The Seafort Project 


Stephen Turner was in residence alone on the derelict searchlight tower of the Shivering Sands Seafort for 36 days from 4 August until 9 September 2005. A time period corresponding to a tour of duty in the fort during WWII.

The Seafort Project was an artistic exploration of solitude, investigating how one's experience of time and place changes in isolation, and what creative contemplation means in a twenty first century context. A book documenting the project is available.

The Seaforts - History

The Shivering Sands and Redsands Maunsell Sea Forts were built in 1942 at Northfleet, Kent and are six-eight nautical miles off the East Kent coast. They were created as anti-aircraft and observation platforms to disrupt overflying by the Luftwaffe on bombing runs to London.

The forts are visible from the Kent and Essex coastlines as small interruptions to the horizon. De-commissioned in the 1950's, standing derelict and disused these utilitarian and brutal concrete structures are poignant reminders of past conflict. They have enormous presence, and a sinister beauty.

Abandoned after the war they were brought, briefly, back into use in the 1960s by pirate radio stations.

The forts have stood derelict and disused since then. They've been described in the Guardian as "some of Britain's most surreal and hauntingly beautiful architectural relics".    The seaforts' structural engineer, Guy Maunsell, went on to use the technology to build the first oil rigs in the North Sea. Project Redsand has been established to secure the future of the Forts.

Seafort - Education

The Forts education programme was a year-long project devised in response to Stephen Turner’s residence on the WWII sea forts. Artists Jo Addison, Alex Schady and Raine Smith worked with forts education project co-ordinator Alice Walton at two Whitstable schools. At Community College Whitstable they worked with groups of mixed age and ability and members of staff from across the curriculum. At Whitstable Junior School children from the final year provided a valuable counterpoint. With artists whose skills included photography, video, sculpture and installation a challenging creative and responsive programme evolved.

The first term tackled themes in Stephen’s work, investigating when and how you might feel isolated and any positive or negative associations of the word. The students built a series of idealised forts where they might escape if they needed to be alone. These became the basis for an installation linking all the structures with a series of bridges and tunnels, stop motion animation and a live action film. We explored themes (isolation, independence, freedom) and techniques (construction, filming, drawing) that could be used to unpick the Seaforts project itself.

In the second term we unveiled Stephen’s proposal and considered the implications of living on a rusty WWII fort in the middle of the Thames Estuary to a barrage of questions. Where there toilet facilities? How would the artist communicate? Would he miss anyone? How would he collect food and water? We devised a series of activities that solicited direct responses from Stephen. The students made messages in bottles, photographed their own work and made postcards, they filmed themselves as TV interviewers and all this material was sent to Stephen who responded with original hand drawn postcards for each individual student. Stephen then came into school and took part in a press conference where questions were answered live.

The final term climaxed with a performance about communication on Whitstable Beach. The students made models of themselves holding project information attached to helium balloons, then released to spread news of the project. Grapefruit boats were launched out toward Stephen in the Forts. Gifts were wrapped from each student and supportive T Shirts designed to be taken to the Forts.