bringing them together to create something that speaks of both, and also creates something new. We’ve had conversation with some of those artists about the physical things they might show, and also had some thoughts about other things that might be relevant to show alongside them – things like wormeries, dried flowers, a theatre of posies, some pickling and fermentation (Jules, who I live, love and work with, makes some great analogies around the cultures that grow while fermenting and the culture we live in).
We’ve also had thoughts about what the exhibition might look like and how it might work – we’ve had conversations about how a ‘village hall’ aesthetic might make it feel more relaxed and informal, and recently ideas around garden design and the labels used in nurseries for plants have been discussed.
Working through exhibition materials (image credit_Becky Demmen)
And I find myself starting to have a clear picture of what the exhibition could look like and how I’d arrange it, but I keep having to check myself, because this project is about working with people, and whilst we all have our own ideas, it’s what happens to those ideas when they’re put out into the world for other people to respond to, and to come back with their thoughts, so it’s going to develop through a sharing of these ideas with the Yarmouth Springs Eternal group, and seeing what ideas they come up with in response.
Analogies from the natural word are hard to resist whilst thinking about this project, and here’s one in relation to creating collaboratively. Regardless of however many systems we try to put in place to restrict peoples organic ways of thinking and living, we always find a way to go round them, or under them, or over them, in the same way that nature always finds a way to overcome our manmade obstructions, which is hardly surprising, as we are nature after all.
Using pieces created as part of the community artist-led community walks/workshops to create a display for the exhibition (image_credit Becky Demmen)
EVENTS COMING SOON!
Find out details of our upcoming events below. If you would like to stay informed of all of the latest information about these events, then you can sign up to our newsletter. You can see our first newsletter here, it’s the best way to get an over view of all of the events below.
EXHIBITION – WEDNESDAY 19TH MAY TO SUNDAY 20TH JUNE 2021
PRIMEYARC, Market Gates Shopping Centre, Great Yarmouth, NR30 2BG | Open daily: Monday-Saturday 12pm to 5:30pm + Sunday 12pm-4:30pm
Ligia Macedo talking to the group at Great Yarmouth’s medieval flint wall (image credit_Genevieve Rudd)
Collecting words
In our fourth session, Ligia Macedo guided us through some gentle creative writing exercises to support the group to express their thoughts, feelings and ideas through words. We begun with a couple of socially distanced warm-up exercises, spread across the PRIMEYARC venue space, before heading out on our local walk.
First, the group read and responded to nature writing and images; pinned to the walls were texts from Maya Angelou, Emily Dickenson, Tu Pac and William Wordsworth, amongst others, alongside images of paradise beaches, chips stalls, buildings and rivers from around the world. The group was invited to jot down their immediate responses anonymously on Post It notes, as a way to start tapping into expressing ideas through words. Then, Ligia invited us to think about the sensory experience of our own morning so far, from the moment we woke up to when we arrived at the space. We soon started to build up a collection of words connected to the senses and nature.
Ligia has a great approach that recognises that often people can freeze up when they are asked to take part in “creative writing”, so the warm-ups were a good way to get us thinking.
Noticing Hidden Histories
Looking up at Great Yarmouth’s medieval flint wall (image credit_Genevieve Rudd)
We set out on our walk mid-morning, from our base at Market Gates to the Medieval flint town wall. As with most of our walks to date, they’re slow, gentle and meandering, with lots of stopping points to share some local knowledge, take a photo or admire a building or plant. We noticed architectural features, self-seeded plants growing in the doorways, crumbling brickwork and spotted the same pink flowered hedge that we’d seen on a previous walk through Cobholm.
During our journey, we each had a series of coloured card sheets asking us to document different aspects of the locations, not just the things we could see but also the things we could hear, smell and touch. So, naturally, there was some brickwork-stroking, tree-sniffing and tree-hugging along the way!
The flint wall is visually stunning and enjoyable to touch, and it is also seeped in deep history. Ligia and the group swapped knowledge of the wall between each other. The group also thought more about the people involved in the construction, and we put ourselves in the shoes of the local communities building the wall for over 100 years. We wondered about the brickwork and structure, and how different generations would’ve brought different skills and attitudes to the project.
The group found a spot along Blackfriars Road, under a large candelabra-like tree beside the wall, to reflect on the sensory experiences of our walk so far. One of our group members shared that she felt anxious when walking through town as it was busy – which others in the group agreed with – but sitting under the tree, she felt calmer. As a final activity, before heading back for lunch, Ligia gifted us 5 minutes of silence simply touching, smelling, looking at and hearing the world around us.
