When I discovered that the venue for the Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year Heat was Blackpool someone very dear to me sent a note to me quoting J.B. Priestly who wrote these words in 1941.

It read:

‘Blackpool is a great, roaring, spangled beast. It is a hearty democratic resort…that has always catered for working folk who were dancing in the great ballrooms long before dance palaces sprung up everywhere’.

I’d visited this northern sea-side town as a child. Like many, I’d witnessed the brightness of ‘the lights’ in dark, autumnal nights spread along the long sea-front marking a line between land and the irish sea, made invisible by the light pollution and glare of the lights but nevertheless – menacing in its nighttime presence.

I thought I knew this place. But this alternative narrative that had been presented delivered a new dignity to the place. One that I ‘d previously lacked the insight to consider.

My close confidants’ depth of intellect, compassion for the underdog or badly done to, wisdom of thought and being had reframed my clumsy assumptions about a town made famous by its ageing Victorian piers, an iconic tower fashioned on its more exotic cousin: the Eiffel Tower, the long rolling promenade and an eclectic collection of rides and rollercoasters that have, through time delighted and terrified generations in equal measure.

Yet, that wasn’t the whole story. Other equally distinctive elements are at play in this celebrated northern town; Blackpool has two worlds that exist in a happy symbiosis and form part of its DNA.

Whilst being a place of manufactured entertainment, it is also one surrounded by those vast natural elements over which we have no control: the sleeping giant that is the mesmerising but unforgiving Irish sea and the vast expanse of changeable and unpredictable sky, both playing out their distinctive roles along a stage that is a long seven-mile coastline.

Each of these elements are as much a part of Blackpool as Blackpool is a part of them: each would not exist without the other. And it was that exchange that spoke to me – on that day – and through that spirit of place: a ‘tension’ that I wanted to capture as part of that reality.

And long after the event, for me personally Blackpool continued to deliver. As with all great enablers and mentors, my confidant’s re-framing lingered. I developed an understanding that found me imagining collective past joys of dancehall revelers and romancers.  Ultimately Blackpool presented a fine example of that which I had known to be true: that the past and present are inextricably linked and to create in isolation or ignorance of a places’ past, seems negligent of its richness.

In Blackpool’s case, I sensed this richness in the imagined quests of visitors from the past who sought a universal experience of finding a common purpose through the pursuit of joy. Listen hard – and it’s possible to imagine and hear the musical organs and tunes played in those Blackpool dancehalls of the past. Look hard enough and it’s easy to imagine those ‘wakes-weeks’ hordes dressed in Sunday best chasing brief and precious respite from hard, tough lives.

Layer upon layer – through times past and present, this is Blackpool’s bequest. A common purpose in the pursuit of joy: delivering an interactive interplay between each generation that will continue to play out with an inherent vigour and energy that is this places’ legacy.

Blackpool: The original party place.

November 2022

Sky Arts