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Now in its third iteration, the Folkestone Triennial is going some way to reversing the negative perceptions of it as a town in decline. This year, the eight-week festival, curated for the first time by Lewis Biggs, brings together a mix of interventions that respond to Folkestone’s past as a resort and major port.

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Words Veronica Simpson

Photography Johnny Tucker and Thierry Bal

In the right hands, curating a public art festival can be a form of deep urban therapy: the curator begins a slow and careful examination of the patient and then, using a combination of diagnostic tools (historical exploration, conversation, creative play, storytelling), the selected artists tease out the most interesting of the place's overt and hidden narratives. Art then becomes the subtle magic or medicine that delivers those stories back to the townspeople in visually striking and witty ways that will heighten or reframe their perception of what this town is, how it got that way and what it means to live there.

Andy Goldsworthy's work in its testing phase. Photo Credit: Johnny Tucker

Lewis Biggs has been practising his form of urban art therapy for a while now. Director of Tate Liverpool from 1990 to 2000, curator of the Liverpool Biennial from 2000 to 2011, he was instrumental in bringing the European City of Culture event to Liverpool in 2008. So he knows better than most what public art can and can't achieve. But can his first curatorial effort for Folkestone's Triennial help to reverse the internal and external negative perceptions of this decommissioned port, struggling with high unemployment and the hostilities that can arise with each fresh wave of immigrants landing on the town from nearby Dover? With two triennials already under its belt, curated by Andrea Schlieker, what is Biggs hoping to achieve with its third?

Folkestone Triennial curator Lewis Biggs. Photo Credit: Johnny Tucker

When the list of his selected artists was first released in March this year, it looked promising on paper: an interesting mix of international and local artists deploying a broad spectrum of approaches and materials. Many of them were strongly architectural and ambitious in scale. Among the 19 assorted works there is a wind-powered lift, created by edgy Ljubljana and Berlin-based artist Marjetica Potrc and Ooze Architects, that rises 25m to the top of East Folkestone's Foord Road Railway Viaduct. Pablo Bronstein has created a Baroquefantasy beach hut.

The old Folkestone street where Goldsworthy's installation is situated. Photo Credit: Johnny Tucker

Land-art superstar Andy Goldsworthy has coated an internal staircase of a shop in the Old Town in rich, Kent-beach-infused clay, along with an adjacent shop window, to disintegrate poetically during the course of the eight-week Triennial. muf art/architecture has transformed a derelict site in the heart of Folkestone's Old Town into a shared public park. Local artists Diane Dever and Jonathan Wright have been conducting a form of artistic dowsing, flagging up the subterranean existence of the river Pent via a series of surreal water towers (wittily titled Pent Houses, to highlight the fact that water increases the value of real estate).

Gabriel Lester's climbable bamboo pole sculpture is clearly visibly to the right of the ship-like Grand Burstin Hotel that dominates the Seafront. Photo Credit: Johnny Tucker

International art legend Yoko Ono is flying in from New York to sprinkle her cultural fairy dust over various venues, with at least one text-based work around the theme of Peace, linking to Folkestone's role as embarkation point for departing soldiers during the two world wars (and for recent veterans marking anniversaries).

Alex Hartley's work Vigil, is a habitable lookout point suspended from the highest point of the Grand Burstin. Photo Credit: Thierry bal

There is a specially commissioned music, film, photography, and even some digital daftness: Detroit-based design studio Rootoftwo has created a 'neurotic early worrying system' consisting of five headless-chicken sculptures perched on various rooftops, which rotate at various speeds according to how many fear-generating keywords are currently being transmitted by Reuters newsfeeds.

Visitors will be encouraged to climb Gabriel Lester's bamboo sculpture to gain a different viewpoint on Folkestone

If you wanted to appeal to as wide a range of tastes and interests as possible, this would seem to be a pretty good formula. But there is no formula, says Biggs. 'It is a good idea to have names that are recognised internationally and it's a good idea to have artists involved who really know a lot about the place. So that was the big picture. In terms of finding the right artists for the right opportunity it was a bit more intuitive.'

