Hear the chimes of the ice cream van? It must mean summer is officially here and EEA will be in the driving seat as we embark on a new exciting venture alongside National Maritime Museum …in an ice cream van!
This summer EEA will be touring up and down England in a new commission to ask the nation; what are your maritime memories and what is your connection to the sea? Days in a deckchair or dug in behind a windbreak, sand in sandwiches, pebbles in flip flops. In the storm, in the calm, in the pub, fishermen, sailors, migration journeys, day-trippers. We will be travelling in our very own ice cream van which has been christened Maritime Memories Machine and instead of serving up ice cream, we’ll be whipping up a series of hands-on activities to help gather and trigger people’s memories & stories which are connected to the sea.
This new pop-up experience will be animated by EEA’s team of Associate Artists who will be in the role as Maritime Memory Catchers, the keepers (and catchers) of sea themed memories. These memories will fuel Maritime Memories Machine, taking it to its next location and more importantly, the stories collected will feature and inform National Maritime Museums new gallery called “Sea Things” which will launch in 2018.
Explore the smells and objects collected in our memory jars, read messages in bottles, listen to other people maritime memories using our Bluetooth headphones, fish for buoys in our conversation pool and share your message to the sea on the back of a paper seagull! You can meet the Maritime Memories Machine at 16 locations across; in Derby, Coventry, Leicester, Hull, Middlesborough, Stoke-on-Trent, Plymouth, Southampton, Portsmouth, Hastings, Jaywick, Great Yarmouth, Luton and Slough the Maritime Memories Machine will be popping up at libraries, parks, community centres and piers.
Keep up to date with our journey on social media using #YourSeaStories