The Role of Culture in Coastal Regeneration
In summer 2023, CHA worked with Dover Arts Development (DAD) to launch a new Dover arts festival. You can reach the world from Dover 2023 was the first event of its kind in the town: a four month-long showcase of art, music, architecture, talks, walks and happenings.
The festival was developed by artists, architects and writers, all of whom have chosen to live and work in Dover and the focus was on showcasing the remarkable things happening in the town already. You can reach the world from Dover was a celebration of Dover at a time when the town’s identity is seen as highly problematic.
We all know that Dover has an incredible history. Its castle and white cliffs are recognised the world over as a historic arrival point to England and the UK. The town hosts sites of huge archaeological importance such as the Roman Painted House and it contains numerous architectural gems from the medieval Maison Dieu to the seaside regency pomp of Waterloo Crescent.
It was a festival about Dover, but it was also a project demonstrating how culture can enrich a place and help drive positive change.
But, the ferries that continually ply their way in and out of the eastern docks and the lorries that drive on and off in long snaking lines offer another kind of spectacle and a contemporary sense that Dover is still profoundly connected to the rest of the world. Dover is a gateway, a place of arrivals and departures celebrated in literature, film and music. It is also a place where people live and work and this can sometimes be forgotten.
Contemporary Dover can also feel a little beleaguered, the poster child of lorry parks, passport queues and the national psychodrama of Brexit. Politicians use it as a photo opportunity to mouth tough sounding soundbites about small boat arrivals. And it has some undeniable problems. The docks and lorries dominate the town, cutting it off from the seafront. The high street features empty shop fronts and it contains some of the poorest wards in the country.
You can reach the world from Dover 2023 didn’t flinch from these facts but neither did it fall prey to them. Instead, it celebrated the town in all is complexity. Performances took place in spaces and buildings normally kept under lock and key. Exhibitions were sited not in neutral gallery spaces but in places pregnant with meaning and relevance to the town. A programme of walks ranged across the town and its surrounding landscape, exploring its forgotten edges, its rich geology and its history of political radicalism.
Visitors and residents of Dover were also invited to take part in various ‘happenings’, a programme of interactive art events occurring throughout the summer. Every Sunday offered a walk exploring some, possibly neglected, aspect of the town and its surrounding landscape. These ranged from an exploration of the butterflies and birds on the North Downs, the geology of the white cliffs that once joined England to France, the River Dour chalk stream and the twentieth century archaeology of defensive installations and cold-war radar stations.
All these works and activities drew on the vibrancy of contemporary Dover. They also formed connections, reaching beyond the town to communicate with the wider world.
You can reach the world from Dover 2023 was a festival about Dover. But it was also a project demonstrating how culture can enrich a place and help drive positive change.
The town’s historic Market Square was transformed into a catwalk for an extraordinary fashion show with local residents modelling clothes developed in a series of artist-led workshops. Nearby, on Castle Street, another fashion-based event popped up in the form of a series of huge portraits of local residents wearing white suits designed by tailoring company POKIT.
All these works and activities drew on the vibrancy of contemporary Dover. They also formed connections, reaching beyond the town to communicate with the wider world. This world-facing aspect was most evident on Dover’s seafront. At Clocktower Square on the new Marina Curve, CHA realised a colourful temporary lighthouse. Formed from scaffolding and printed fabric, the structure lit up at night and formed a symbolic beacon as well as a literal meeting point for festival events.
You can reach the world from Dover 2023 was a festival about Dover. But it was also a project demonstrating how culture can enrich a place and help drive positive change. It is part of a story about coastal regeneration, but it is not the usual one about gentrification. It was specifically about Dover, the people who live there and the kind of town they want to live in. It didn’t solve all the obvious problems but it offered ideas – hundreds of them, in fact – about how these problems could be addressed through the strategic deployment of art and culture. The festival can be seen as a blueprint for a Cultural Strategy, a key piece of local policy that CHA are now working on with Dover District Council.
Texts and ideas by Charles Holland.