A wind-powered lift by Marjetica Potrc and Ooze Architects carries people to the top of this viaduct

The intuition was underpinned by some deep geographical and cultural immersion. Biggs was a historian before he became an art historian and curator. He also grew up in Kent, so the economic and sociological issues that affect this edge of England are familiar to him. But still he spent a lot of time delving into the personal and civic perspectives of its townspeople. In this, he was helped immeasurably by his team at the Creative Foundation, a charity founded by local entrepreneurs and philanthropists, the De Haan family, which underpins most of the creative investment in Folkestone, as well as commissioning and partially funding the Triennial. Says Biggs: 'The Creative Foundation unlocked a lot of doors. All I had to say was, "I'm doing the next Triennial", and people would want to talk to me.

One of five headless chicken weathervanes by Rootoftwo

So I spoke with the town centre manager, shopkeepers, people who have been long-term residents and incomers, and local artists, who are of course a very good source of insight... The process of research is very much the same in a gallery or museum. I wouldn't dream of making an exhibition without knowing what the previous programme had been or what the audience profile was. These are fundamental aspects of what we do as curators.'

Jyll Bradley's sculpture on the site of the old gas works draws on the structures of typical Kent hop fields. Photo Credit: Thierry Bal

However, Biggs' approach is not the norm -- at least not the norm with big public art festivals, according to Alastair Upton, executive director at the Creative Foundation and one of the figures instrumental in appointing Biggs. Upton had worked with him in Liverpool previously and says: 'We share a common understanding of art and where it fits into regeneration.

One of Diane Dever and Jonathan Wright's water towers, this one sited atop Alison Brookes Architects' Quarterhouse building Photo Credit: Johnny Tucker

With the 2008 and 2011 Triennials it was much more about the curator choosing an artist and the artist responding to the town. Lewis has embedded himself into the town, looked at where the energy is, what needs to happen... and then found the artist. He's briefed the artist and discussed what they're going to do. And that's made the difference. You have to engage with the community so that you understand what you're working with.'

Something & Son's Chip Shop that farms fish and grows potatoes in a closed eco-system. Photo Credit: Thierry bal

The key narrative for 2014, for Biggs, was: 'How to make the best use of the past for the future.' To depict the future, you need lashings of imagination, he says -- which is why artists, richly blessed with the stuff, are best for the job.

The device many of the artists have turned to in response to this brief, is that of the lookout. Folkestone town is carved out of a valley, with a high clifftop ridge surrounding the bowl of the harbour and steep hills providing multiple vistas across and beyond the town. Some have responded literally. For example, Alex Hartley is using state-of-the-art climbing technology to place an inhabited lookout point on the roof of the Grand Burstin Hotel -- the chunky, white ocean-liner-inspired bulwark that guards the harbour. Gabriel Lester has constructed a quirky and delicate stepped structure out of bamboo that nestles into the disused railway viaduct spanning the harbour, offering views back onto the town.

muf architecture/art's Mark Lemanski above the progressing Payers Park project. Photo Credit: Johnny Tucker

Looking out is also the dynamic that underpins the strategic positioning of the pieces, drawing people into and across areas they may not otherwise visit, either as residents or tourists. For example, from one of Dever and Wright's shiny new 'water towers', you can see Marjetica Potrc's wind-powered lift as well as the glittering geometry of Jyll Bradley's installation, Green/ Light. The effect of this positioning is to set up a network of new connections between the artworks and their sites. To continue the therapeutic metaphor, it's as if the artworks are acting as acupuncture points, activating the latent energy and directing it along new meridians.

But, if knowing where the pressure points might be and which artist to deploy there, is Biggs' skill, the quality of the artists' interventions -- the richness and resonance of their narratives and aesthetics -- are also integral to the patient's response.

The works seem to cluster naturally into four different, authentic, Folkestone narratives: dereliction and neglect; creativity, curiosity and enterprise; evolution and early settlement; and evocations of Folkestone's grand 19th and 20th-century past as a resort and major port.

Sarah Staton's sculpture-cum-shelter Steve which overlooks the beautiful harbor. Photo Credit: Johnny Tucker

Dereliction is writ large in Jyll Bradley's Green/Light work, a light installation inspired by the agricultural architecture of hop fields. On the site of the demolished gas works, which has lain disused and unloved since 1968, it provokes questions about corporate, institutional and civic neglect. It was here that the first electricity was generated for Folkestone, and where the gas works once employed many local people. Not only is it symbolic of the toxic waste that still lies buried under ground, but it's a 'symbol of human waste' says Bradley, flagging up the cavalier way in which industry casts people and towns aside when more convenient or economical alternatives are presented.

