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Creative Island with Anneka Rice

·24 min·2 clips
Annika Rice explores why this tiny island has attracted poets like Tennyson and Dickens for over 150 years.
Annika Rice introduces the episode by reflecting on her personal connection to the Isle of Wight, where she paints and writes. She questions why the island has attracted creative figures like Tennyson, Keats, and Dickens for over 150 years, suggesting factors like isolation, light, and community. Rice visits Newport to meet Gavin Stride at Key Arts, a creativity hub; Stride describes Creative Island as an organization fostering collaboration and notes the island's vibrant amateur and professional arts scene. She then travels to Freshwater Bay to meet Joy Gidden, a trustee of the Isle of Wight Literary Festival, who shares anecdotes about Tennyson's home attracting Victorian artists like Millais and Rossetti, and mentions visits by Prince Albert. Rice next visits Binnell Studios to interview glass artist Brown Marriott, who explains how he creates coastal scenes from recycled glass scraps, and painter Celia Wilkinson, who discusses how the changing landscape and climate influence her semi-abstract paintings. Finally, Rice meets garden designer Jerry Price in St Helens, who talks about applying her fine art and sculpture background to coastal gardens, emphasizing elements like movement and negative space. Throughout, Rice emphasizes themes of isolation, community, and the island's natural inspiration, concluding that connectivity within the local community is key to its creativity.

As heard by us

A portrait of the Isle of Wight that finds creativity in light, nature, and community.

Creative Island with Anneka Rice presents the Isle of Wight as a place where creativity, memory, and community overlap. Anneka Rice speaks from a long attachment to the island, and that personal pull gives the piece its shape.

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Why you'd press play

If you want a slow island listen about why the Isle of Wight keeps pulling creative work out of people.

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