Hosted by Ali Pretty, walking artist, community activist and founding artistic director of the 2025 Beach of Dreams coastal art festival that will bring a festival of banner art, sculpture, performance and storytelling to the coastline of Britain. She invites you to discover the works of three textile artists who will be contributing to the Beach of Dreams.

In this café we wish to explore the connection in weaving together threads, some of which are from waste materials to re-imagine the future of our coastlines, specifically to ask ask What Does Our Waste Tell? and to think carefully about the materials we use, in everyday life and in our choice of fashion.

Rachna Toshniwal will be introducing Weaving Interconnections a community art project conceived as a large-scale tapestry installation woven using waste materials collected along the coastline of Saraal beach, Alibaug, India.

Elspeth ‘Billie’ Penfold is working with adults with learning disabilities from East Kent Mencap weaving, poetry reading and walking on a project called Weave and Read around Herne Bay, UK to coincide with Beach of Dreams.

Rahemur ‘Ray’ Rahman has been commissioned to embroider together of 500 Beach of Dreams Silks, damaged in storms along the South Coast in 2023. In this ambitious project, Ray is collaborating closely with eight sewing groups based along the Thames Estuary, including the Whitechapel Sewing Group Inspire and resident Kinetika Studios sewing group, Kite Spirit.