Lowestoft: Culture, heritage and future belonging
First Light Festival, Lowestoft, 2019. Image © Kate Ellis
Creativity is rising in Lowestoft as the people behind the drive to embed culture at the heart of the Town Investment Plan are brimming with positivity and a deeply collaborative spirit. Genevieve Christie, founder of the First Light Festival; Phil Aves, relationship manager at Lowestoft Rising; and young filmmaker Joshua Freemantle have each been actively engaging with East Suffolk District Council to make the case for creativity in the Town and all their efforts are beginning to flourish.
“There's been this mushrooming,” says Genevieve. “We've lit the touchpaper and you just see things starting to happen.”
Recognition for a council willing to take a risk on culture
In March 2021 Lowestoft’s regeneration team was nominated for Improvement and Efficiency Social Enterprise’s(iESE) Public Sector Transformation Awards in recognition of the team’s innovative approach to regeneration and asset management and for its placemaking, branding and community involvement work to develop the Town Investment Plan.
Gabriella Fox, Regeneration Project Officer at East Suffolk District Council, is part of the innovative team placing culture at the centre of plans for the future of Lowestoft.
“We are a highly deprived area, falling within the 10 per cent most deprived neighbourhoods in England, so being able to provide culture on our doorstep - make it accessible and completely free, like we did with the First Light Festival - is really important,” she says.
Recognising the transformative role of culture and heritage in placemaking, Lowestoft’s regeneration team has been steadily nurturing creative sector talent and skills in the Town for several years, establishing the idea that culture can be created by and for everyone.
Lowestoft’s newly adopted cultural strategy provides the foundation for its Town Investment Plan (TIP) which secured up to £24.9 million investment from government in March 2021. “Celebrating our culture and heritage” is one of five key themes that run through the TIP, as Lowestoft takes strides to regenerate and reimagine the Town for the future.
Lowestoft’s TIP develops from an inclusive, bottom-up approach to culture and heritage that builds on the momentum ignited by Genevieve Christie, Phil Aves, Joshua Freemantle, among many in the Town’s creative community, each with an important story to tell.
Genevieve Christie, Founder of First Light Festival and cultural instigator
When Genevieve first came to the Lowestoft area, she was struck by what she saw as an inequality of opportunity for people to engage with high quality arts and culture.
“There was huge untapped potential. It was what wasn't happening in the schools,” she says. “These children were not getting the opportunities that other children were getting, and that was cascading through the community.”
Today, Lowestoft is home to a blossoming creative sector and Genevieve has led a number of projects in the Town including the eclectic FlipSide Festival; Making Waves Together - an ambitious multi-partner programme initiated in 2017 to boost the culture offer in Lowestoft and neighbouring Great Yarmouth; and the First Light Festival - a multi-arts celebration of Lowestoft’s unique position as Britain's most easterly town launched in 2019.
Over time Genevieve has built and nurtured deeper connections with culture and heritage among the communities she has worked with in Lowestoft. Her commitment to culture has seen her invite people in Lowestoft to reconnect with the Town’s story and to generate a new sense of belonging. The First Light Festival proved there is an appetite for more cultural activity in the Town and played a role in laying the groundwork for a TIP that has been able to confidently focus on arts, culture and heritage for the community.
“Culture is a living thing,” says Genevieve. “Everything around us is to do with our culture, whether it's the 1960s shop or an Old Town Hall that's got a stained-glass window, it’s all part of what makes a town mean something. An understanding of the heritage of a place enables you to connect to it -, even if you weren’t brought up there or don’t have family there - and engender a sense of belonging. It's giving people the opportunity to talk about a place to reflect on it, to exchange ideas about it, and to learn to value it.”
Phil Aves, on reaching communities by engaging children and young people
Another key figure in Lowestoft’s journey to strengthening the role of culture and heritage in the Town is Phil Aves. He is a relationship manager for Lowestoft Rising (a public sector partnership aiming to improve quality of life in the Town), a mental health ambassador for Lowestoft and chairs the Local Cultural Education Partnership (LCEP) for Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth. Phil established an LCEP in the Lowestoft region in response to a call from local schools for greater access to arts, culture and heritage.
“It's 10,000 children across primary schools, high schools, colleges, special schools and nurseries,” he says. “The teachers were saying - we're culturally void, we've been so focused on getting the core subjects better, and in doing so we've forgotten about all the culture, the dance and the music.”
By starting with young people Phil believes there is real possibility to reach whole communities.
“I think the hardest thing was engaging the community because we use the term culture - and people think ‘it was not for me’,” says Phil.
“It is for you, it's for everyone, it's our history. Start with the young people and let it grow from there. Getting in early gives you a whole lifetime of culture and everything else, but it’s also a way of reaching the families, through the children and with a really strong culture of education policy.”
Joshua Freemantle is a young filmmaker changing the story of his Town
Joshua Freemantle is a dynamic young filmmaker and producer from Lowestoft and is quickly becoming another important voice for the local creative community.
Joshua is committed to challenging negative perceptions of his Town. So much so that in 2019 he went to Phil Aves with the idea to make a documentary that would shine a spotlight on what makes Lowestoft special.
‘Life of Lowestoft’ was released in September 2020 and uncovers the culture and history of the Town. The Life of Lowestoft moniker has now evolved into a podcast series, in which Joshua hosts conversations with local people sharing his passion for all things Lowestoft.
“I'm going to carry on shouting about Lowestoft because there's just so much that young people like me just don't know about,” he says.
Despite being born and raised in Lowestoft, before embarking on the ‘Life of Lowestoft’ project Joshua had very little awareness of the history and heritage of the Town. Areas such as Scores - a series of lanes leading from the high street to the beach village, once a bustling hub of Lowestoft’s fishing industry - were unknown to him as a young person in the Town.
“There's such a hidden gem in the north of Lowestoft. Why did I as a young person never know about the Scores?” he asks. “Making the documentary really opened my eyes and helped me learn about the hidden heritage and history of the Town.”
Creating a sense of belonging through culture
Lowestoft’s proposed Towns deal projects include a large-scale mixed-use development in a designated Cultural Quarter that will upgrade the existing theatre and provide a new arts venue; year-round First Light Festival cultural programming; and conservation-led improvements to the Historic Quarter - including the Scores.
For Genevieve, Phil and Joshua there is a clear role for culture in creating a sense of belonging and connection to Lowestoft, while linking to the past and the future of the Town.
This story was written from a conversation with Genevieve Christie, founder of the First Light Festival; Phil Aves, relationship manager at Lowestoft Rising; Joshua Freemantle, filmmaker and Development Producer, Sunrise Studios; and Gabriella Fox, Regeneration Project Officer, East Suffolk District Council.
Lowestoft is one of 101 places invited by the Government to develop Town Deal proposals to deliver long-term economic recovery, clean growth, jobs and prosperity as part of the £3.6 billion Towns Fund. Lowestoft submitted a successful Town Investment Plan and secured a Town Deal of up to £24.9 million in March 2021. Lowestoft is currently developing business cases to take forward their Town Deal proposals.