MARSH BODIES is a 3-part podcast series, released each month from December 2023 to February 2024, developed as part of beneath the pavement, the marshes, a new creative programme bringing artists, activists and ecologists together with local environmental and community groups working in Bexley to explore the ground beneath our feet.
The series follows the water of Bexley’s marshlands through silt and mud, to the cells within plant walls, ocean currents, brackish ponds, in the species living within the clouds and steam above our heads, and the water within our own cellular bodies. Each episode explores a quality of water that is amplified within the marshlands that FILTER, ERODE and LEAK.
In this episode, FILTER uncovers how the built environment is sieved through bodies of reeds, bivalves, water voles, ducks, and local volunteers; featuring an interview with Anji Peterson from Crossness River Action Group.
Subscribe to the Three Rivers Bexley podcast now to be the first to hear about upcoming MARSH BODIES episodes.
MARSH BODIES is written by architects and artists, Anyu Chan and Rosa Whiteley, commissioned by Three Rivers and funded by Arts Council England, with sound design by Jacob Norris and Alice Western.
BENEATH THE PAVEMENT, THE MARSHES
beneath the pavement, the marshes focused on how wetland environments shape, and are shaped by, the communities living along the river between Thamesmead and Slade Green; an area of London built on reclaimed Thames marshlands.
Wetlands are complex environments that can encompass marshlands, estuaries, mangroves, peat bogs and grasslands. Up to 75% of the world’s wetlands are now lost, and so is the rich biodiversity that inhabits them as well as the histories that they carry.
Throughout 2023 the programme presented a series of artist projects and creative workshops, walks and this podcast, responding to the unique habitats of Crossness and Erith Marshes, including foreshores, wetlands, woods and urban gardens, and will attempt to surface the sinking histories contained within them by testing out different ways of sensing and learning with our local environments to imagine new ways of relating to them. Learn more here.
Three Rivers is a free-floating action research programme investigating the flows of culture, community and creativity in the London Borough of Bexley. We bring local people and partners together to actively research how we can use culture to make a difference in Bexley. We collaborate with the people who live, work and study here, to produce festivals, run radio stations, become art critics and stitch quilts. We want to create a new way of making culture in Bexley, by empowering local people to make it themselves. Learn more here.
