Local community arts organisation Compass Arts has launched a themed art trail in Eastbourne seafront hotels, along with an exhibition in the town’s Beacon shopping centre.
This semi-annual art trail sees works by local artists is being hosted within seafront hotels. These include The Hydro, Lansdowne, The View, Cavendish, Cumberland, York, and East Beach. Running until September, the theme is ‘Water’; the opening coinciding with Eastbourne’s Plastic Free, Spring Water Festival.
The aim of Promenade is to support the arts and promote the town’s coastline, bars and café-life. It will also celebrate the inclusivity and diversity of Eastbourne.
It is presented in partnership with Eastbourne Alive – an ambitious creative community programme for Eastbourne which marks the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of the Turner Prize 2023 coming the local Towner gallery. This aims to be the catalyst for lasting change in Eastbourne. It is working with young people, local cultural organisations, East Sussex Public Health, businesses, and the wider community on a range of public art installations, exclusive schools visits. Also, animating disused shop fronts, teacher training workshops and a wide-reaching work experience programme.
To accompany Promenade, an exhibition of ideas, interpretations, and art forms on the theme of ‘Water’ will be open to the public at Eastbourne’s retail shopping centre until Weds 19 July.
Based in Eastbourne, Compass Arts is an intergenerational, co-creative, artist-led community organisation. It recognises people feel most empowered when given independence, responsibility and are at the ‘giving’ end of care. 12 interdisciplinary artists deliver a weekly program across several sites, free of charge and without any expectation of participants. These artists’ regularly work together on exhibitions and events, and self-publish under the name, Compass Collective. The Collective was formed in response to participants who identify as an artist and wish to develop their practice and have greater public interface.
Compass Arts is currently celebrating its 20th year. The organisation’s Artistic Director, Fenya Sharkey, said: “As with all Compass Art’s work, this exhibition and art trail explores and reveals that “mostly ignored landscape” inhabited by people who find little or no place in the everyday world. Other worlds are possible. We only need to create them. People who live beyond prevailing norms are, strangely and beautifully, at the forefront of that enterprise. The objective is to challenge perceptions around trauma, mental illness, and health inequalities.”
For more information, visit: www.compasscommunityarts.co.uk
