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Presented by Kinetika, T100 is a free cultural programme that invites you to connect with Thurrock and its surroundings in new and unexpected ways. By exploring local places, sharing stories, and getting creative, we bring people together and celebrate the voices that make our communities unique.
In 2023, T100 was fortunate to be once again awarded a substantial grant by the National Lottery Reaching Communities Fund to be utilised over the next three years. The funds are currently being used to help deliver more activities in the region as well as engage with more people within the community.
T100 aims to provide a framework which links grassroots activities to larger initiatives, mechanisms for local people to access and shape place-based strategic narratives and ensure a spatial framework which literally connects people and places together. Furthermore, the ongoing support from Reaching Communities enables T100 to build a sustained programme across the year and to build on its work supporting local children and young people to explore their creativity, and shape and take on more leadership of the festival activity.
Programme Manager, Nicole Artingstall (nicole@kinetika.co.uk), who is responsible for community engagement and festival programme management.
Alongside founding organisation Kinetika.
Environmental Champion, George Bellamy (george@kinetika.co.uk), who develops the community garden and natural dyes at our base in High House Production Park in Purfleet-on-Thames.
In 2015, Kinetika was invited by the Council’s Public Health Department to develop a Thurrock walking arts festival to change people’s attitude to walking, reveal accessible footpaths across Thurrock and get people talking to each other.
What began as a 100-mile marathon across the borough has developed into a year-round programme and a festival that starts and ends in Thurrock, stretches along and across the estuary, into Southend and over to Kent.
The concept of T100 is simple. In response to a theme selected for the year, a programme of walks and community-led activities is devised by local groups.
The festival takes place in towns and villages over a numbe rof weeks each summer, with a series of walks connecting all the events together.
Leading up to the festival, activities are undertaken in libraries, schools and community spaces and have included writing, drawing, cooking, painting, researching, dancing, audio recording and acting. The results add colour to the walks which have incorporated heritage talks, shared community meals, outdoor theatre, a soundscape installation, silk flags reflecting local stories, singing and performance.
The magic of T100 is its simplicity as a framework. It enables groups to come up with their own ideas, develop them as separate projects then showcase and share them to the wider community as part of the ten-day festival.
