Episode 102: We Are Avon | A place based movement for regenerative change

this is an audio adventure featuring a live panel conversation from the launch of new bio-regional project We Are Avon and musings from a Pilgrimage along the River Avon herself

Across the UK more and more communities are engaging with the deteriorating health of their local rivers and wild waters.

From cold water swimmers, fishermen to local food growers, conservationists, nature lovers, artists, storytellers, writers and community activists there is a growing understanding that the health of the rivers reflects the health of our societies.

There is also a growing awareness that the rivers and wild waters of our lands are the arteries that lead to the ocean, the great blue heart of Spaceship Earth.

River Guardians are beginning to emerge across the land, we explored this back in EP 67 in 2023. People from diverse backgrounds and passions taking action, participating in protection, connection and regeneration.

If we are to grow true regenerative movements, then engaging communities around rivers and weaving new regenerative cultures from the bottom up will be essential.

In the last couple of years I’ve been participating in the birth of a Bio-Regional project called We Are Avon (WAA) here in my hometown of Bath ( EP 98 was a recording from a panel last year about this project)

We Are Avon is an emergence of a place-based movement for regeneration in the UK.

It aims to act upon the interwoven crises of river pollution, climate change and food insecurity. Led by the people, a diverse web of communities, regenerators, farmers and projects who collaborate to regenerate.

This is a grassroots movement to provide healthy and affordable food resilience for the region whilst also regenerating the communities, landscapes and watersheds of the catchment area beginning from the local level with river and land in this Avon valley.

Centering food, river and land as powerful anchors for reconnecting people to place, this project aims to re-identify humans as 'regenerators’, as active participants in service to the climate and nature crisis we collectively face.

After a year of visioning and development, We Are Avon has launched its first crowd-funder to formalise and activate a number of community engagement projects

This episode conversation was recorded live at the start of April to mark the crowdfunder, and a whole range of community engagement invitations over the coming months.

We gathered local community at an evening event hosted at the Bath store of good friends - ocean and adventure brand Finisterre.

The session was themed around sharing hope and vision for a regenerative future in the Avon bioregion.

The panel represented River, Land, Food and Community movements in the local area with guests - poet and activist Meg Avon from Save Our Avon, Charlotte Sawyer, Director of award winning feature river documentary Rave on for the Avon, and Hamish Evans, regenerative farmer, prefigurative activist from Middleground Growers who has been the lead instigator for the WAA project and myself as host.

This is a conversation for anyone interested in the health and futures of our land, river and local ecosystems.

For those curious about river and environmental action, community led responses to the climate crisis and different and more creative participative ways to get involved in bringing life back to the places we call home.

But really it’s a conversation about relationships between humans, communities and the more than human world around us with a focus here on rivers.