ATownExploresABook mentees Tatenda and Yasmin planning their sideshow activities for Sunday.

Sideshows, field recordings and Pacman in the Park

This Sunday, 21 August, there will be a summer fete and community picnic in Gensing Gardens from noon to 3pm. It is the last of a series of summer events hosted by local arts organisation ATownExploresABook and funded by the Heritage Fund to mark the 150th anniversary of Gensing Gardens. HOT’s Erica Smith looks forward to the event.

Local residents and people who regularly use Gensing Gardens are invited to bring a picnic to share with their neighbours and to try out traditional fete activities with a modern twist which have been devised by the ATownExploresABook young mentees.

The first event of the day will be a musical instrument making workshop with Hannah Collisson at 11am. Families are invited to upcycle domestic waste into percussion and stringed instruments.

Yasmin Aishah has visited The Keep in Lewes to explore the early plans for the gardens, whilst Tatenda Michael Manyarara has built a jig-saw puzzle of recent history of the park. Other mentees have been looking at the town’s seaside history of Punch and Judy and traditional sideshow games.

Solar power wizard Arran will hook up the sun to Karl Horton’s retro arcade games which young and old are welcome to try out.

At 1pm, award-winning musician and composer Ruby Colley will launch ‘Shoon Akai’ (romani language for ‘listen here’) – a composition commissioned as part of this year’s ATownExploresABook festival in April. This is the second time that Ruby has worked with sound recordings in Gensing Gardens – Hear My Tree was recorded in the park in 2021.

Ruby taught students from Robsack Wood Primary Academy and Hastings Academy to make field recordings as they explored their local natural environments. These have been combined into a soundscape which will be broadcast from speakers within Gensing Gardens.

I have been working with Hastings Borough Council’s Tree Officer, Chris Wilken, on a ‘tree map’ of Gensing Gardens – there are over 150 trees in the park including some oaks that pre-date it, some Gingko Biloba trees and a mulberry tree planted by the local Baha’i group five years ago which has fruited for the first time this year.

Ceramicist Emma Harding will be running a drop-in clay workshop between 2 and 3pm.

At 3pm there will be a meeting of Friends of Gensing Gardens which anyone who lives nearby or uses Gensing Gardens regularly is welcome to attend. Friends of Gensing Gardens plans to give a voice to local residents so they can plan future activities and uses for their local green space. Cycle parking and a compost scheme are two of the suggestions that will be discussed at the meeting on Sunday.

Bring a picnic and something to sit on – meet your neighbours and explore the sideshow activities on Sunday from 11am for the musical instrument workshop all the way through to the Friends of Gensing Gardens meeting at 3pm. See you by the baby apple orchard on the Charles Road side of the park!

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