The Tide is London’s answer to the Manhattan High Line
Taking place alongside this weekend’s Pride celebrations is Turning Tides, a brand new art, music and film festival on Greenwich Peninsula. LGBTQ collective Sink the Pink kick things off tonight, performing to crowds outside the O2 Arena amid inflated water droplets by LA-based artist Geronimo.
Turning Tides Festival celebrates the opening of the first kilometre of what will eventually be a five kilometre elevated park linking all seven of the new neighbourhoods on Greenwich Peninsula. Known as “London’s High Line”, The Tide is set to host a punchy festival programme spread over multiple venues and two weekends, which has pulled in an impressive roster of home-grown and international talent.
It was ten years ago that New York opened its elevated garden route, the High Line, which was an instant hit. Its co-developer, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, has partnered with Greenwich Peninsula’s Chinese developer, Knight Dragon, to bring an architectural green walkway to snake through the total redevelopment of this previously post-industrial toxic wasteland.
The Tide’s concept ticks all the right boxes, using culture (including artworks by Damien Hirst, Allen Jones and Morag Myerscough joining existing works by Antony Gormley, Richard Wilson and Gary Hume), green space, the outdoors and the river to elevate the development itself.
“A lot of the people who come to the O2 don’t know the river is just there,” says Kerri Sibson, director of Greenwich Peninsula development as she takes me along the The Tide’s zebra-striped walkway.
As a peninsula, the long sweep of the majestic Thames is the area’s biggest asset. Knight Dragon took ownership of Greenwich Peninsula in 2013, so we are only six years into its 25-year masterplan.
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“The peninsula is going to be constantly evolving,” Sibson says, “so The Tide becomes this wonderful ribbon that we weave in as we develop a different neighbourhood.”
As a name, The Tide not only connects people to the river but echoes the day-to-day surges of people coming into the area.
Benjamin Gilmartin, as partner-in-charge of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, says The Tide’s architecture interacts with and absorbs the flow of people along its zebra-striped bridges and paths. These include routes for walking and jogging, decked sections for looking out over the urban landscape, and seating areas with benches wired with meditation soundscapes for use with an app.
Sibson tells me that the hoardings only came down in the early hours of the morning, and as I meander from the elevated stretch onto the riverside walkway, people are starting to discover The Tide for the first time.
A breeze blows in the rigging of anchored yachts in the Thames beneath the Emirates cable car overhead, and the clinking mingles with the rustling of the wind and tide on the reed beds that line the shore. People are reading books on new wooden loungers; there’s a whiff of marijuana.
I wander onto a jetty next to Damian Hirst’s Hydra and Kali sculpture and discover a new café/workshop space filled with plants.
I stroll over to London’s longest permanent picnic table by Studio Morison and find a group of four people challenging each other to jump the width of it. People are finding their own ways to enjoy The Tide, as thousands more will this weekend.
Turning Tides Festival at The Tide, Greenwich Peninsula, takes place this weekend, from 6pm tonight, and 12-14 July. Free entry (greenwichpeninsula.co.uk)