Preparations for a unique Community Carnival evening are well under way to celebrate the arrival of Live Screen - a giant open-air television sculpture in the grounds of Triangles Community Centre in St Radigunds, Dover. The Carnival evening takes place from 7pm on Saturday 15 September, when music, street theatre, video and film, human puppetry and mime will blend in one remarkable event.
The 3.75m high television is the fruit of an exciting collaboration between local people at St Radigunds and nationally acclaimed sculptor Tom Grimsey. The project is part of an ongoing programme of arts at Triangles Community Centre designed particularly to involve young people. The TV stage sculpture provides an open-air platform for improvisation and children's play. On other occasions it will enable theatre performance, and an outdoor screen is incorporated for open-air film.
Triangles Youth Forum, together with other young people at the Community Centre, is working to create the carnival event in collaboration with Dover's increasingly successful Blackfish Arts Academy (www.blackfishacademy.com) - which is based at the Roundhouse Theatre at Dover Discovery Centre (Blackfish presented We Will Rock You - the musical by Queen and Ben Elton - at the Roundhouse in July). Blackfish's input into Triangles' Carnival is called Channel Hopping, and is a move away from traditional performance at the Roundhouse to physical theatre where performers and audience mingle in one group responding to the main character - the new TV sculpture itself.
Project manager Tom Roberts is delighted with the opportunity to bring together architecture, landscape, sculpture, theatre and young people - all within a community framework. "The event" he says, "is a fantastic way of showing to everyone what can be achieved on the new open-air stage. Everyone wants to be on TV, and everyone can be."
The prefabricated concrete structure has been made in Lancashire by Bendcrete Ltd, and was transported by road in large sections and assembled on site in Dover in August.
The client for this imaginative project is the St Radigunds Community Centre Company, a St Radigunds based community group which has instigated all the community-based operations on the site over the last five years. SRCCC is most grateful to the Foundation for Sport and the Arts for its confidence in sponsoring Dover Live Screen, and Blackfish is equally indebted to the KCC Youth Capital Fund in helping them with a grant to be part of this amazing young people's project. The overall cost of the project is £45,000.
Site neighbour, the London Fancy Box Company, has not been overshadowed in the imagination stakes - producing a beautiful souvenir and teaching tool (in the form of a cardboard model of the new theatre) as part of its contribution to the initiative. The project is a truly impressive example of how a good simple idea can inspire so many people to work together to create a unique outcome.
