The Voice of Billericay

We have reported previously on our participation in the Creative BasildON “Community Voices” Programme, where we are part of the “Billericay Voices” group.  The group commissioned Lizzy Mellish-Dix to create the ‘Billericay Art Trail’ of ‘Free Little Art Galleries’ (FLAGs) - a trail around Billericay of small art galleries.  The theme of FLAGs was Leave Art, Take Art, Love Art.  I.e. one leaves a piece of art in a FLAG, if it’s liked, it’s taken, and loved.

Creative BasildON has been busy with projects since the FLAGs, including a huge sculpture ofthe moon on display in St. Martins Basildon, and a very large “Owl and the Pussycat electromechanical wedding cake”.

Three More Years

Latest news - it has obtained three years of funding (the full amount requested of just under £1,000,000) from Art Council England, which means it can fund further Arts projects for £7,500 each.

So seven of the Billericay Voices group including President Stephen and Peter Greene met again at the human kind cafe to discuss such a new Art project for the town.

All present were asked to propose ideas for the project and these were then compared against each other with everybody making input before reaching a final consensus on the form of the project.

The idea is to concentrate on a project illustrating the history of Billericay for display at exhibition spaces within the tow.

Our leader from Creative BasildON, Hannah, took the consensus away to , as she said, create “a Texty Thing” which could be distributed to artists for their submissions in 2026.