Listening to Lidos: Cliftonville 2016

Critical Kent introduces ‘Listening to Lidos: Cliftonville 2016’, text by Ben Hickman (Kent School of English) and music by No More (previously of Kent Law School), designed as a soundscape for use when walking around the evocative, desolate site of the Cliftonville Lido, Margate. Best experienced in early morning or just before sunset, the lido is a very short walk around the headland from The Turner Gallery. Download, for free, here.

 

Notes about the history of the site are available here, with thanks to Anne Bottomley, Phil Hubbard and Tim Brittain-Caitlin. Ben’s poem is here. The project was initially inspired by the journey and site visits undertaken as part of ‘The Topographies Project: Beaches’ symposium, in September 2015, which included as field trip along the North Thanet coast, including a visit to the lido.

Chilham on Screen: A One-Day Festival

Lavinia Brydon (School of Arts) is launching an exciting new project to explore questions of location filming in the region. Working with Lisa Stead (Exeter), the project kicks off with the Chilham On Screen festival – a day of fun activities that seeks to understand the impact of location filming in the village.

The free open event will focus on sharing and exploring the memories and experiences of community members, young and old, who have seen film crews transform their homes and streets for some 70 years. Since Powell and Pressburger filmed their iconic A Canterbury Tale within the village, Chilham has hosted a wide variety of filmmakers and television crews, providing a backdrop for Jane Austin adaptations and playing host to TV shows such as Top Gear, Poirot and Miss Marple.

The day-long event, hosted at the village hall, will feature exhibition stands, film clips, a DIY location map, a children’s table and more, and tea and cake will be served throughout. The organisers are keen to record people’s memories and anecdotes from having a home or business turned into a film set, and encourage locals to bring along any photographs, autographs, newspaper clippings and other memorabilia that they may have gathered over the years. The project hopes to create a new resource for the community, charting people’s experience of the village through its screen histories.

If you have memories to share, or a passion for film – come along and join in!

Poster – CoS

Monday Beaches Symposium Schedule

10.00-12.30 Two Beaches, One Case: Questions of Access, Property and Rights.

A discussion investigating the impact (on such cases as Whitstable) and the reasoning of the judgment in R (on the application of Newhaven Port and Properties Ltd) v East Sussex County Council and another [2015] UKSC 7.

Contributions from: Donald McGillivary (Sussex), Elaine Sherrat (KLS Law Clinic Solicitor) and Geoffery Samuel (KLS). (whitstablebeachcampaign.org)

Chair: Phil Hubbard (UKC).

12.30-13.30 Lunch, with film (by Simon Robinson) projected in seminar room.

13.30-14.30 Contested Thresholds.

David Herd (UKC) ‘The View from Dover (https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/view-dover).

Mark Vacher (Copenhagen) ‘Broen//Bron – How a Dead Body can form a Region.’

Chair: Harley Ronan (Brussels/4 Cities).

14.30-15.50 Sensual (and other) Pleasures.

Pau Obrador Pons (Sutherland) ‘Placing Touch on the Beach.’

Victoria Brooks (Westminster) ‘Entanglements and Folds.’

Lavinia Brydon (UKC) ‘The People’s Pier Project.’

Chair: Lucy Finchett-Maddock (Sussex)

Break 20 mins.

16.10-17.30 Topographical Features.

Rupert Griffiths and Lai Wei ‘Engaging with topographies and traces’. (https://publicarchaeology2015.wordpress.com/lia-wei-rupert-griffiths/ and www.fragmentedcity.net/)

Patrizia Muscogiuri (Salford) ‘The Shore of the Wor(l)d. Liminality and Agency in Virginia Woolf’. (http://salford.academia.edu/PatriziaMuscogiuri)

Nathan Moore (BBK) ‘The Limit’.

Chair: Anne Bottomley (KLS).

17.30-18.00 Final discussion (Facilitated by Anne Bottomley and Ben Hickman).

18.15 Walk along Tankerton Beach.

19.00 Dinner. 

20.00 Evening Performances with Rod Edmond, Claudia Molitor and Patricia Debney.

London St Pancras to Margate train journey inspires art work

Informed by trains, journeying and the disconnect between looking at the passing landscape and hearing only the interior sounds of the carriage, the work by composer/artist Claudia Molitor – titled Sonorama  – is described as ‘filling the gap between the visual and sonic realities of train travel’.

Imagining the journey as the ‘score’, Claudia Molitor’s  cycle of works, collected interviews, readings and British Library archive material respond to the social history of the route. The tracks cover topics as diverse as visio-centricity, Roman history and hop-picking – all relating to a different point or area between London St Pancras and Margate.

The App, which features contributions from flautist Jan Hendrickse, poet Lemn Sissay, saxophonist Evan Parker and writer Charlotte Higgins, will be free to download at the App store from 19 June – 30 September 2015.

Claudia Molitor lectures at the University’s School of Music and Fine Art.

Critical Kent

This is the website of the Critical Kent project at the University of Kent, an initiative bringing together researchers from all disciplines investigating aspects of Kent. Here you will find ongoing and archived research and updates on upcoming events related to Critical Kent, the Topographies Project and Reanimating England.