Collective writing
Sharing words and phrases from the day with Ligia Macedo (image credit Genevieve Rudd)
After lunch (which tapped into our 5th sense – taste!), we brought all the ideas together from the day on a long sheet of paper, writing down our favourite lines or words from the nature writing examples, our morning sensory experiences and the sights, sounds and smells from our walk. From this, the group created a collaborative community poem, called ‘Uma escritor (a writer)’. I won’t share it here, you’ll have to visit the exhibition to read it!
It was brilliant to spend the day tuning into our sensory experiences. I was especially inspired to think about how the everyday locations – from the busy town centre to Great Yarmouth’s old wall, and the buildings and houses in between – are so rich with hidden stories. And how, with just a few simple accessible activities, an inspiring creative writing can blossom. Our group shared some thoughtful anonymous reflections at the end of the day:
“Today’s session was relaxed, creative and a good reminder of what we have to appreciate”
“Muito interessante, criativa, por causa da troca de ideias” / Really interesting, creative, because of the exchange of ideas”
“Every session has thus far been good. I have felt my creative side coming out more and am inspired after every group”
Events coming sooN!
Find out details of our upcoming events below. If you would like to stay informed of all of the latest information about these events, then you can sign up to our newsletter. Our first update will be going out this Friday!
EXHIBITION – WEDNESDAY 19TH MAY TO SUNDAY 20TH JUNE 2021
PRIMEYARC, Market Gates Shopping Centre, Great Yarmouth, NR30 2BG | Open daily: Monday-Saturday 12pm to 5:30pm + Sunday 12pm-4:30pm
Under Breydon Bridge (image credit_Genevieve Rudd)
We were led by photographer Mark Cator for our third artist-led walk/workshop session. He began his session with a photography presentation of Great Yarmouth, with a focus on the life and culture around Breydon Water since the 1800s. Mark is an expert on the photographer P H Emerson, having grown up around the Norfolk Broads, so much of the presentation explored this historic work alongside Mark’s own photography. It was fascinating to track the changes based on local landmarks, such as the Town Hall and river, which gave us a good starting point before heading out on our walk, picking up the start of the Angles Way walking route.
Links to Landscape
Angles Way walking route (image credit_Genevieve Rudd)
One of our group members had a strong personal link to the area, having grown up and lived on the edge of Breydon Water for many years, which enriched the day with lots of insider local knowledge. Mark had some of his own photography from the area taken around the 1990s, that we used to compare and contrast on location. Even when the group didn’t have a personal connection to the landscape we were walking within, it triggered early memories. One of our participants had spent time in Alaska when he was younger and remembered eating Fiddlehead Ferns, a memory sparked during a conversation about the abundant edible Alexanders around us. Another participant had grown up in South Africa and remembered childhoods exploring vast landscapes. We spoke about how, in the context of Norfolk, Breydon Water looks vast but even here, we’re still not far from houses, shops, trains and roads.
We were blessed with bright sunshine and blue skies, so it felt like the perfect day to relax by the water, talking and sharing stories, sitting low to the ground to keep away from the cool wind once we reached Breydon Water. Mark had selected a text by P H Emerson written around 1890 on the stories from the area. We each read a short passage against the watery backdrop, recorded by Mark. After basking in the sun, chatting and taking some photos, we walked back into town for lunch.
Reviewing & recording
Screening of Sara reading P H Emerson (image credit Genevieve Rudd)
In the afternoon, we had a screening of the group’s reading Mark had recorded on location, which audiences will be able to see at our exhibition in May and June Thanks to our project assistant Moyses Gomes for translating extracts of the text into Portuguese too. Once we’d all been embarrassed by seeing ourselves on the big screen (!) Mark had a final activity to bring our conversations, walking and experiences from the day together. We thought about the lines found at Breydon Water – horizon, jetty, posts, clouds – and created a long collaborative monochrome drawing. The page was populated with words extracted from the P H Emerson text, some of which are now lost in history. Some of our multilingual group members also translated selected words to add into the drawing, alongside line drawings in graphite and charcoal.
