A PLAN to celebrate Thurrock’s culture, arts and heritage is expected to be backed by top councillors at the council cabinet meeting on Wednesday (17 December).
A report to the meeting entitled Thames Estuary Festival outlines plans for a festival this coming summer and a major borough-wide celebration in 2016.
Speaking on Thursday (11 December) when the scheme was made public, Council Leader, Cllr John Kent, said: “A great deal of work has been going on in the background over the past few months.
“We have spoken about the ‘cultural entitlement’ for Thurrock people – and especially the younger generations – for some years now as our relationship with ‘the arts’ becomes ever-more important.
“These two events will be the embodiment of that entitlement; they will give Thurrock people a chance to enjoy and celebrate what’s happening here and they will give us all a chance to shout about Thurrock to the rest of the world.”
The report states: “The potential for the creative sector in the borough is being transformed as partners work together to create new world-class cultural facilities together with a growing creative skills offer.”
And it continues to say that the summer 2015 festival will be created with the Thurrock community, leading to “a larger Festival of the Thames Estuary in 2016, together with a web-based project to raise profile, support audience development, networking and business support for the creative industries”.
The council is working with an organisation called Metal which has already had successes in Southend including the Village Green event which attracted 22,000 visitors.
Cllr Kent said: “We are building on the success of T-Fest over the last few years, but by bringing in Metal, we are learning from the success of the Village Green event as well.
“I’m told the Thurrock event this year could include a wide range of stages – world music and dance, youth and even literature for example – plus performances by dance groups and musical theatre, a family area and an artist-led market place as well as the main performance stage.
“This report highlights the tremendous heritage – ancient and modern – that Thurrock can boast and when you look at it in one document there is a single question that needs to be answered: Why don’t we celebrate this?
“The answer is that we’re going to.”
