Free-to-see artworks and activities include virtual reality, streamed performances, animation, projection, and sound

Following a successful debut in 2020, Electric Medway returns this summer with an ambitious 10-day arts programme held in a variety of locations, with free-to-see artworks and activities including virtual reality, streamed performances, animation, projection, and sound.

Electric Medway is produced by the Chatham-based arts organisation, SparkedEcho, which produces digital and site-specific work, using technology, music, and art in local communities. It is also a Creative Estuary Co-commission – the initiative which aims to showcase 60 miles of the North Kent and South Essex region as one of the UK’s most dynamic and creative areas in the whole of the UK.

The central theme for this year’s festival is Synchronised, with commissioned artists making brand new digital work that explores how people create order in their lives during times of chaos – something many of us can relate to at the current time.

The contributing artists have created pieces that explore repeated rituals, including daily patterns, routines and reprogrammed behaviour. Another strand is collective action, with ideas of shared recovery and a sense of civic duty considered. While the global pandemic has been a central aspect of all our lives, other important issues have also engendered a sense of disrupted reality, such as truth-telling and a wider public awakening to injustice.

At The Spur Battery in Fort Amherst, overlooking Chatham’s Historic Dockyard, visitors to the free-to-visit site can also enjoy MOONSEED. Performed by the Moonseed Collective – AKA long-term collaborators Luke Birch, Anna Braithwaite and Helen Lindon (all based in Kent), with Canadian dance artists Olivia C. Davies and Daisy Thompson – MOONSEED is a dynamic art installation that synchronises simultaneous live performances from around the world with sound and video recordings, to create new rituals dedicated to the moon and its cycles.

In Rochester, an immersive work by fashion designer Kalikas Armour and tech company Cybersaur Arts will be installed in the historic setting of the town’s Masonic Hall, where visitors will encounter an environment and atmosphere of chaotic movement created by 3D design, digital effects, and character model creation. The work explores how, throughout the lockdowns, individuals and communities relied on a variety of rituals to create stability and a sense of emotional tranquility amongst the chaos.

For fans of contemporary dance, Railing by Harriet Parker-Beldeau, with support from Loop Dance Company, will be must-see. A series of films choreographed and shot on three Medway piers responds to the everyday spaces we inhabit. Accessed via a QR code placed on nearby railings, each film can be downloaded onto the viewer’s mobile device.

At INTRA Arts, Chatham, Echo Exchange by British artist Jane Pitt and her Brazilian counterpart Isabel Nogueira, layers virtual, digital, and physical space to create a multi-platform audio visual installation. To begin the process, the two artists from different countries and cultural backgrounds come together as virtual 'sonic pen pals', to experience life from each other's perspective via a series of audio exchanges. Through their dialogue, the pair discover the intersections, patterns, threads, connections, disconnections, and boundaries in a world where we can no longer pretend to be separate.

[[even a stopped clock is right twice a day]] by Ashford’s Sophie Stone and Michèle Saint-Michel from Missouri, is a split-screen installation exploring repeated rituals and routines made during the pandemic. It invites the audience to make a choice - which screen do you look at? This can be seen at The Grand Magazine, Fort Amherst.

To accompany the art installations, Electric Medway also promises several other events and activities. With technology at its core, the festival invites you to charge up your smartphone and follow a Digital Trail of QR codes, showing specially commissioned digital artworks, accessible via mobile devices, electricmedway.co.uk and at selected cafe venues.

Don’t forget to pop into your local library to see if it is hosting a virtual reality (VR) experience. In Gillingham Library there is also an augmented reality (AR) piece by Livi Wilmore.

Importantly for the creative community of North Kent, the festival acts as a showcase for emerging local artists and diverse community groups, including students, Theatre31 and Medway Pride.

For artists interested in tech, Medway Hack is effectively a play space in which to learn, experiment and improve their knowledge and skills with state-of-the-art hardware and software; from live coding and AR, to geolocated sound and music production. Electric Medway will also be hosting a series of live industry discussions and artist talks, with pre-recorded ‘tips n’ tricks’ videos available to download from the festival website.
For creatives - whether up-and-coming or established professionals - there will be chances to network at live events, while also enjoying MOONSEED, plus performances by local bands SKIES, Lunatraktors and Minimus.

Budding filmmakers and cinephiles should head to Sun Pier House in Chatham for True Realities, a sci-fi inspired evening of experimental film and AR from John Vincent, Annis Joslin, Sarah Cole, and Chronic Insanity Theatre. As befits a partnership between the festival, Sun Pier House and Rochester Kino, the event concludes with the screening of the classic Eighties sci-fi movie, TRON.

Kevin Grist, Co-Director of SparkedEcho, is one of the festival’s producers and says: “In between last year’s second and third lockdowns caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, Electric Medway was a fun, uplifting and innovative way to connect with art and the people who make it. This year’s event will again give our incredible artists and people involved in the creative industries an opportunity to make, perform and exhibit new work online and in public spaces. Just like last year, I am delighted that Electric Medway will again support young artists and creatives with paid work opportunities and artist mentoring.”

The Electric Medway installations were co-commissioned between the festival’s organisers SparkedEcho and Creative Estuary, as Chair of Creative Estuary Sarah Dance explains, each installation highlights the breadth of creative skills of people living and working in the region: “The Thames Estuary’s potential to grow as a cultural and creative hub is boundless, and we are committed to supporting local artists and engaging our communities to contribute to their creative identity. In everything we do in the Estuary, we want to capture imagination and provide opportunities, and Electric Medway does just that with a wealth of innovative and creative artworks across a wide variety of locations, reaching potentially thousands of people.”

For more information about Electric Medway, visit www.electricmedway.co.uk, Twitter @electricmedway / Instagram @electricmedway / Facebook @ElectricMedway