The Creative Folkestone Triennial is an arts festival held every three years in

Folkestone Folkestone ( ) is a coastal town on the English Channel, in Kent, south-east England. The town lies on the southern edge of the North Downs at a valley between two cliffs. It was an important harbour, shipping port, and fashionable coastal res ...

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

, England. Site-specific artworks are commissioned for what are often unusual locations around the town, a number of works remaining in place permanently after the end of each festival as part of the permanent Creative Folkestone Artworks exhibition. The 2021 Triennial will be the first to break the usual three-year cycle following a postponement from its original 2020 dates due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Artists who have exhibited at the Triennial include Lubaina Himid, Tracy Emin,

Cornelia Parker Cornelia Ann Parker (born 14 July 1956) is an English visual artist, best known for her sculpture and installation art. Life and career Parker was born in 1956 in Cheshire, England. She studied at the Gloucestershire College of Art and Design ...

Martin Creed Martin Creed (born 21 October 1968) is a British artist, composer and performer. He won the Turner Prize in 2001 for exhibitions during the preceding year, with the jury praising his audacity for exhibiting a single installation, ''Work No. 22 ...

, Myles Stephens, Emma Hart, Sir Anthony Gormley,

Andy Goldsworthy Andy Goldsworthy (born 25 July 1956) is an English sculptor, photographer, and environmentalist who produces site-specific sculptures and land art situated in natural or urban settings. Early life Goldsworthy was born in Cheshire on 25 July ...

and

Bob and Roberta Smith Bob, BOB, or B.O.B. may refer to: People, fictional characters, and named animals *Bob (given name), a list of people and fictional characters * Bob (surname) * Bob (dog), a dog that received the Dickin Medal for bravery in World War II * Bob t ...

. During 2014, graffiti artist

Banksy Banksy is a pseudonymous England-based street artist, political activist, and film director whose real name and identity remain unconfirmed and the subject of speculation. Active since the 1990s, his satirical street art and subversive ep ...

contributed Art Buff to the town, announcing that it was "Part of the Folkestone triennial. Kind of." The Folkestone Triennial was curated by Andrea Schlieker in 2008 and 2011, and Lewis Biggs in 2014, 2017 and 2021.

Community engagement

Announcing the 2021 artists, curator Lewis Biggs described the Triennial's connection with Folkestone by saying "we will treat the town as a gallery", adding it "has to be about the context and history of Folkestone". Community engagement and involvement with the development with the artworks is a key feature of the Triennial, including HoyCheong Wong's 2017 piece working with Folkestone's Islamic Cultural Centre - a relationship which will be extended for Wong's collaboration with the local Islamic community, artist Simon Davenport and architect Shahed Saleem/Makespace for the 2021 Triennial. Other pieces commissioned for 2021 with strong elements of community engagement include those commissioned through Pioneering Places East Kent and funded by Arts Council England and National Lottery Heritage Fund inspired by the former site of Folkestone's Ship Street Gasworks. These include Jacqueline Donachie's piece inspired by a social club which remained on the derelict site long after it ceased production while Morag Myerscough is designing a gateway or 'welcome pavilion' for the former gasworks site.

Educational programme

The Triennial's significant educational programme has been growing since its first inception in the 2014 edition, which involved over 18,000 learners across more than 70 schools and 50 community groups. In 2017 this was further developed to 202 talks, tours, workshops and conferences through a schools, community and further and higher education programme. In 2021 the Triennial will expand its footprint online through virtual tours and video content.

Economic impact

According to the organiser, the direct and indirect impact of the Folkestone Triennial was worth more £65 million in 2014, including £2m in grants and donations, £2.7 million in visitor spend and £59 million in media value.

Reception

An independent survey was conducted after the 2014 Triennial, finding that 89.8% of visitors gave a good or excellent rating for the artworks; 96.3% rated the Folkestone Triennial as good or excellent. In 2014, the Triennial attracted 119 articles in regional, national and international media, as well as 14 items of radio or television coverage and over 1.6 billion hits across more than 200 web articles, generating a combined media value in excess of £59m.

Themes

# 1 Tales of Time and Space - Folkestone Triennial 2008

Inspired by Folkestone's past, present and future the inaugural Triennial saw work displayed in Folkestone's beach, harbour, parks, marine promenade and historic buildings. Artists included

Christian Boltanski Christian Liberté Boltanski (6 September 1944 – 14 July 2021) was a French sculptor, photographer, painter, and film maker. He is best known for his photography installations and contemporary French conceptual style. Early life Boltanski wa ...

Tacita Dean Tacita Charlotte Dean CBE, RA (born 1965) is a British visual artist who works primarily in film. She was a nominee for the Turner Prize in 1998, won the Hugo Boss Prize in 2006, and was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 2008. She lives ...

