local walk Archives - Waterlight Project

18/07/202418/07/2024

Religion and Climate Futures – Waterlight Screening & Cambridge Unseen ‘Chalk Walk’

Waterlight Project team member James Murray-White writes about a recent screening of our film at Cambridge University’s Divinity School joint summer school with the LSE on Religion and Climate Futures, an accompanying Cambridge Unseen ‘chalk walk’, and the interest in chalk streams and further film making that Waterlight has helped stimulate.

Through connections to the Divinity School within Cambridge University, forged via two insightful conferences this year on the theme of water, I screened Waterlight to a group of 20 students on this summer school in the faculty on the balmy evening of 3rd July.

This followed on the heels of co-leading them on an afternoon field trip, ‘Cambridge Unseen – Chalk Walk’, as part of Water Sensitive Cambridge. Organised by co-founder Clara Todd, with associates Emma Linford (from the NGO The Stars Are For Everyone) and well-respected geologist and hydrologist Dr Steve Boreham, we led them from the Divinity School on West Road, along a planned series of eight points, looking at the geological records and the morphology of the Cambridgeshire landscape, with radical differences in climate and ecology.

Showing ‘Cambridge Unseen - Chalk Walk’ field trip as part of the summer school. Photograph by James Murray-White — ‘Cambridge Unseen – Chalk Walk’ field trip as part of the summer school. Photograph: James Murray-White © 2024.

Using the rare and precious chalk-stream waterways as our key theme, we sought to peel back the layers of the present to glimpse what lies beneath, beyond our human ancestry, into cosmological and geological or ‘deep’ time. The route started with entering a portal on the West Road/Sidgewick Site campus, along West Road and onto Queen’s Green, along the Mill Pond — meeting a changed landscape, a flood plain, and a canalised waterway, as well as two old mills, one with an accessible water wheel. We then met the River Cam and Vicar’s Brook, looking at themes of pastoral and aesthetic beauty, and then discussed pollution in our waterways, both from sewage and from vehicles. Then, the final stretch, along Finch’s Walk along Hobson’s Brook, and a shifting narrative into nature’s recovery, thinking about the extraordinary resilience of nature, in a verdant lush old quarry, where coprolite was mined, and between two streams. Entering the second and final portal, the kissing gate between the Accordia development and Empty Common Community Garden, we brought the students into a circle for the closing meditation and reflection upon the journey, all the information shared within this city landscape, and gave them some time and space to digest this within the context of the summer school, with its core themes of climate and faith.

Showing Meditation on water, a photographby James Murray-White. — Meditation. Photograph: James Murray-White © 2024.

It felt highly appropriate to then be able to screen Waterlight and give them a deep dive into the River Mel, mediated by Clare’s words. In this context, the film really became an ethnographic study, picking up on the themes of place and belonging that had come up earlier on the walk.

We had pointed out the old mill at the Mill Pond in Cambridge, on Laundress Green, once the hive of industrial activity, and where a waterway had been artificially created, or ‘canalised’, for that industry. The water wheel exists inside, which can be admired while one chomps on gourmet pizza! Within Waterlight of course viewers can go inside a watermill on the Mel, and see exactly how it used to be, with the inner and outer layout of the building, land and river system, explained.

This was once cutting-edge technology, cleverly controlling flow. I’ve seen this used in creating riffles in the Mel and elsewhere, in smaller and softer examples, and wish we could apply the same knowledges and understanding to working with our waterways as healthy ecosystems.

Showing the audience watching the Waterlight film, with Clare Crossman on screen. Photographs by James Murray-White. — Audience watching the Waterlight film, with Clare Crossman on screen. Photographs: James Murray-White © 2024.

Comments afterwards were really positive, with appreciation for the film’s warm feeling of community engagement and personal action; a student said she felt disempowered by angrier activist films and calls for action (although I responded that all these forms of storytelling have their place). An interesting question came up about the passing on of knowledge in terms of river action, and knowing how and what to be doing in the water — removing invasive weeds etc, given the relatively older age of the River Mel Restoration Group, as shown within some scenes.

I feel that we do show our efforts to engage the kids of Meldreth Primary School, and their game of pooh sticks, as well as our walk along the river, and them using iPads and tech to record the sights and sounds of that experiential day (not included in the film), and hope that went some way to inculcate care of the river and a lasting engagement. Let’s continue using film as a way to do this, within our communities and networks. It is probably for a longer blog post, but I’m proud of what we as a team have created, and that Waterlight is the forerunner to a series of recent films that Nigel and I have made or helped to make, or advised, including Pure Clean Water by Tony Eva, Fulgolburna (by Nigel, for the Fulbourn Arts Group led by David Cottee, and coming soon) and Rivers of Light (made by me), about the Newmarket Chalk Stream that runs from Dullingham through the racing town of Newmarket, and under the A14 (for the newly created Friends of the Newmarket Chalk Stream group). And these are all in our area! Maybe Waterlight has spawned a revolution in local films about chalk streams, waterways, tributaries, and confluences!