It was a relaxed and sunny day, filled with conversations and images from the past and present. Our group members had lots of positive things to say about the session:
“The photos of the areas at the beginning were essential and a good opener to the walk and observation in the nature”
“Quite relaxing and pleasant I’d say. Photography is not one of my skills, but I enjoyed meeting you guys”
“I really enjoyed unexplored areas of Great Yarmouth”
Events coming sooN!
Find out details of our upcoming events below. If you would like to stay informed of all of the latest information about these events, then you can sign up to our newsletter. Our first update will be going out in a couple of weeks time.
EXHIBITION – WEDNESDAY 19TH MAY TO SUNDAY 20TH JUNE 2021
PRIMEYARC, Market Gates Shopping Centre, Great Yarmouth, NR30 2BG | Open daily: Monday-Saturday 12pm to 5:30pm + Sunday 12pm-4:30pm
Exploring the Cemetery with Georgie Manly (image credit_Moyses Gomes)
In our first session when asked where the group would visit to experience nature around town, the most popular answer was Great Yarmouth Cemetery. Therefore it made sense to make the Cemetery our walk destination for our second session guided by guest artist Georgie Manly.
EXPLORING & OBSERVING
Drawing in the Cemetery (image credit_Moyses Gomes)
We headed out from our meeting place in Market Gates Shopping Centre, through the market and towards the Minster. The walk was filled with the sound of alarms, sirens and dogs barking, so reaching the Minster and Cemetery grounds felt especially peaceful. After swapping facts about the history of the building, we explored the space individually with some prompts from Georgie. She suggested we focus on a plant to create a study with words and sketches, from observations, memories and stories or facts we already knew about it we welcomed into the mix.
After some initial sketching, we moved into the Old Cemetery, past a gathering of seagulls and pigeons fighting over bread crumbs and into the windy tree lined space. We then created a second plant study in this wilder location. Many of the group members were drawn in by the gnarled trees, pretty Spring primroses and rambling ivy vines. One of our participants shared a beautiful poem she had written in Portuguese, which she translated to the group in English. She spoke about the connection between humans and plants, and how we share so much in our life cycles, and Georgie suggested that the graveyard environment can often inspire deep reflections on life.
To round off our time at the Cemetery, we had a go at drawing with scissors, cutting shapes from coloured paper inspired by our plants studies, which we then embedded into the landscape. For me, this felt like the most magical part of the day. The group was tentative at first and we spoke about what a strange thing it was to do. However, after a little while, we had soon curated a pop-up exhibition of colourful shapes, and included papier mache recycled vessels one of our group members brought along to show us. The whole arrangement was made even more surreal by the dead rat laying face up under the tree nearby, but it was fun and lively because of its spontaneousness and playful energy in what could’ve been a solemn space if it wasn’t for the Spring plants bursting into life around us.
After carefully removing our paper shapes and making sure the location was left how we found it, we went back for a spot of lunch from the market. We reviewed our morning walk and created a new arrangement using the things we had made, drawn and found in the Cemetery. Georgie is very good at gently encouraging creative engagement and the group soon curated another arrangement, this one even more beautifully odd and eclectic than the last! We took part in large scale still-life drawing with charcoal and coloured ink to finish off our day, with some slow looking, quick 1 minute sketching and added collaged elements of our drawn shapes.
Still-life drawing and found object arrangement with Georgie Manly (image credit_Moyses Gomes)
It was brilliant to work with Georgie and see how her influence sparked fresh creativity with the Yarmouth Springs Eternal community group. I think the final charcoal collaged drawings show the free and playful energy she brought out from the group.
Look out for Georgie’s creative prompts and ideas, alongside our other guest artists, in the Yarmouth Springs Eternal creative resource booklet, which will launch at the Summer Solstice. It will be filled with ways to engage with the outdoors and natural world, inspired by the community events this Spring. You can also see all of the artwork produced by the community group in our exhibition at PRIMEYARC, Market Gates Shopping Centre in Great Yarmouth from 19th May to 20th June. You can find out more about the exhibition by visiting the Norfolk & Norwich Festival website.
Out and about
Here are some other places you can find the project:
Washing a cyanotype print (image credit_ Moyses Gomes)
the first steps…
After 8 months of planning, we put one foot in front of the other, and set out on our first community walk/workshop this Spring. To make this first step – in partnership with originalprojects; – there has been many months of behind-the-scenes fundraising, risk assessment reviewing and some rescheduling. Throughout the project, we will be working in collaboration between 13 artists or arts & support practitioners, 2 community audience partners and 5 funders. At the best of times, this is quite an undertaking, but in the context of the last few months I’ve certainly had a few sleepless nights! Yarmouth Springs Eternal was born out of hope and a desire to support people in Great Yarmouth, and beyond, to nurture their personal relationships with the nature found around them, and within them.