Bradley was born in Folkestone and grew up in Kent, with the hop fields' delicate cats-cradles of poles, wires and string an integral part of her youthful landscape. She says: ''I always had a deep desire to build a hop garden. There's something remarkable about the architecture of them. The whole technology of hop gardens is about building something that brings the maximum amount of light in through the top to the plant below.'

Instead of plants, Bradley's hop garden is festooned with long and slender Perspex panels, one side an iridescent greenish yellow and the other mirrored. Internal LEDs light them at night, and sunlight by day, casting intriguing, geometric shapes, colour and shadows across the white aggregate that cover the site's rubble-strewn surface. Says Bradley: 'The piece is activated through people engaging with it. That's what I'm most looking forward to -- seeing people within the space.'

Tim Etchell's neon word-based installation in the evocative, now-derelict old harbour station, alongside the control tower. Photo Credit: Thierry Bal

Curiosity and enterprise are manifest in a structure being built on the flat, black roof of the local sixth-form centre (another fruit of the De Haan family's investments). Something and Son -- aka Andy Merritt and Paul Smyth -- have conjured a greenhouse laboratory for the growing of fish and chips. Inspired by sustainable technology, it grows potato plants using 'aeroponics' (suspended on strings, the potatoes will be watered with steam), 'aquaponic' pea plants and fish that are farmed in specially adapted tanks creating a zero waste energy cycle and miniature ecosystem. They are hoping to recruit members of the sixth form to maintain and harvest the produce, selling it to the local fish and chip shops and, with the school, keeping the profits. Merritt and Smyth would like to see it taken on by the school in the long term.

Among the art works representing Folkestone's grand past as a seaside town, Pablo Bronstein's beach hut is a magnificent confection evoking past craftsmanship: a fantasy beach hut 'in the style of Nicholas Hawksmoor'. Bronstein says: 'There is a lack of important 17th and 18th-century architecture in this part of the world. There's nothing by a major architect until the early 19th century. So, this is a slightly tongue-in-cheek plug in the historical fabric.' Beautifully crafted out of wood and designed to last at least six years, it stands out among its utilitarian, pastel-painted beach hut brethren like a rather sombre wedding cake in a tray of fondant fancies.

One of the sculptures that form Strange Cargo's The Luckiest Place on Earth installation under a bridge near the main train station. Photo Credit: Thierry Bal

This grandiose seafront structure strikes one as potentially the iconic image of the Triennial; the one that will spread virally throughout the mediasphere, revealing Folkestone's charm and wit, its traditions along with its ambition. In the same way that Antony Gormley's 100 rusting iron men (Another Place), installed across Crosby Beach for the 2008 Biennial, suddenly 'revealed' Liverpool to the rest of the world as the kind of place in which really provocative and interesting art could happen (although National Museums Liverpool declined the gift of keeping them, leaving Sefton Council to snap up that happy PR opportunity).

Was Biggs aware that Bronstein's beach hut could turn into the Triennial's postcard moment? 'You just can't tell in advance,' he says. For the locals, the 2014 Triennial icon may well turn out to be Steve, the sculptural pavilion that Sarah Staton has delivered on the harbourfront. A perforated shelter made of Corten steel slabs, with a pinkish concrete 'pouffe' at its centre and edible planting scattered at its base, she named it Steve because 'it's the kind of name you wouldn't normally give to a statue. It's like a plinth, so when you are sitting in it, you become part of the statue.' When we visited Steve, he had been in place only a few hours, yet already he'd been adopted by a crowd of friendly drunks, each taking turns to sit within his wonky walls.

Asymmetry is something that interests Staton. As a perhaps unforeseen bonus, asymmetry also has the effect of deterring seagulls; Biggs says he has seen a few gulls try to land on its rusting slabs and quickly depart, unable to cope with the tilt that it throws on to their coastal vista. Perhaps it's this very wonkiness that makes it so appealing to the inebriated -- a validation of how the world looks after a few cans of Skol. 'There should always be room for craziness in art,' says Biggs. 'I think there's a good seam of craziness running through the Triennial.'

Given its view out to France and the Continent, Staton adds: 'It's also a symbolic gateway for people coming from overseas. There is a lot of anxiety about that community, but this is a place where they could be welcomed.'