As well as having a fabulous impact in engagement with people loving their local rivers and working together to keep them clean and healthy, what an amazing legacy for Clare!

The screening and Cambridge Unseen field trip were part of Cambridge University’s Divinity School joint summer school with the LSE on Religion and Climate Futures.

James mentions Water Sensitive Cambridge. Do check out walks on their website.

James has recently published a review of the new book Water Beings: From Nature Worship to the Environmental Crisis by Veronica Strang. In his post for ClimateCultures James finds connections between Veronica’s research into the significance of water and his own work as a filmmaker at a time when water is under threat and we need to rebalance our elemental relationship. The post also features a Q&A with Veronica.

You can find out about any planned Waterlight screenings that are coming up on our Upcoming Events page. And there are posts about previous screenings and more besides on our blog!

16/03/202416/03/2024

Waterlight Screening at Reed Gardening Club

This was another first for the Waterlight Team: a showing to a gardening club. Our screening for Reed Gardening Club — near Royston in Hertfordshire on 13th March — was again in a village hall opposite the village green. These halls appear to have all been built around the same period to a similar design.

In his introduction, Waterlight team member Bruce Huett — a keen allotment holder — highlighted the importance of water for gardening and how we must keep up our efforts to ensure that over-abstraction is stopped by the water companies. He also emphasised the importance of using water judiciously in gardening and mentioned that Cam Valley Forum, the chalk stream preservation action group, had just issued two leaflets; one comparing high and low water users and another with tips on restricting water use around the home.

It was encouraging to hear that several members of Reed Gardening Club had already walked the footpath along the Mel, so the film brought back happy memories of the river for them but also provided interesting additional information to enhance their enjoyment on their next walk there.

Some members of the group were involved in improvement to their local chalk stream the Rib — see the River Rib Restoration Project. They were encouraged in their work by the improvement that had been made on the Mel e.g. silt removal and revetment construction, which has produced a much better flow and revealed the beautiful chalk and gravel base so loved by invertebrates. Bruce was able to talk in detail about the work carried out by the River Mel Restoration Group featured in the film, and explain some of the techniques and the purpose of different elements of the restoration, to help them with their own project.

Showing the River Rib Restoration Project plan — River Rib Restoration Project plan: a project to enhance 2km of the River Rib for wildlife and people

It was interesting to hear that the river, and the moats and pools in the village, are located on the same hard chalk bed that stretches from the Chilterns and forms the base of the Mel.

There were about 30 members of Reed Gardening Club present and there was the usual lively discussion over tea and biscuits at the end of the showing.

Don’t forget to check our Upcoming Events page for future talks or screenings of Waterlight.

13/03/202313/03/2023

Waterlight Film Showing at Royston W.I.

On 9th March 2023 — a very cold and drizzly afternoon, with snow flurries trying to carpet the road outside — about 30 ladies from Royston WI were transported to the world of the Mel through the Waterlight film.

Royston is a particularly appropriate setting for showing the film as the water that supplies the Mel originates as rain falling on the soft chalk hills surrounding the town. Today, the melted snow will percolate through the chalk to eventually emerge at the springs in Melbourn, the source of the Mel. In his introduction, Bruce Huett drew parallels with his experience of snow melt from the Himalayas supplying the rivers of Tibet, other parts of China and India.

Showing speaker Bruce Huett talking with an audience member after the Royston WI screening — Speaker Bruce Huett talking with an audience member while others chat after the Royston WI screening.

Although Waterlight was not made as a campaigning film, audience members recognised links to national concerns about the general health of English rivers and mentioned the recent BBC programmes ‘Our Troubled Rivers’.

Following the screening, the Royston WI secretary e-mailed:

“Thank you again for coming to show your film and talk to us this afternoon. It was a very calm, peaceful watch, with beautiful music, as well as being very informative. I hope you could see how engaged all our ladies were. It made our afternoon very enjoyable”.

Bruce was again delighted to receive an account of someone who remembered playing in the river at Melbourn as a child, which was similar to accounts he had collected in ‘memory capture’ events with elderly residents in Melbourn and Royston. They had described swimming, paddling down the river in boats improvised from rubber tubes or barrels, fishing and generally messing about in the river or on the banks for whole days in the summer. Some of these accounts are on the Your Waterlight Stories page of this website and others can be found in the Mel pages at Meldreth History, The Story of a Cambridgeshire Village.

Others, who had visited the British Queen pub in Meldreth but had never taken the short walk across the field at the back to the river, now decided that on their next trip there they will definitely take a stroll along the Mel and visit the adjacent Melwood local Nature Reserve that is featured in the film.