The Harwich Festival originally began in the late 1970s as a classical music festival and has evolved into a year-round combined arts festival and charity that helps support the local community.
The Harwich Festival also manages the Harwich Arts and Heritage Centre staging numerous events including gigs (both local grassroots and touring bands), theatrical performances, art exhibitions and heritage workshops for children, acting as a hub for local arts groups including Camera Clubs, Art Clubs, Craft Café, Ballroom Dancing, Ukulele Group, Embroiders Guild and local choirs.
The Story of The Harwich Festival
The Festival aims to promote the arts in Harwich and the surrounding area for the public benefit by establishing a regional Arts Hub that provides a diverse range of cultural activities, addressing the needs of all sectors of the community whilst promoting cultural events throughout the year which are located in venues that ensure full engagement with the community.
Peter Davis, the Artistic Director at the Harwich Festival has curated the annual festival for over 10 years & Chris Berwick, the General Manager of the Festival as over 15 years of working on community driven art projects in North Essex.
Chris Berwick, General Manager has over seen the running of the Harwich Arts & Heritage Centre since 2020 and managed the annual festival and other large events. Chris also a duty manager at The Colchester Arts Centre and runs a grassroots music project who put on over 800 events including festivals (Kelvedon, Harwich).
The “Challenge” or “Opportunity”
The Harwich Festival have worked with many local artists and art groups, establishing working relationships with a broad range of partners and is now driving forward new community projects in Harwich that are both being led by the Harwich Festival & the artists themselves.
For 2022 the Festival wanted to expand the local aspects of the festival to help give it even more of a community feel than usual, a priority important as 2022 was the first full annual festival since the pandemic.
Why the practitioner chose to partner with ECC
The Festival has been fortunate enough to have had funding & support from ECC during previous projects over the years and have always found the team very supportive, informative throughout both the application process and project management.
How ECC / the culture team responded
The Harwich Festival application to the Arts & Culture Fund clearly outlined the Essex residents it aimed to engage with via an exciting programme.
The ECC culture team has supported the project via regular catch up’s, offering assistance wherever needed in terms of marketing, PR, and general project advise.
The Results
The Open 20×20 exhibition which invites the community to submit work 20x20cm saw 583 people at the Old Chapel in Harwich. The Dovercourt Art Club Exhibition meanwhile attracted 791 people at the Esplanade Hall whilst the ‘Exploring the Sublime’ exhibition at the Harwich Arts & Centre had an audience of 2,300.
Musical performances also saw strong performances with ‘Dracula by Dramatic Pause’ at Redoubt Fort, ‘Kinder by Smoking Apples’ at the Harwich Arts & Heritage Centre. And the
Harwich Coral Society Performance. St Nicholas attracting audiences of 322.
Other outputs include that the Arts & Theatre events allowed the Harwich Festival to work with a whole new section of the local community not previously worked with. Through the not only did the Festival work with new artists (18 new artists for the 20 by 20) but many artists had the chance to exhibit their work for the first time publicly.
This resulted in a rise and interest in local arts groups with The Dovercourt Art Club, Harwich Camera Club & Craft Cafe all reporting an increase in members as a direct result of these exhibitions. Venues such as the Harwich Arts & Heritage Centre & Old Chapel have seen a large increase in footfall for exhibitions held since the Harwich Festival 2022.
Many of the newer artists that took part in these exhibitions have since gone to put on exhibitions of their own locally and have been involved with Harwich Festival Projects such as the First Arts Fair. These artists included Maria Barnes (Harwich), Tina Bullen (Colchester), Lousia Charrington (Tendring) & Sandra Wagstaff (Harwich).
The theatre performances by Smoking Apples (a touring company) allowed the Festival to engage more with local schools with several classes attending a tour of the set and talk about the piece (a puppetry and visual theatre show about the Kindertransport). This gave students a unique chance to see behind the scenes of a professional & poignant production. The result of this has led to the festival being approached by local schools to co-ordinate several community-based projects in 2023.
The Festival have seen an increase in overall community engagement for The Harwich Festival. Attendance for arts-based events during the 2022 annual festival have returned to pre-pandemic levels. Local arts groups have seen an increase in membership as a direct response to the exhibitions. Local artists are working with groups, venues and other artists that they weren’t working with before. The local community are supporting the local arts scene in increased numbers and the Festival have formed new working relationships with different community groups & schools to deliver new arts-based projects in the area next year.
General Manager Chris Berwick: “The response to the project from the community has been immense, with a massive increase in the Art Exhibition attendance at the Harwich Arts and Heritage Centre since the annual festival and a lot more people have got involved with the local arts club as well as the craft cafe classes.
Feedback from the community has included that people didn’t know how accessible the arts can be and where they could attend classes/ workshops.
Over 2,000 individuals attended the exhibitions in Old Harwich & at the Harwich Arts and Heritage Centre.”
Getting involved
Here at Essex County Council we are passionate about Arts & Culture and keen to su
pport projects across the county. If you have an idea you’d like to share with us, take a look at the Arts & Cultural Fund webpage on the Explore Essex website here and get in touch via email us: culture@essex.gov.uk
