Sea Change Festival
The Sea Change Festival was a creative festival that took place over a weekend in May/June each year and ran from 2012 until 2019.
The aim was to give everyone who lives on the peninsula an opportunity to join in and for creative learning in Kilcreggan and Rosneath primary schools, Cove Park and other local venues. We also hoped to attract people from outside the area to show off our villages and boost the local economy. There was a different theme each year starting in 2012 with the environment and ending with our coast and waters
Saturday’s started off with a fancy dress wheels parade from Kilcreggan village centre to the village hall, and in the first year this was led by local pipers. The following year samba lessons for the community were set up and from then on the parade was led by our samba teacher and featured local players, until the final year when it was led by an alien on a bike.
Friday nights and Sundays were mainly food for thought at Cove Burgh Hall, Cove Park, the local hotel, pub, cafe and outside spaces. Over the years this featured live broadcasts from Kontiki the yacht made of recycled bottles, sea shanties in marquees, guided tours by the late Jim Taggart at Linn Botanic Gardens, a fishy acting working weekend led by Mischief La-Bas, Tim Peake’s planetarium and a Let’s Circus weekend which featured circus lessons and circus performances plus loads more.
Each year artists worked on the festival theme with children at our primaries, youth club and at Cove Park to produce art works and costumes that would be displayed and used throughout the weekend. One year we had art works from our children displayed on each lamppost from Kilcreggan to Cove Village Hall and another year local artists worked with a young person’s winning design to create rock art at Cove Bay.
Surveys undertaken from our earliest Sea Change Festival showed that the vast majority of children taking part and older people had never been part of a public culture and arts festival. The festival became an established part of the calendar and feedback was gathered each year helped to ensure that the content was meaningful, made the most of local resources and added value. Each year over 160 children took part in the build up to Sea Change and over the weekend over 200 additional people attended, including visitors from outside the area.