For the first session, ably supported by our excellent Project Assistant Moyses Gomes, in my welcoming introduction I shared how this project is a response to the harshness and isolation experienced in the past year, both informed by personal experiences and wider collective experiences of inequality. I shared how the simplicity of putting one foot in front of the other, when everything else feels out of control, has been my own coping mechanism during this period. And that walking, sometimes slowly over relatively short distances, would be our approach to connecting with the natural world however it presents to us during this project.
We began our first session with a question: ‘where would you go in Great Yarmouth to experience nature?’. This question developed from the EarthWalks training attended by the project artists, as we wanted to work from the participants’ own perspectives of local locations. There were some shared favourite places, such as Great Yarmouth cemetery and the beach. Some of the places suggested were described as having restorative effects, such as giving the individual a sense of ‘peace’, ‘tranquillity’ and space to be ‘alone with one’s thoughts’. These answers will inform the upcoming walks led by our visiting artists this Spring, as a way to get to know each other through personal relationships with a particular place, and to grow new memories together.
We started our walk from our base at PRIMEYARC in Market Gates Shopping Centre, which is far from a calming place, with its artificial light and constant too-loud background music. Within the Centre, looking for nature was a challenge, but not completely barren. We saw plants on sale in shops, a slither of (grey) sky in the skylight spattered with bird mess, and a spider making webs above our heads. Even when we stepped outside, we had to hunt to discover as we took in the perimeter of the shopping centre on foot. Looking really low and high uncovered self-seeded plants in obscure places, and collectively we discovered the site of a Medieval gate squeezed between Poundstretcher and the closed down Taco Bell. It was the tuft of shrub that drew us in and the small plaque that gave us context.
Slowly and carefully with lots of drawing and talking stops, we ambled past KFC, where a buddleja shrub grew up high from the guttering by the bins. More and more tufts of green burst out as we crossed over to St George’s Park where we were guaranteed trees, flowers, birds and plantlife. The hundreds of daffodils gave us the colour we craved on a grey day. As we stopped at the war memorial, on which one of our group member’s relatives are named, a blue tit dashed onto the sign and quickly went again. All around us, the sound of seagulls squawking. Earlier in our introduction, one of our group members said St George’s Park was a place filled with significant memories from them and a place to reflect, so we made our way to his bench, noting and drawing all the living things as we went along.
Spring bulbs in St George’s Park (image credit_ Moyses Gomes)
After our short circular drift around town, we stopped for lunch. In the afternoon, we turned the morning’s thoughts into photography negatives, using acetate sheets and marker pens, and prepared some cyanotype paper. Cyanotype photography is a technique I use often in my own arts practice and a method the group hadn’t experienced before, so it was exciting to share the magic. I was cautiously setting expectations when we set-up our pop-up studio at St George’s Park: ‘it’s a grey day’, ‘I don’t think I got the ratio of chemical right’, ‘we can always use these as collage materials next week!’. And, as I was worrying, the sun didn’t quite break through the clouds, but it glowed noticeably stronger and the chemical reaction between iron salt and UV happened. The group were really pleased with their hand-drawn and found object prints, and were excited to witness the process happen before their eyes, and so was I.
As a reflective practitioner, I welcome feedback from the groups I collaborate with, asking: what worked? What didn’t? What shall we do more or less of next time? Therefore, to close the session, I invited the group to scribble down their thoughts on how the session went from their perspective.
After we said our goodbyes, one of our group members said she was initially unsure whether to come as she wanted to catch up on sleep, but she was very glad she made the effort as she loved the day, which made my day to hear! As Moyses and I cleaned and sorted the workshop materials after the group had left, we had big smiles on our faces (behind the masks and visors) when we read the unanimously positive anonymous feedback from the group. I came away feeling so uplifted and excited to see where the sessions would take us next time.
“I enjoyed everything; being amongst nature”
“Time went quickly”
“I enjoyed the activities and the environment”
“I feel like I achieved and created”
“I am so happy I learned something new. It enriched me today”
Cyanotype print developing in St George’s Park (Image credit_Moyses Gomes)
Russell washing a cyanotype print (Image credit_Moyses Gomes)
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