Medway’s Superstars
Plus Anchored at LV21, new Medway film club, Common Ground exhibition, we review Thai Four Two, our weekly event guide, and more
A new project seeks to highlight Medway’s creative talent in a series of a short films, so we’ve been finding out all about it. Further down, we have details of a unique aerial dance performance on LV21, a new Medway film club, an exhibition taking over the Riverside Country Park, we review Thai Four Two in Rochester, our weekly events guide, and more.
Medway’s Superstars
Margherita Gramegna is the artistic director of 51zero and has produced a series of short films highlighting creative individuals in Medway. We caught up with her to find out more…
The name ‘51zero’ refers to the geographical coordinates for Medway and the organisation has successfully held festivals and art shows since its formation. “When I started 51zero, I wanted to create something rooted here, connected to Medway, but with the intention, the desire, to bring Medway out of Medway.”
Their latest project is Medway Superstars, funded by Arts Council England, showcasing creative talent across Medway at various stages of their careers. This is the first stage in a wider project: the Medway Artists Portrait Platform, focused on the artist’s role in local urban and cultural regeneration.
“I'll tell you how the Medway Superstar came about.” Margherita’s partner is a Medway musician, and she soon found she had become part of the scene and got to meet a variety of Medway musicians and artists. “I became familiar with a lot of them without even asking, and then I started getting involved with a lot of what was going on art-wise.”
Margherita got involved with Creative Medway, which had a new scheme that she found positive and forward-looking, and focused on regeneration via arts and culture. “I felt that as an artist, I wanted to contribute a project to it, as champion of those artists.” She feels her art is about knowing that “I can't change the world, but what I like to do is to try to change the world around me.”
She got involved with the cultural partnership, attending council meetings, and in one of those meetings was a map of artists in Medway, which she found lacking in detail. “I thought, these are five names, and people I knew weren't even mentioned.” She found there to be “a total misunderstanding of what is happening in Medway. There are international artists, musicians known around the world. It seems like Medway doesn’t know about them.” Which is very often the case. It was this realisation that sparked her into action.
The project is titled Medway Superstars. “Maybe slightly ironic,” she notes, but she wanted to connect it to Andy Warhol’s ‘Superstars.’ “I wanted to connect Medway to something bigger, to give that importance, pride, highlight that actually there are superstars in Medway and all the artists that work their arse off to produce their art.” She wanted to give them the respect, the encouragement and support. “People need to know they are here.” So she set out to build bridges between the artists and everyone around them. Margherita intends to create pride and connection and “to create possibilities. If no one knows that the artists are here, how can anything happen?”
Margherita worked on her proposal, gained support from others and submitted it. While waiting for a response, “my head blew off. I was hospitalised and everyone thought I was going to die.” Margherita’s world went blank. She lost memory and had suffered a massive brain haemorrhage. “An aneurysm ruptured in my brain,” leading to her treatment at King’s College Hospital in London.
“I don't know why I'm here, to do more good or more bad. God spared me and I came back from the hospital.” Over the weeks, Margherita got better. “My life was reduced to pain, medicines, medical routines. It was just awful.” It was during this time that she received a letter. “Congratulations. We love the project, and we are happy to give you the money.”
That moment, and her enthusiasm for the project, helped to rejuvenate her, giving her something to focus on outside of the medical treatment. “I started thinking about how am I going to make these films? What are they going to look like? How am I going to express? Creativity came back to me.”
From the perspective of the project, the hardest part for Margherita was choosing which artists to focus on from “all of these amazing people.” An advisory panel was selected to represent a diverse range of experience across the local cultural sector and select the final ten artists for this stage of the project. Decisions were based on geographical spread across Medway, reflecting local diversity, and showcasing artistic practice.
The best part for Margherita was devising the films. “I am not a documentary maker. I'm an artist, and they had to be art pieces.” She devised the films to be told in three parts: an introduction, the studio, and Medway. “I wanted the audience to feel like they were guests in this artist environment, and they were getting to know them, but respecting the place, the people. The camera goes in the studio, but it is a visitor.”
Margherita is launching this project as part of Estuary Festival at the A+E Lab in Chatham Historic Dockyard. The private view on 26 June and then displayed publicly until 29 June. The ten short film portraits of Medway artists will be shown as an installation piece with headphones for audiences to watch and listen to each one.
LV21 hosts site-specific aerial dance show
LV21 and Scarabaeus Aerial Theatre are working together to produce Anchored, a site-specific outdoor aerial dance performance, as part of the Estuary Festival. We spoke to Päivi Seppälä and Daniela Essart to learn more…
Anchored takes place tomorrow night (Sat 21 Jun) as part of the Estuary 2025 launch weekend, as the sun sets on Anchor Wharf at the Historic Dockyard Chatham. There will be pre-event entertainment, with the Silver Darlings performing shanties and Nicole Mollet showcasing a sneak peek of the River Medway public artwork that will be erected at the pumping station. The main performance will start at 10pm.
The performance was created on LV21 during Refugee Week. The intent is that, as LV21 is a rescue vessel, and there are wider tensions regarding human rights, they wanted to subtly produce a political act. The themes are crossing and passage, with the rescue at sea of two women refugees, and LV21 as a place of refuge and safety, a vessel of light.
In terms of what people can expect to see, the show is an outdoor performance that primarily happens atop LV21. Movement and dance up in the air, with the sunset as the backdrop. The theatrical piece comes together with a designed soundtrack and bespoke lighting, which has its own challenges on the longest day of the year. All in all, the performance should be an impressive spectacle.
