Burning the Clocks

If you live in or around Brighton & Hove, one of the biggest events of the year is Burning The Clocks. Thousands of people mark the darkest day of the year with a beautiful procession of lights through the city centre, contemplating what is no longer and looking forwards to the future. The streets are awash with the sight of the community bringing paper lanterns out onto the streets, each marked with poignant messages, in a modern tradition which provides a thoughtful counter to the excesses of the Christmas season.

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The procession culminating with a huge fire on the pebbles of Brighton’s beach has led a few people to speculate the event’s foundations are in pagan tradition. But Rob Batson, from organisers Same Sky, tells me that’s wide of the mark.

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“It's funny, really. We do get that label, but we've never described it ourselves as that or even aspired to it. I think people just assume it is, because we place it on the Winter Solstice.” There's so many Solstice traditions, perhaps people just assume it fits in with those. But by design it stands as a unique event, with no basis in established practice or religious custom. 

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“What is really powerful about the event, is the big spectacle, with the burning and parade, but people bring their own meaning to it,” says Rob. “This is about all of us.” The Same Sky approach has been to strip out any kind of iconography in Burning The Clocks, so it opens up to all sections of the community, who are welcome to place their own significance on the proceedings.

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“Last year, we had the Sikhs of Sussex at the front of the parade, next a Bhangra band that we invite. We can hang whatever we want on this event. We can invite whoever we like. And we really love that, because every year we try to think which communities are not on the parade? How do we get them involved?”

Burning the Clocks began in 1993, with the aim of providing an uplifting celebration in direct contradiction to the excesses of a modern commercial Christmas. For the participants, preparations commence in early November, when they start building willow and paper lanterns; many inscribing them with personal messages and aspirations for the coming year. After being paraded through the city, these are finally burnt beneath a huge fireworks display.

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“It was well before winter light installations became commonplace. We started very small, just making some cool things, and doing this slightly silly event. It is all a bit nonsensical. We’re burning clocks. What’s that meant to mean? It’s so ridiculous that it's hard to ascribe anything to it, other than having fun and people’s own experience.”

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Rob says he often talks to people who built the clock lanterns to remember someone they've lost, or tragedy during the preceding the year. “We really try to make space for that. You know, the winter isn't always a happy season for everyone, naturally. In the last 30 years, Burning The Clocks has really become this event for people to memorialise. If you look at a lot of the lanterns on the parade, you're gonna see names and dates.”

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While Same Sky left Burning The Clocks completely open to personal interpretation, it does heavily feed into mankind’s love of ritual. Communities love coming together for a common purpose. And humans have always been slightly hypnotised by the contradictory gift of fire. While it destroys, it also offers comfort. “It’s pageantry. There’s the sum of costuming, creation, music and arranging people. It all comes together, in parades and spectacles and, yeah… the burning of things.” We’ve also always been drawn towards light. We admire sunsets and sunrises, gasp at fireworks and our culture is alive with figurative phrases and language which reference illumination as a positive thing. Although, the light captivating us increasingly comes from LED screens. 

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“A big part of the event explores our relationship to darkness. The event is about people making lanterns which bring light to the darkest day of the year. There is a moment when, after the fire goes down and the fireworks are finished, when there’s several thousand people together in the darkness. I think that’s significant.”

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Burning the Clocks isn’t the only event Same Sky produce during the year. This community-led arts organisation also stages Brighton Festival’s Children’s Parade, along with similar projects across the South East. Set up in 1987, they set out to create imaginative activities and workshops which strengthen communities, inspire individuals and brighten people's lives.

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“We're kept pretty busy all year round,” says Rob. “We do a lot of work in Kent with our organization called Cohesion Plus. Our creative director, John Barrow, also runs Glow Wild at Wakehurst. It's really varied.  Right now, we’re gearing up to run the Maidstone winter lights and installation at Ebbsfleet. We’re also trying to get a few carnivals in the north up and running. We try to put our best work into Burning The Clocks, but there's a lot of stuff going on throughout the year.”

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Same Sky’s work engages directly with the community to produce a wide range of events, combining the visual and performing arts. They act as a resource for schools and other community groups supplying information and specialist advice and a programme of masterclasses, training courses and residencies. They have a proven track record in producing site specific events and installations, permanent and temporary public art.

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Much of their work is supported by a deeper philosophical conversation. Last year’s theme for Burning The Clocks was inspired by 1977’s Voyager probe mission, along with an eloquent passage from Carl Sagan's The Pale Blue Dot. 

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The latter asks us to: “Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

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In addition to Sagan’s words, which highlights how interconnected we truly are, the theme also reminds us of the welcome Brighton & Hove offers to so many displaced people on their individual voyages.

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While Burning The Clocks has been formed out of nothing, with no link to the past of specific practices, does the team behind it think the event will become a local custom itself? “We're trying our best to make that happen,” says Rob. “You know, it's only in its 30th year, or 28th full one, but it's kind of become a tradition. We will have to let go of it eventually, so we have been thinking of how we can give up more of it to the community, so it can happen without Same Sky. That’s kind of a long-term goal, but for now we’re the people closing the beach and hauling pallets around at nine in the morning.

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None of this would be happening without the support of the community, whether its individual contributions on the night, Arts Council funding or generous contributions from local businesses; as well as help from Brighton Fringe, Brighton & Hove City Council, Brighton Winter Fayre, Brighton Dome and Festival, and Sea Lanes. There are also important artistic partnerships keeping the event interesting. As well as over 2,000 parade participants, with 30,000 spectators, the event involves a dozen local bands, dancers and artists. Last year’s parade welcomed members of the city’s deaf community for the first time, including Omeima Mudawi-Rowlings MBE, a Brighton based deaf British-Sudanese combined textile artist. Other artists and groups in the lantern parade included Manor Road Gym in East Brighton, Brighton Table Tennis Club, mASCot, Unified Rhythm, Rap ‘n’ Rhyme, BARCO, Woodcraft Folk and local Guides and Scouts groups.

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“This event only happens because people show up, and because people put a lot of work in,” offers Rob. “I don't even set my eyes on everything. There's just so much that goes into making it happen. So as much as we can claim ownership of the event, it’s really owned by every single person who's on the parade. If I were to get hit by a bus, or Same Sky suddenly shut down, I imagine you'd go out the next year on the stones, and there'd probably be 25 people setting fire to grandfather clock…”

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www.samesky.co.uk 

www.facebook.com/burningtheclocks 

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