Hosted by Ali Pretty, walking artist, community activist and founding artistic director of the 2025 Beach of Dreams Coast 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 Association Secretary Shinlee Hung and internationally-acclaimed sculptor and land artist Julie Brook to discuss with you how their approaches to craft and art overlap.
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.
The Taiwan Thousand Mile Trails Association has developed the Eco-Craft Trail Building programme, through working closely with traditional trail builders who use their human labour and local materials rather than heavy-plant equipment, thereby elevating traditional craft skills that honour the environment, promote a holistic understanding of the local ecology, with limited intrusion and low ecosystem disturbance.
For Beach of Dreams, Julie Brook will be creating “Tideline“, a shoreline sculpture along the mid-tidal mark on the coast of Fife working with the local community to build a linear stone structure that is transient to the weather, and over time will be eroded by the tide. Her working practice honours the environment and responds in a physical way, to its rhythm, and its structure. Responding in a way that also invites a physical interaction. So it’s a work that can be walked on or walked up or walked into. As she says “I am very interested as sculpture to be something that people can really physically interact with, not an object that you stand back and look at, but you engage with with your body.“