Jeremy Deller Jeremy Deller (born 30 March 1966) is an English people, English conceptual, video and installation artist. Much of Deller's work is Collaboration, collaborative; it has a strong political aspect, in the subjects dealt with and also the Idealiz ...

Tracey Emin Dame Tracey Karima Emin (; born 3 July 1963) is an English artist known for autobiographical and confessional artwork. She produces work in a variety of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, film, photography, Neon lighting, neon text ...

, Langlands and Bell, Heather and Ivan Morison,

Mark Wallinger Mark Wallinger (born 25 May 1959) is an English artist. Having previously been nominated for the Turner Prize in 1995, he won in 2007 for his installation '' State Britain''. His work ''Ecce Homo'' (1999–2000) was the first piece to occupy th ...

and Richard Wilson. Works retained and still included in the Creative Folkestone Artworks collection include

's series of works, Baby Things,

's Folk Stones, Patrick Tuttofuoco's FOLKESTONE, Richard Wilson's 18 Holes, Adam Chozko's Pyramid,

's The Whispers, Pae White's Barking Rocks and Richard Wentworth's series, Racinated.

#2 A Million Miles from Home - Folkestone Triennial 2011

In 2011, the theme highlighted an outward-looking facet of Folkestone and the town's place as "a gateway to other cultures, politics, environmental warnings and the fundamental notion of how our shores contribute to our sense of place and belonging". Notable highlights included

's Folkestone Mermaid - her own version of Copenhagen's 'Little Mermaid', with a local woman acting as a model for the sculpture. Parker's piece can still be viewed overlooking Folkestone's Sunny Sands as part of the permanent

Creative Folkestone Creative Folkestone (formerly The Creative Foundation), is a UK charity dedicated to art and culture, based in Folkestone, Kent, UK. It is responsible for the Folkestone Triennial, Creative Folkestone Triennial, the Quarterhouse (a theatre and ev ...

Artworks collection dotted across the town, along with works by Richard Wentworth, Hamish Fulton, Tonica Lemos Auad, A K Dolven, Paloma Varga Weisz, Ruth Ewan, Spencer Finch and Christina Iglesias. Additional artists presenting hailed from Algeria, Morocco, Kosovo, Israel, Egypt, Guyana, India, Brazil, Denmark, Spain, Germany and the USA.

#3 Lookout - Folkestone Triennial 2014

While Andy Goldsworthy was seen by some as the "headline act", Berlin-based artist Michael Sailstorfer attracted most media attention by hiding £10,000 of 24-carat gold bars on Folkestone beach, with some of the 30 bars yet to be found despite the rush to dig. Artists with works still featured in the permanent

Artworks collection include Cézanne Charles and John Marshall (a.k.a
rootoftwo
, Pablo Bronstein, Diane Dever and Jonathan Wright, Strange Cargo, muf Architecture,

Ian Hamilton Finlay Ian Hamilton Finlay (28 October 1925 – 27 March 2006) was a Scottish poet, writer, artist and gardener. Life Finlay was born in Nassau, Bahamas, to James Hamilton Finlay and his wife, Annie Pettigrew, both of Scots descent. He was educa ...

Tim Etchells Tim Etchells (born 1962) is an English artist and writer based in Sheffield and London. Etchells is the artistic director of Forced Entertainment, an experimental performance company founded in 1984. He has published several works of fiction, ...

, Sarah Staton, Will Kwan and

Yoko Ono Yoko Ono (, usually spelled in katakana as ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up in Tokyo and moved to New York ...

, who contributed two pieces - Earth Peace and Skyladder 2014.

Banksy's Art Buff

Renowned graffiti artist,

, gatecrashed the 2014 Triennial, painting a mural called Art Buff on the side of Palace Amusements in Payers Park in October 2014. His website announced that the mural was "Part of the Folkestone triennial. Kind of". It was soon vandalised with the addition of a phallic symbol, spray painted onto the previously empty plinth in the artwork. It was then flown to the US to be sold two months after its creation. In September 2015, a London judge – Richard Arnold – ruled that

's mural Art Buff must be delivered to Creative Foundation (now known as

) from storage in New York, where it was being kept by the curator of a December 2014 exhibition of Banksy's works in Miami, at which it failed to sell. It was finally returned to Folkestone in 2020, inspiring

's celebration of creativity in the community, The Plinth.

