What if it were owned by the people?
From which direction is the wind coming? Can you feel the breeze on your face?
Do you ever look out at the wind farm in the Thames Estuary?
What does it do? How does it work?
Does it provide power for homes around the Estuary?
Who does it belong to?
How much money does it make and who gets it?
What if it were owned by the people?
What if the winds bound us together?
Estuary 2025
The People will Possess the Wind was commissioned by Estuary Festival for Estuary 2025.
Estuary Festival is an independent arts organisation that shines a spotlight on the Thames Estuary through high-quality contemporary arts programmes.
Estuary 2025 (21-29 June 2025) is the 3rd edition of the contemporary arts festival celebrating the stories, places and people of the Estuary. Through the theme of ‘Vessels’, Estuary 2025 looks beyond the boats and ships of the Thames Estuary, to explore how communities, people, flora, fauna and even art events might be thought of as vessels too, carrying stories, memories and ideas.
The People Will Possess the Wind in the Estuary 2025 is the latest version of a project that began in Liverpool Bay in September 2018 as a collaboration between Platform and Artists4Corbyn. Commissioned by Lena Simic and Gary Anderson of The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home in Liverpool, a crew journeyed by boat to Burbo Bank Wind Farm to celebrate the possible future of this resource.
The event and first The People Will Possess the Wind sail were presented at The World Transformed at the Labour Party Conference 2018. An accompanying booklet was published. and a motion passed by the Walton Constituency Labour Party.
A second version took place in the Thames Estuary as part of Platform’s Crude Britannia project within the Estuary 2021 festival, May 2021. The project included video conversations between former workers at the Coryton Oil Refinery and Isle of Grain gas plant brought together with participants from Algeria and Nigeria.
The project features in the book Crude Britannia – how oil shaped a nation, by James Marriott & Terry Macalister (Pluto 2021). Available online and in all bookstores.