Climate change murals inaugurated in coastal town

One mural is painted on the side of the Indian restaurant on Bevan Street

A coastal town has inaugurated large murals that aim to raise awareness of the climate emergency.

The designs were created with the help of local people in Lowestoft, Suffolk, who responded to a public call-out and attended workshops with artists.

The town has formally inaugurated the completed artworks, on the sides of two buildings, and hoped they would draw attention to the area's flooding risk.

Residents are concerned about rising sea levels and said they wanted their voices heard at a regional and national level.

Lowestoft was flooded after a tidal surge in December 2013

The two murals are located at 10, Bevan Street and at 62, Stanley Street at the junction with Wollaston Road, both to the west of the town centre.

The event was hosted by Rights Community Action, which produced the murals in collaboration with creative collective Glimpse and Suffolk-based Art Eat Events CIC.

The Use Your Vocie mural is located on the side of a house at the junction of Stanley Street and Wollaston Road

Penelope Dack, from Lowestoft Arts Centre, said the murals were there to show that people "need to speak up, they need to come together".

"We need to be more powerful to get the message across that things are changing and they're changing very quickly and very badly for us," she added.

"I think we are in crisis; we only have to look around us to see what's happening.

"[There are] rising water levels all along the Waveney valley, with which I am very familiar, places are flooding that never flooded before.

"They have done lots of work on the riverbanks, but that's not going to stop what's happening to us and to the planet."

Local resident Debbie thought the murals were a "brilliant call to action".

"I think it's a way of communicating with the public because people need to know what's going on and what's going to happen, and this is one way of starting a conversation," she said.

The event was held today at the Crown Lounge Real Indian restaurant on Bevan Street East, where one of the murals is located.

Local poet Dean Parkin attended as special guest and the event included refreshments, live music and a free film screening.