THE T100 Festival of Walking, Talking & Making will return to the borough this year with a number of events planned for June to showcase the key workers of Thurrock who have held the community together over the past two years

'T100 People' will take place from the 2nd to 25th of June and will feature a series of events, walks, talks and community celebrations along the Thames Estuary, including the return of The Thank You Dance to Thurrock, a section of The Queen's Platinum Jubilee Pageant created by Kinetika – a company which specialises in creating large-scale hand-painted silks to feature in community projects it organises.

T100 People launches on Thursday, 2 June with a flag procession into Purfleet-on-Thames, Kinetika's home in Thurrock.

Here the community will join in a special Thames Community Forum event culminating in the lighting of the beacon, one of 1,500 beacons across the country to be lit for the Queen's Jubilee.

Over the following three weeks, 12 more walks will criss-cross Thurrock taking in towns, villages and green spaces with each event highlighting a different community value and key worker sector.

Alongside the walks are a programme of community celebrations with picnics, talks, music, performances and lots of flag waving as highlights from previous T100 years are revisited.

This year's T100 festival has a very special link to the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Pageant. Kinetika has been commissioned to create a special section of the Pageant, with multigenerational participants drawn from across Thurrock, London and Milton Keynes.

Building on this as well as the themes and values identified in each place visited over the last two T100 festivals, T100 Calling and T100 Dreaming, T100 People will honour the people of the local area and the wider Thurrock community. The images of seven inspirational local key workers, who represent the wider Thurrock community, will be seen on a series of silk flags in the Thank You Dance at the June 5 Pageant in London and throughout the T100 Festival in Thurrock, when their stories will be shared at specially devised events

Paramedic Stevie Smith with her scroll.

T100 People will culminate on Sunday 25 June with a spectacular finale at the Port of Tilbury, as The Thank You Dance comes home to Thurrock. Leading a procession from Tilbury Town to the Port Open Day at the Cruise Terminal, the parade will celebrate all the amazing people across the borough who have helped make T100 a success and who have worked so hard to keep their communities safe and secure during the last two years.

In 2020, T100 Calling saw communities designing and making large-scale mandalas using various materials that reflected the challenges and themes identified, such as plastic waste and ceramics collected from the beach, as well as leaves, flowers, fruits and vegetables.

It was a call to action to respond to the climate crisis and take positive steps to work towards a different tomorrow. T100 Dreaming 2021 followed the call to action with a series of workshops to reimagine the future of Thurrock in relation to the themes from the previous year.

T100 has always had the community at its heart and this year it has established community hubs in different locations across Thurrock. The festival will highlight the values of each of the hubs and a key worker character will lead walkers to each Thurrock site in a carnival procession, culminating in a finale where all the characters and community hubs come together to share a collective moment and the T100 Dream which has been two years in the making, will be realised.

Partners in the festival this year include Essex Book Festival, Essex Wildlife Trust, Thurrock Lifestyle Solutions, The Port of Tilbury, local schools and businesses, community volunteers, young carers and the Thurrock based theatre company, The Complete Commedia Company.

All T100 People events are free to attend and can seen and booked via: http://t100festival.co.uk/2022-walks/. All walks in the festival programme are led by experienced guides and Kinetika stewards. There are no restrictions, and everyone is welcome to join in with the festival.

To find out more and keep up to date with T100 news, go to http://www.t100festival.co.uk