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 conjunction with, the World Trails Network, for which Ali is Chair of the Art & Cultural Committee, and the 2025 Beach of Dreams coastal festival, for which she is the creative driving force, this café will appeal to trail enthusiasts and walking artists.
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. She writes: “By design, this project is about inclusivity and engagement – weaving (quite literally) our connection with the lived environment (nature, people, garbage) into a tapestry – bringing together the many threads that intersect within an ecosystem of a local shoreline; with the ultimate goal of using art to sensitize, initiate and activate change in response to the ecological crises we find ourselves in today.”
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.
| Video recording of Threads of Tomorrow |
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When Craft becomes Art
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 asks “when does craft become art?“, and to this café has invited Taiwan Thousand Mile Trail
Threads for Tomorrow – a café hosted by Ali Pretty
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.
Walking with Ghosts
We were delighted to connect with Thread and Word and work with Elspeth Penfold throughout the process. Through the walkshops, the expression and exploration of war became foregrounded . The walkshops also took us beyond the immediate vicinity of Folkestone and the last hundred years. Through engaging with poetry and art from global cultures, we reflected on the impact and experience of war across time, space and culture. This global perspective connected what was a site-specific artwork to a global story.