Anchored is free to attend, but tickets must be booked in advance.
Electric Medway launches film club
Medway has a new film club hosted by Greg Waller and Electric Medway. The club shows films at the Huguenot Museum in Rochester on the last Wednesday of the month. We spoke to Greg to find out more…
Greg moved to Medway three years ago and felt that Rochester should have an independent cinema. Having completed his Master’s degree, he felt that he had the time to take the matter into his own hands and set about setting up a community cinema. Following some networking at Dragon Coworking, he was put into contact with Kevin Grist, then director of Electric Medway.
Greg found Kevin to be supportive and engaged, and he started to put a plan in place to launch a new film night. Whilst Electric Medway were able to support the technical aspects, Greg had to research the finer details before they were able to launch in March at the Huguenot Museum. Greg wanted the venue to be easily accessible, as well as to be a good size and, of course, available at a reasonable rate. The Hugenot Museum also provided a projector screen and rake seating.
The first movie screened was the Kent-filmed Bird by Andrea Arnold, followed by Irish film The Quiet Girl, and most recently Hard Truths by Mike Leigh. The next film is an Iranian film called My Favourite Cake. Greg has since created a WhatsApp community group, allowing people to vote on which films they should screen in the future, with Hard Truths and My Favourite Cake being chosen by members.
Tickets to each screening cost £5 and can be booked here.
We Live Here seeks to find common ground
We Live Here is based at the Sunlight Centre and is in the process of being set up as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation. We spoke to Artistic Director Tim Harrison about their artistic project to connect local communities with the environment…
For Tim, the project is about how “nature can help with our mental health and help us kind of enjoy our lives more.” Tim creates artistic projects that connect local communities with climate change and biodiversity loss. “I'm really interested in who gets to enjoy nature and green spaces.”
Tim is aware that there are people who might not have the same access to nature as he has had for cultural, social, and economic reasons, “which has been hugely beneficial for myself and my own mental health over time.” Tim was raised in the countryside and “accidentally ended up living in cities.” Tim realised through a lot of personal turmoil that he needed to reconnect himself with nature.
“I took this idea of how the arts can connect different voices and different communities to a particular topic.” Tim applied that to questions around nature, environmentalism and ecology. The purpose of the CIO is to enable more people to access the benefits of nature and engage with nature by creating different artistic and participatory projects to get people involved.
Tim has been working with multi-award-winning photographer Allie Crewe, thinking about nature and how that can serve a healing role. “To have conversations about what place, what landscape, what nature mean to us. We started working with people who have lived in this area for a long time, and also people who've come to this area.” Working with a group from Ukraine who arrived as refugees and were based in Medway, Ali worked with them to create photographs of them in different natural places that meant something to them and reflect their experiences through that.
The resulting ten photograph Common Ground exhibition is currently being exhibited at the Riverside Country Park in Gillingham. “They're going to be on these big metre-and-a-half wide panels, dotted around the country park, so people will be able to walk around and see them in that space.”
Common Ground will be on display at Riverside Country Park until 24 June.
Out to Lunch: Thai Four Two in Rochester
There was a time when Thai Four Two was spoken of almost reverentially. It was one of the places to go to eat in Medway. Since it moved across the road on Rochester High Street, this seems to occur less often. Is it due to a change in standards, a change in taste, or wider socio-economic factors? I endeavoured to find out. Well, the first two points at least, as this isn’t really the space for a column about how socio-economic factors are affecting restaurant culture in Medway. (I’d be fine with it - Ed)
I got there for lunch on a Wednesday, and the venue was very quiet. I am, of course, sat by the window, in a shameless attempt to encourage passers-by to come and eat. The restaurant is friendly and welcoming, and has a running water feature, which so few places do these days. I ordered ‘Keow Krob’ crispy wontons stuffed with minced fish and prawn for starter, followed by duck in a tamarind sauce, and egg fried rice for main. All for a slightly higher than average price.
The wontons were exactly as advertised: Crispy, stuffed, and delicious with a dipping sauce. The duck was served in a sizzling dish, which added an air of theatre and risk to the endeavour. Once everything had calmed down, I had to serve it onto my own plate and add the rice. All whilst people walked past the window watching me miss the plate. The duck with crispy shallots was packed full of flavour, the tamarind sauce hot from the sizzling dish complimenting it perfectly. The rice was perfectly good, if needing a bit more egg and a bit less carrot for this palate.
If you haven’t been to Thai Four Two, you should check it out, and if you have been, then you should go again.
Events this week
🎨 19 Jun - 2 Jul - Apart // New exhibition by collective of Rochester artists. Halpern Gallery, Chatham. Free.
🍊 Mon 23 Jun - Tangerine // One night only screening of Sean Baker’s social realist drama. Odeon, Chatham. Tickets £6.
🎤 Thu 26 Jun - Big Trouble // Open-mic poetry night with headline sets by Connor Sansby and Tom Sastry. 12 Degrees micropub, Rochester. Tickets £7.
🗣️ Thu 26 Jun - Special Medway Council meeting // After years of getting nowhere, Medway Council will finally present a Local Plan. St George’s Centre, Chatham. Free.
More Authority
Yesterday, we published our latest Voice column, where we hear from one of Medway’s elected representatives. This month, Medway Council Leader Vince Maple discusses democratic transparency, Kent County Council’s new Reform administration, and upcoming summer events in Medway.
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