From Thurrock, to the world

Ali Pretty is the founding member and artistic director of the international outdoor arts company Kinetika. Here she tells Essex Life about here passion for history, Thurrock and its links to the world.

- Ali Pretty

I LANDED in Thurrock in May 2014, not by boat but by the A13. As artistic director of Kinetika, a London based arts organisation, I’d made the decision to move from Hackney to Purfleet, lured by the beautiful brand new Acme studios. Looking out at the River Thames and the Dartford Bridge, all I could see was container ships and trucks.

On my first foray into Thurrock, we drove round and round roundabouts, under bridges and along bypasses through what seemed to be miles and miles of distribution parks that all led one way or another to the citadel of the Lakeside shopping experience.

So when Debbie Maynard, head of public health at Thurrock Council, approached me to develop a walking arts festival for the borough, I couldn’t imagine how that would be possible.

‘Can you walk 100 miles around Thurrock?’ I asked.

‘Well there are many footpaths,’ Debbie explained to me. ‘It’s just that most people don’t know about them.’

And so the adventure began. Today, I know you can walk 100 miles around Thurrock, because in 2015, the first year of our festival Thurrock 100, we did.

Every day for 10 days we walked 10 miles through fields of potatoes, along the banks of the Mardyke, across rail tracks, clambering down gorges, trampling the concrete path by the side of the seawall and past a mile of graffiti, a drove of wild horses, two ancient forts and more. 100 miles later, we had discovered that Thurrock is jam-packed with hidden stories.