20 artists and community groups from Southend to Kew came together this month to discover and celebrate their local identity and connections with India, through painting giant 6m long silk scrolls for the Silk River project.
Attendees from – Kew, Tower Hamlets, Greenwich and Woolwich, Barking & Dagenham, Purfleet, Dartford, Gravesend, Tilbury, East Tilbury and Southend, have previously attended intense design sessions with Kinetika to discover their local history and created designs that will be used on the scrolls.
Fascinating connections have been made between these areas and the areas they have been partnered with in West Bengal.
The scroll for Dartford contains references and images of the area’s connection to the river. For residents here, the river is not an adornment or an ornament, but a working thoroughfare that has provided jobs and prosperity for hundreds of years.
Dartford Council are keen to engage as many people as possible through this project. Not just the usual suspects like the artists and community groups, but every resident right across the borough, to give them more reasons to be proud of Dartford and connect with the heritage of the area.
For Silk River, Dartford is twinned with Howrah in West Bengal, which is a big transport hub with an iconic bridge that looks exceptionally similar to the QEII Bridge.
Silk River is an ongoing project that will culminate in a walking festival 15-24th Sept 2017 in the UK and 7-17th in India, more details can be found at www.silkriver.co.uk.