The Great Promenade Show
Tom Grieve, Cinema Editor
The Great Promenade Show in Blackpool was, in some ways, born from necessity: in 1996, essential work started to raise the town’s South Shore Promenade by 2m, in order to defend the shorefront buildings from flooding. Blackpool Council’s Arts Team saw this as an opportunity; they approached over 50 international artists to request proposals for a series of artworks along the promenade, each reflecting the town’s unique identity, as well as working with the light, wind, sand and sea that were the location’s natural backdrop. A public vote narrowed things down to ten installations, further developed by the artists before being permanently installed between 2001 and 2005. The final series of outdoor works includes one of the biggest disco balls in the world by artist Michael Trainor, which features 47,000 mirrors, as well as a High Tide Organ by John Gooding, which makes music from the swell of the advancing tide.