#4 double edge - Folkestone Triennial 2017

The 'double edge' theme in 2017 "plays with ambiguity, dialogue and deceit," according to the curator, Lewis Biggs. Audiences were tasked with exploring why the world is the way that it is, how it might be, and how change is always possible. Issues explored included borders; thresholds; margins; the periphery; gateways and the liminal. Notable works in the 2017 Triennial which still reside as pieces in the Folkestone Artworks collection include

Antony Gormley Sir Antony Mark David Gormley (born 30 August 1950) is a British sculptor. His works include the ''Angel of the North'', a public sculpture in Gateshead in the north of England, commissioned in 1994 and erected in February 1998; ''Another Pl ...

's Another Time XXI, Richard Woods's Holiday Home sequence, featuring model second homes by the sea,

's Folkestone is an Art School and Marc Schmitz and Dolgor Ser-Od's giant shell-cum-gramophone piece, Siren, which was described as an example of a work that "seems to have fallen to Earth on the East Cliff". Other remaining pieces in the Folkestone Artworks collection from the 2017 collection include works by

Amalia Pica Amalia Pica (born 1978 in Neuquén, Argentina) is a London-based Argentine artist who explores metaphor, communication, and civic participation through sculptures, installations, photographs, projections, live performances, and drawings. Pica cu ...

, Rigo 23, Diane Dever and the Decorators, Sol Calero,

Michael Craig-Martin Sir Michael Craig-Martin (born 28 August 1941) is an Irish-born contemporary conceptual artist and painter. He is known for fostering and adopting the Young British Artists, many of whom he taught, and for his conceptual artwork, '' An Oak ...

, Lubaina Himid, Gary Woodley, Bill Woodrow,

David Shrigley David John Shrigley (born 17 September 1968) is a British visual artist. He lived and worked in Glasgow, Scotland for 27 years before moving to Brighton, England in 2015. Shrigley first came to prominence in the 1990s for his distinct line drawi ...

and Studio Ben Allen, whose architectural piece, The Clearing, is still a feature of the first floor bar at Folkestone's Quarterhouse. Additional artists exhibiting at Triennial 2017 included Alex Hartley, Emily Peasgood, Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas and HoyCheong Wong.

#5 The Plot - Folkestone Triennial 2021

The theme in 2021 is 'The Plot', subtitled 'Urban myths and their relation to verifiable realities: the gap between the story and the materiality'. The first artwork to be unveiled for the 2021 Triennial is/was Rana Begum's brightly painted new beach huts, replacing rundown chalets along the coast between

and Sandgate. Interactive sculptures - Skating Situations - at the mainline railway viaduct and the Harbour Arm is a collaboration between

Turner Prize The Turner Prize, named after the English painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist. Between 1991 and 2016, only artists under the age of 50 were eligible (this restriction was removed for the 2017 award). ...

-Winning collective Assemble and local skateboarders. The event will include 20 outdoor, newly commissioned public artworks by artists including Assemble, Rana Begum,

Gilbert & George Gilbert Prousch, sometimes referred to as Gilbert Proesch (born 17 September 1943), and George Passmore (born 8 January 1942) are artists who work together as the collaborative art duo Gilbert & George. They are known for their formal appearance ...

, Atta Kwami, Pilar Quinteros, and Richard Deacon.

Funders

2014 supported by The Roger De Haan Charitable Trust,

Arts Council England Arts Council England is an arm's length non-departmental public body of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It is also a registered charity. It was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council o ...

, the Folkestone Estate,

Kent County Council Kent County Council is a county council that governs the non-metropolitan county of Kent in England. The non-metropolitan county is smaller than the ceremonial county, which additionally includes the Unitary authorities of England, unitary auth ...

and Shepway District Council. 2017 sponsored by Saga and supported by The Roger De Haan Charitable Trust and Arts Council England along with Kent County Council, Shepway District Council and the Oak Foundation. 2021 supported by The Roger De Haan Charitable Trust, Arts Council England, Folkestone & Hythe District Council, Kent County Council, Oak Foundation,

Henry Moore Foundation The Henry Moore Foundation is a registered charity in England, established for education and promotion of the fine arts — in particular, to advance understanding of the works of Henry Moore, and to promote the public appreciation of sculpt ...

and EU Interreg North Sea Region Cupido. Individual works are often supported by specific funders: e.g. Pilar Quinteros' piece in 2021 is co-commissioned by England's Creative Coast, Beach Huts by Folkestone and Hythe District Council and 2021 pieces by Jacqueline Donachie, Jacqueline Poncelet and Morag Myserscough have been commissioned through Pioneering Places East Kent and funded by Arts Council England and

National Lottery Heritage Fund The National Lottery Heritage Fund, formerly the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), distributes a share of National Lottery funding, supporting a wide range of heritage projects across the United Kingdom. History The fund's predecessor bodies were ...

References

{{reflist Folkestone Arts festivals in England Festivals established in 2008