From anecdotal evidence, there has been a fairly warm welcome already from Folkestone's residents towards their new artworks. Jyll Bradley's Green/Light was so enthusiastically received by members of a local tenants association, they even helped to clear up and prepare the site. Dever and Wright had some fascinating conversations with locals in the course of constructing their water towers -- one resident, a former building site worker for Wimpey, even got stuck in with a spade to help with the foundations.

Says Biggs: 'This city reminds me of Liverpool in that ports have a particularly open mind. Places that have a lot of new people coming through do tend to have citizens with more open minds.' Does this make them more open to art? No, just more open to ideas, he says. 'I'm very happy if people don't recognise that it's art, but just respond to it. The best art is something that people can make up their own minds about.'

He allows that 'the whole context is about regeneration but it's also about culture. We want it to be seen to be bringing great art to Folkestone rather than it being an instrument of regeneration. Art "works" by faith, just like religion or love. If you do things out of self-interest or in too obviously an instrumentalist way, they tend not to work.'

Pablo Bronstein's Hawksmoor-inspired beach hut on the seafront. Photo Credit: Thierry Bal

But there is undeniable regenerative potential in muf's creation of the new Payers Park -- formerly a sizeable and central chunk of neglected land, ringed by car parks. This is a major piece of civic surgery; the removal of a cancerous lump and replacement with a generous and inviting landscaped park, complete with multiple entry points, walkways, slides, seating, and rich in trees, bats and birds. When completed, it will encourage free circulation and inhabitation between the harbour, the Old Town and the more modern shopping streets to the north.

Biggs saw the potential of this plot way back at the start of his tenure in 2012. Ironically, it was owned by the Creative Foundation, which also owns the majority of properties and retail surrounding it. Says Biggs: 'The anomaly is that the Creative Foundation had been refurbishing all these properties but had not addressed the land around which all those properties sit. So it was... allowing this waste space to drag down the atmosphere.' With the Triennial two years away, Biggs saw a realistic schedule for its construction, plus the opportunity to employ a really interesting outfit to resolve its structural and social challenges.

muf's community engagement skills kicked in, trying to find common ground between its regulars: local Goths, immigrant teenagers from the Czech Republic and Romania, plus the elderly people whose flats overlook the site, who had been scared away by the first two groups. A silent disco was one tool, using multi-channel headphones. The arts centre at its base, the Quarterhouse, hosted a series of concerts, from Roma rap to Country and Western. There was also an archaeological dig, which muf architect Mark Lemanski says: 'stressed the point that history is not only what happens in the past, but what you make of a space in the present.' Lemanski adds: 'There's a definite lack of green spaces in this part of Folkestone. You could sense that by the way young people would gather around the raised planters at the top of the old high street. This [new park] will be well used.'

So, what are the prospects for this urban patient, casualty of history, geography and recession, on the third application of its art therapy? In its favour, the previous treatments already seem to have initiated an improvement. According to a piece of research from Sheffield Hallam University, the Triennial is one of the reasons why Folkestone is the only seaside town in the region of Thanet that has had an increase in tourism jobs (it is currently enjoying a steady fall in unemployment too). The Creative Foundation's Alastair Upton backs this up. He sees it as one vital component within the overall strategy: 'We run a theatre that gives the substance to living in the town. We have a creative quarter with 90 buildings supporting creative businesses.

The high-speed train is what makes this model possible. We have not set up the tourist attraction that everyone comes to -- that's the model for Margate with the Turner Contemporary.' Instead, Folkestone is being fine-tuned as an attractive place for creatives to live in, accessible to London, but with enough energy and momentum to keep the residents satisfied. 'You can't expect art to do it all on its own but the Triennial is the one that changes the image of the town most strongly.'

The artists involved talk of a greater freedom to experiment and explore with this kind of commission. Pablo Bronstein says: 'One of the things I think happens in towns that need rescuing through art or any other means is that you're allowed to do things that you're not allowed to do in other places. When offered the opportunity to do something like this in somewhere like Folkestone, you know they're going to go all the way for you -- get planning permission, etc. Whenever I've done more complicated things in public places, it's impossible.'

As for Biggs, he believes that 'public art is a risk-taking activity... and, unless there is a single person who is prepared to be the champion of a public art situation, it's really hard to take risks and make good work... I don't know whether I'm taking more risks or fewer risks than in Liverpool, but I'm confident that the success rates of those risks will be higher because there's a champion who will stand behind it.'