Tidal Remedies

Tidal Remedies is a community event designed to bring people of Poole together who have not met before, to sit down one to one with a cup of soup and discuss a pertinent topic of conversation selected from choices designed by local communities.

Local artist, Gemma Alldred will be facilitating a range of workshops, discovery walks and interviews with people who live and work in Poole. The consultation process allows us to better understand the neighbourhood and design relevant topics for discussion without requiring specific knowledge. We want to address community issues the residents feel are important for the well-being of society as well as to build relationships across different communities with people who may not usually have conversations together.

During Light Up Poole Festival of Light, an area of the High Street will be laid out as a café and actors will invite the public in to have a cup of soup and discuss one of the topics with someone they haven’t met before. After twenty minutes they will write on a post-it-note a phrase that most represents what they learnt from their conversation. This will be captured in a digital machine invented by Artist Andy McKeown and projected onto a wall and an online gallery. This allows us to transform a public space into a place for civic expression.

The world is ever changing, tensions are flying high because of economic and cultural reasons and all too often we evolve in isolation from one another, through virtual conversations and social media that ultimately leave us feeling somewhat divided and disconnected. The impact of the work is revealed through the range of conversations and snap shots of municipal issues captured digitally and projected to passers-by. It will allow local communities to convey important civic topics face to face, outside their comfort zones: the role of women in society, cultural diversity, social isolation, Brexit, the fear of terrorism, freedom of expression, racism; we want to share these issues and create direct ties and make our human interactions and public spaces more dynamic and democratic.

To participate digitally please send us topics of conversations you would like to discuss using Twitter or Facebook with #TidalRemedies.