—
Animating Morecambe town centre with a day of free art workshops for everyone
—
Date:
July 2016 & 2018
Location:
Victoria Street, Morecambe
Client:
Self Initiated, In Association with Portas Town Team
Audience Figure:
3000
Photography:
Bean Photo
Festival Challenge:
During 2016, the local authority completed extensive work to the local public realm. We wanted to show that the central town centre now had the opportunity to become a brilliant space for pop up festivals and it was our job to animate it successfully to make it shine as a festival site for the community.
Victoria Street Press is a street art initiative commissioned by the Portas Pilot Town Team in response to a Government Report by retail expert Mary Portas. Deco Publique were asked to create a range of artworks on Victoria Street that reflect heritage stories about Morecambe and enhance the sense of place.
Victoria Street Press was produced over a period of 18 months and culminated in Street pARTy - a cultural celebration of positive change in Morecambe with a day of high quality, completely free art experiences in the centre of town.
The area surrounding Victoria Street is a key retail space for the town that can benefit from greater creative programming. Street PARTy party saw a huge increase in footfall for the area, with three times the predicted number of people taking part in the free workshops and a total attendance of over 3,000 - four times our predicted number.
In 2018 we held the event for the second time with free art workshops programmed through the day.
Project Areas
Research | Creative Direction | Programming | Project Management | Festival Direction | Budget Control | Operations | Design, Marketing & PR Direction
Workshops were created to reflect the artworks that line Victoria Street and provided an opportunity for the community to work with artists and craftspeople to make sailor hats, tattoo badges and mosaics to take away. In this particularly low engagement area for arts participation, families took part in workshops together, creating pavement art, learning circus skills and contributing stories to a gigantic newspaper - fostering community ownership, creating sense of place and increasing civic pride.
Workshop Artists and Organisations
Carne & Co | Ruth Bridges and Harriet Lawson, XplusYEquals | Beki Melrose, The Exchange Creative Community | Kate Drummond | Morecambe Artist Colony | Ragtag Arts | Rocket 01 |Faunagraphic |
Street pARTy was funded by Arts Council England, Morecambe Town Council and kindly sponsored by Arndale Morecambe Bay
With special thanks to The Portas Town Team for investing in and supporting the project