FROM GRIT TO HIGH RISE is a new project, starting in the summer of 2025, supported by Arts Council England, aiming to create a original piece of drama and performance focusing on the rise and fall of three Lowestoft communities.

Led by Lowestoft born writer and poet Dean Parkin, From Grit to High Rise is the follow-up to his popular theatre show, Pearls from The Grit, which toured East Anglia in 2018/19. The year-long project will work in schools and care homes and include an exhibition in a pop-shop, all designed to generate new content, stories and memories.

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Poetry People co-director and producer of From Grit to High Rise, Naomi Jaffa said, 'This Arts Council funding couldn't come at a better time. People have been constantly asking for a follow-up to Dean's amazing Pearls from The Grit show. It's vital to record and bring to life the stories of Lowestoft's lost communities before it's too late.'

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The project will enable Dean to team up again with long-time collaborator pianist and composer Maurice Horhut who provided the atmospheric music and memorable songs for Pearls from The Grit.

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From Grit to High Rise will also allow Dean to explore more of the extensive Jack Rose Collection. Dean says, 'Jack has an especially fine selection of pictures chronicling the demise of those north-end streets — Mariners Street, Duke's Head Street and Clapham Road — which have rarely been seen and have been lovingly digitised from the original negatives by Bert Collyer.'

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An exhibition of these photographs will be central to a launch event in a pop-up shop in the town in early September, designed to capture memories of these lost communities and streets, in time to take them into the primary schools in the autumn term.

The project is a collaboration between Poetry People CIC and The Seagull Theatre, made possible by Arts Council England

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