Music, art, installations, activities, films and talks are just some of the offerings in this year’s Ramsgate Festival of Sound.
The eight-day event kicked off yesterday (July 20) and has a packed programme running through to August 27.
Outdoor creations for the festival include Time Flies by artist and creator of the bra-bunting exhibit in Ramsgate four years ago, Ann Munro.
Time Flies has exhibits throughout the town from now until the end of the festival reflecting the passage of time. These include a sand-timer housed in the Customs House Visitors Centre, a huge sundial on the capstan outside the Martime Museum (calibrated to Ramsgate’s time 5 minutes 41 seconds ahead of GMT), a display in Mr Simm’s sweetshop of 60 clocks created by local children and standing figures carrying working clocks in Harbour Street representing the businesses- which you can have your photo taken with.
There are also special clocks in Gold-and-Silver-Mine and Stanley’s jewellers, a ‘cradle to grave’ display in Heaven and Hell, an Alice in Wonderland cake In Crusties bakery, and the Time Machine in the town centre that offers an infinity experience inside and an infinity scarf for those who want to buy one.
An accompanying booklet on sale revealing more about the artwork, and about TIME, including poems and stories by local writers.
To reflect the feeling of time passing for all of us, Ann is supporting two local charities from donations to the installation; Project Motorhouse, which aims to inspire young people to reconnect with their own talents and society in general, and EKIDS (East Kent Independent Dementia Support) a voluntary group which supports and encourages sufferers and their families in activities and social interaction across Thanet.
The cake in Crusties will be raffled for the charities and donations are welcomed.
Also on offer is the Sonic Trail of sound-based artworks in and around Ramsgate
These include Worse Things Happen at Sea at Ramsgate harbour from Mooch.
Theresa Smith is the principal artist at Mooch, a practice specialising in public realm art. The work’s title came from Theresa’s father who was a Navy communications officer. The work will broadcast Morse code from Ramsgate Lighthouse, listing the Harbour’s Latin motto, Perfugium Miseris, plus the names of vessels lost on the Goodwin Sands, scaling the history of lives lost at sea over a lime period from early recorded history to the present day and creating a place to reflect on this extraordinary story.
Also part of the trail is sound artist Emily Peasgood’s Smack Boys work at the Sailor’s Church in Military Road.
The work pays homage to the smack boys of Ramsgate, the child fishing apprentices of fishing smacks. The smack boys were as young as ten years old, and when ashore lived and rested above the Sailor’s Church and later in the Home for Smack Boys next door.
Smack Boys brings the smack boys back to life through sound, voices, games and song, situated within a larger choral work. It is experienced through 11 speakers in and around the Sailor’s Church, and creates the sense of a time we know little about in living memory; a soothing lullaby to the Smack Boys of Ramsgate.