The annual Art Walk Porty celebrates its 10th anniversary this weekend with a focus on the town’s seaside variety entertainment ere and travelling showpeople culture.
Almost 50 venues involving 60 artists spread over four different art walks, will take part in the popular festival over the weekends of 6-7 September and 13-14 September, hosted in a mix of artists’ studios and homes and local shops.
A programme entitled Showground, places an emphasis on Porty’s public spaces, performance and play, with the central strand Arcade including site-specific performances and interactive events embracing a seaside sideshow, acrobatics, puppetry, theatre, dance and film.
Created in partnership with local Nobles Amusements, Arcade involves five artists and collectives with performance and participatory work taking place along the Promenade and beach.
A film programme, Super Slide, curated in collaboration with Moving Images Cinema Caravan, hosts a series of 15 short artist films, and is named after the helter skelter ride once in operation at the much-loved Fun City fairground site.
And Flowering Porty opened on 30 August across 35 front garden locations and community growing spaces which celebrate biodiversity, wildlife and colour around Portobello and Joppa, with visitors asked to vote on the Best Seaside Retro Garden.
Rosy Naylor, Director/Founder of Art Walk Projects, said: “To reach this point of ten years of consistent activity feels like a real milestone. After ten years of multiple projects, many near and afar, this year to bring the focus back to Portobello, to its public spaces as a showground for activity, encounter and engagement, to consider how we use and interact with public space, is about returning to where the idea for this festival first began, and from where we continue to create projects resonating from.”
Writer Tom Jeffreys, added: “In borrowing conventions from circus, theatre and other modes of formal or informal performance, and bringing them into public space, this year’s Art Walk contributes to recalibrating – even if only for a short time – not only how we see the city but how our bodies move in relation to the built environment, dancing new paths or retreating existing ones as we do so.”
For more information visit the Porty Art Walk website – https://www.artwalkporty.co.uk/
