Cycling Post To The Coast Art Trail

I picked a sunny day to cycle Post To The Coast art trail. An evolving heritage project by Creative Waves Community Arts, this year-long coastal trail covers a 6 mile route starting at Worthing Lido's traditional English seaside sweet shop and ends at the corrugated steel Nissen Hut at Shoreham Fort. The trail shows artwork, seaside memories and poems inspired by postcards featuring the Sussex coastline.

Having taken part in early research workshops for the project investigating historical postcards at Worthing Museum, and subsequent art workshops at Shoreham Fort, I was keen to experience the whole trail. A bright sunny day with a westerly wind blowing towards Shoreham made cycling an ideal way to cover the entire route. Proceeding at a leisurely pace on my upright trusty Dawes bike and stopping to look and think along the way, it took me 2 hours to complete the trail.

I'd looked at the interactive trail map before setting off, so had an idea where the artwork would be, but still found it exciting each time I saw a new piece of art or an information post containing a story or a bygone holiday memory. The section along Lancing seafront from Beach Green to Widewater Lagoon is superb, with artwork hung along the slatted wooden walls defining the beach. This is a perfect place to view art and contemplate the history of the area with ever changing skies and sea as a backdrop – an invigorating experience for the senses.

I was thrilled to discover my own drawn postcard (above) installed on a weathered wooden wall alongside the beach huts at the end of Lancing Beach Green. Another personal highlight was at Shoreham Beach's Old Fort Road where a row of painted wooden postcards hang along a fence outside a corner house (on Ferry Road). These 19 simple, beautiful images are reminiscent of Alfred Wallis and were made by students at Shoreham Academy - a must see.

Finally arriving at Shoreham Fort I found artwork hung on the side of the wooden postbox and in the rear windows of the Nissen Hut, where my drawings are also on display alongside some poignant pieces made by fellow artists at the Creative Waves Wednesday Fort workshops. 

Post To The Coast trail will continue to grow throughout the year and visitors are invited to share their own Sussex seaside memories and contribute postcard artwork. Free trail maps and postcards are available along the route (and at Worthing Museum), and information on how to take part can be found at Creative Waves.

Beach House Park Bug Hotel

Yesterday we helped build a bug hotel in Worthing's Beach House Park as part of the BugCycle project run by new community organisation Worthing Wildlife in partnership with established community arts group Creative Waves and Sussex Wildlife Trust. BugCycle aims to promote wildlife and encourage biodiversity through creating new habitats for wildlife in this much loved Worthing park.

On a drizzly Sunday afternoon we joined a group of hardy locals of all ages to build the first Beach House Bug Hotel. A bug hotel (wildlife stack or mini-beast mansion) is a man-made shelter for insects made from recycled materials which mimics natural habitats by creating lots of small spaces, nooks and crevices of different sizes for insects to nest in. 

We used old pallets, bricks, rotting bark, tufts of moss, dead leaves, stones, broken pottery, branches with holes drilled in and hollow bamboo canes to create an ideal environment for insects. Our bug hotel will attract a wide variety of invertebrates including; solitary bees, woodlice, woodlice spiders, earwigs, ladybirds, beetle larvae, funnel web spiders and centipedes.

   On walking home through the park later that day my daughter spotted a bee leaving the hotel. It's heartening to discover it's inhabited already!

In other news: the first buds have appeared on the BugCycle willow dome we helped build last month. What a joy to see growth and new life in this corner of the park.

Building a Living Willow Dome

The first few days of February's half term holiday were spent helping to build a living willow dome in Worthing's Beach House Park. This family-friendly project was part of BugCycle an initiative run by community arts organisation Creative Waves in partnership with Worthing Wildlife. BugCycle aims to bring wildlife, planting, crafts and colour to an underused space in this beautiful park.

Willow crafting team extraordinaire Ganesh and Elaine of Creative Willow led the construction of the dome and taught us how to make bird feeders, stars and living willow pencils. Children were encouraged to decorate the area with chalked drawings and crafts. Happily the BugCycle team provided hot drinks and biscuits which nicely took the edge off the winter chill as our kids were having too much fun to want to leave!  

Beach House Park is a place I walk through every day – with tree lined paths and herbaceous borders it's a haven for birds and wildlife as well as the site for Nancy Price's Pigeon War Memorial. For years the park was famously home to the Bowls England National Championships, an event that packed out the park every summer. Controversially this flagship tournament moved to Leamington Spa last year amid local mutterings that Worthing Council should have done more to hold onto what had been an acclaimed and lucrative event for our town for over 40 years. The loss of the tournament (and revenue) has already signalled changes in the park with the vast, colourful flower beds that ran through the central avenue being dug out and replaced by large green tubs of low maintenance shrubs. While these are still pretty they're not a patch on the spectacular floral displays that greeted visitors to the park during the Bowls Championship years.

BugCycle hopes to breathe life into neglected areas of Beach House Park again and I'm sure will help attract many new visitors – human as well as insect! I look forward to seeing the project grow, especially the living willow dome.

Save Worthing Skyline!

Property developer Roffey Homes intend to build a 21 storey high-rise apartment block close to the promenade on Worthing beach. Yesterday I joined the Save our Seafront protest to voice my opposition to these disproportionate plans for a sight previously bequeathed to the town's people for leisure use.

For two hours two dozen locals braved the cold weather to hand out fliers to passers by, collect signatures for the petition, hoist banners and raise awareness for this just cause. Every supportive beep from passing motorists, bus, lorry and van drivers was met with a cheer!

Roffey's proposed skyscraper is an ersatz, unimaginative design that would exceed the height of all buildings in Brighton Road and along the seafront. It would ruin the seafront skyline and herald the destruction of what is historically an elegant seaside resort. Over a thousand people have signed a petition indicating they don't want it to go ahead and I hope that Worthing Council will consider our views and veto Roffey's plans.

