Emma Critchley is a visual artist specialising in underwater photography and video.

Sadie Hennessy has presented "Souvenirs of Cliftonville" her exhibition of 14 specially commissioned portraits of local Cliftonville residents, displayed in a custom-made souvenir shop. The portraits have been developed by the artist during a 3 month residency at the Resort Studios. Each portrait celebrates a different aspect of Cliftonville, and draws upon the subjects' memories of living and working in the area. The artist has incorporated found ephemera from Cliftonville's heyday in the finished portraits and each portrait is a one-off digital collage.

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“Open See” – Alex Sturrock

Everything that drew me to the area originally still has a draw, the meeting of rural and urban, of international and local. People from across the globe live next door to each other a stones throw from a beautiful and desolate beach, in flats converted from grand houses that once housed the rich at play. The front doors are left open, on many the locks are busted, and people within the different communities are always dropping past on each other,  like an inner city council estate before the modern day security doors.

The area has an abundance of the contradictions and eccentricities that are hallmarks of modern Britain. Retirees rest next to a square full of young kids, creatives work happily in big cheap studios while their bikes are stolen and sold for parts, people swim blissfullly alone in an acre long tidal pool while big groups of the same faces share pain and laughs on the same doorsteps day in day out. I have seen Junkies get high in hallways next to reiki cleansing centres, & people talk openly in racist terms only for the next week see them go out their way to help people of the family they were talking about oblivious to what their words mean.

People who have grown up in Thanet see a different place to people who chose to live here because its offers refuge from London, and again people who chose to live here because of its beauty and have their eye on the future have a different way of seeing the area to those attracted to the cheap accommodation. These differing viewpoints are like faultlines pushing against each other in an evolving and developing place.

People talk openly here and some people will always enjoy the notoriety that comes with living in area of reputation, but also in area with so much transience people cling to things to unify them with what they think is the norm.

Kids play out and run wild, in a way that most inner city kids aren't getting the freedom to do any more which is something I really wanted to be a focus of the work, and feel we have done with some success. But this is still modern day Britain and the paranoia that our children are under constant attack is felt here also. So we had to concentrate the work on small groups and would seek contact with parents, instead of large groups of kids “playing out”, which unfortunately is where kids ride the line of freedom and adventure, and are at their most creative.

In reality the most successful part of the work was focussed on one family whose eldest son, Martin, became an integral part of the project, and I hope that he got as much out of it as I did from being invited to join them where the family is from in Slovakia and during my time spent with them in Cliftonville.

The Colombian artists Vividero Colectivo in collaboration with UK-based architect Studio Sam Causer researched the evolving role of the landscape and architecture of the English seaside in the expression and repression of the body, gender and sexuality. As a result of their research they conceived BLUSHING PAVILLON – a series of events including a temporary intervention at the seafront shelter in Palm Bay, Cliftonville.

http://www.vividerocolectivo.com/#/blushingpavilion/