Theatre of the Sea
- Heather Fearfield
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
LDA Design has been speaking about its project working with Portsmouth City Council, Coastal Partners, Royal HaskoningDHV, Wessex Archaeology and VolkerStevin and more, on a major infrastructure scheme spanning 4.5km of Southsea’s coastline, designed to protect 100,000 homes and 700 businesses from flood risk.
It says:
'Art in public spaces can enliven and enrich, it can help people to feel more connected to a place and to better understand what they might be seeing, hearing or sensing.'
In Southsea, Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, has unveiled ‘Theatre of the Sea’, his poem inspired by the new amphitheatre steps that sweep around the 500-year-old Southsea Castle. The poem is now set into the new seawall.
Armitage was a Geography student at the University of Portsmouth forty years ago and so the city holds special meaning to him. As a student he says that he found the sea consoling.
But when seeking a subject for his new work, it was the drama of the promenade terraces by LDA Design and team and the views they offered across the Solent that inspired him most, and the way they created a relationship between the sea and ‘the audience’. The sonnet fits perfectly into the fourteen sections of the new wall and was unveiled as part of Portsmouth’s Year of Literature and Literacy.
LDA Design comments:
'The project has been managed in such a way that it is creating not only a safer place but a better place, with new marine planting, seating, play, spaces to socialise and a design that celebrates local heritage, including Southsea Castle and Long Curtain Moat – both nationally important scheduled monuments.'
‘Theatre of the Sea’ is part of an exciting programme of public art projects planned for Southsea seafront by the city council to help activate the restored seafront. These projects will celebrate local histories and artists, as well as involving national figures.
Click here for a short interview with Simon Armitage and for a reading of ‘Theatre of the Sea’.
All photos by Harry Scott, Seafront Arts Programme Officer, Portsmouth City Council.
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