This weekend a group of pilgrims have arrived at St Mary’s Cathedral in Palmerston Place with the 500 Beach of Dreams flags created after the 35 day walking project.
Ali Pretty joined the Pilgrimage for COP26 with the batik silk flags at Portobello where they were planted in the sand on Thursday.
The flags were then walked to St Mary’s Cathedral and will be walked all the way to Glasgow beginning on Monday morning from Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop.
Meantime the flags are resting in the Cathedral and will be on display in the Cathedral garden on Sunday morning.
Ali Pretty said: “Beach of Dreams was a 500 mile walk along the east coast of England, and it was also in response to the climate emergency. We invited 500 people to walk during lockdown on their bit of coastline and to take a photograph – a close up photograph of their favourite bit on their favourite mile. And then they did a bit of writing about what connected them to that mile, and about what their hopes or fears and dreams were for their great, great, great grandchildren.
“What would be still left at the coastline in another century’s time. Those designs an as d writing were sent to our studios in Thurrock where we have a team of artists and we translated those designs into these batik silk pennants.”
The purpose of Beach of Dreams was to explore how we can take care of the environment, take care of the coast, take care of the community and ourselves, and the project’s ambition is that this conversation is adopted across the country and further afield.
More information on Beach of Dreams here
Listen to the episode of our podcast which we recorded with Ali Pretty in St Mary’s Cathedral on Friday afternoon:
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
