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Estuary 2021
From Pitsea and Tilbury to Margate and Herne Bay, Estuary celebrates the spectacular creative power and historical resonances of the tidal Thames’ landscape and culture.
The project
The festival’s second iteration, Estuary 2021, featured artworks set in the landscape, online and within Covid-safe venues. It explored contemporary concerns including climate justice, protest and rebellion, imperial legacies and the rich, often overlooked stories of its diverse communities.
The brief
Uniting outdoor and physical place-making creative work with purely online activity, the brief was to ensure consistency, ease of access, and the ability for the festival to reach new audiences with a breadth of important stories. With a programme including a blend of live and recorded video and audio works, it was crucial that digital platforms facilitated discussion, participation, and accessibility under Covid-19 restrictions.
The solution
Working with festival partners Cement Fields and Metal, we worked remotely with artists in the region to record their work, before uploading it and curating the digital space prior to the festival’s launch. We included a variety of access measures, including captioning all pre-recorded work.
Live remote panel discussions were also programmed, for which we provided live mixing of remote contributors with pre-recorded video and live audience Q&A. The outcome was a series of seamless hour-long programmes broadcast on the festival website.