I urge all readers of my blog to sign our petition to Save Worthing Seafront. You don't have to be a local resident to sign – you are all potential visitors to Worthing!

For more information visit Save Our Seafront Worthing. Sign the petition here.

Teville Gate in the Summertime

Teville Gate is one of the great mysteries of Worthing. A vast derelict space right in the centre of town, it's the first sight you see when arriving from Worthing's central train station. No one can fathom why this huge prime piece of real estate full of potential has remained empty for so long. Our Conservative council still seem to favour it being turned into some sort of money-spinning entertainment multiplex experience, though one of these proposed schemes fell through and the current firm appointed by them have failed to raise the £150 million capital needed to fund the colossal twin-tower design hotel, conference centre, 9 screen multiplex cinema, 86,000 square foot supermarket and parking space for 967 cars that the council would dearly love to see. Perhaps just as well, it sounds ghastly!

I think it's a shame this site wasn't considered for the new secondary school our town needs. The as yet un-named Secondary Academy is currently being built in Broadwater, an area already congested with traffic to the north of Worthing, some 20 minutes walk from the railway station. A central Worthing location for the new secondary school would have much better suited the needs of more members of the community, bringing life and learning into a massive empty, neglected space; and it would be an environmentally friendly initiative, being a location much better served by public transport. The council could have looked into funding an educational centre of excellence right in the centre of town instead of building another entertainment and shopping complex with enormous car park. We already have two large supermarkets with car parks within walking distance of Teville Gate, four cinema screens and plenty more empty car parks in the town centre. Enough already!

However, the current sponsors have just pulled out of the Secondary Academy with concerns about the Broadwater site being unsuitable so at this rate we'll be lucky if the new school gets built at all, let alone by 2015. Meantime, nature is making moves to reclaim Teville Gate herself. In another year or so it'll be ready to enter Worthing In Bloom.

The Just Cause: taking part in Worthing Community Play

On Saturday I'll be donning my homemade Victorian outfit, tying a bonnet tightly under my chin and fixing my face with a stern glare to join a cast of some 200 fishwives, seafarers, schoolchildren, choirs, temperance campaigners, down and outs, church folk and gentry as we re-enact scenes from 1880s Worthing.

It's been a long journey to reach this point, two years in the making for the creative team behind Worthing's Community Play The Just Cause and a good eight months of workshops and rehearsing for the cast. I'm a relative newcomer to the production having just joined in February – actually I had only intended to watch my child's rehearsals but soon found myself one of Worthing Working Women's Temperance League...

A highlight of taking part in the play has been singing Sussex folk songs every week at rehearsal and around the house at home with my daughter in our best Sussex accents surelye, our favourite tunes being Fathom The Bowl and The Sussex Wedding Song. It's also been fascinating finding out about the lives of ordinary people in Victorian Worthing and illuminating learning about the hardship and struggles faced by the working class women who were moved to campaign for temperance with hope of improving lives plagued by poverty and domestic abuse from alcoholic husbands. The Temperance League was especially popular amongst the female brick layers in Worthing. I hope we do them justice with our performance.

Most of all I've enjoyed the experience of feeling a part of the community of Worthing and getting to work with such a splendid motley crew of townsfolk - we've had many laughs and much fun along the way. We wunt be druv!

 

The Just Cause takes place at Christ Church, Worthing on 14th, 21st and 28th June 2014. All tickets have now been snapped up for all three performances. However, there will be a queue for non-ticket holders at each show with priority entry given to people dressed in Victorian costume. Visit Worthing Community Play or follow us on twitter.

Along the banks of the River Adur

Last Wednesday was the gloomiest, chilliest day of May's half-term holiday but that didn't stop us wrapping up warm and going for a walk along the banks of River Adur with good friends and their adorable schnauzer puppy.

We sipped take-away coffee and ate pastries bought at Shoreham's Real Patisserie while our children romped, climbed and swung in a windswept playground overlooking the river. 

Our walk took us under the steel railway bridge to Shoreham's Art Deco Airport – once known as Brighton Hove & Worthing Joint Municipal Airport and recently renamed Brighton City Airport. 

The Grade II listed terminal building has expanded into a huge (dog friendly) restaurant inside while the outside is held up by scaffolding with rusting walls of peeling paint. It has noticeably deteriorated since I last visited a few years ago and this splendid building is crying out for some love and care.

It seemed too windy for any planes to take off so we continued our walk through a boggy field and alongside the colourful houseboats on Shoreham Beach, taking in another playground before walking back across Adur Ferry Bridge.

Seeking Occupants of Interplanetary Craft at Earthship Brighton

It's been a beautiful sunny week in Sussex, a fine start to the school holidays and a complete contrast to last year's bitter Easter holiday weather. On Wednesday we travelled by train to Stanmer Park, a nature reserve with open downland and woods on the edge of Brighton. Our event horizon was Earthship Brighton a sustainable 'green' building constructed using waste car tyres, wine bottles and recycled materials. It's the first Earthship to be built in England and has been designed to provide its own heat, electricity, water and food. Our walk there took us through wide open spaces, blossom heavy orchards and through the grounds of Stanmer Manor where we stopped for a picnic. Continuing uphill we passed allotments, a forest of roughly carved wooden faces (with eyes that followed us) and getting warmer, reached Stanmer Community Farm.

The Earthship was closed but we explored the outside of this intriguing building and its grounds which resemble a glorious eco-friendly Teletubby Land. Heading back downhill we sensibly took a detour to Stanmer Park Tearooms and refuelled with tea and cake before hiking back to Falmer Station.