Amid the Air and Earth

Myths for a Wetlands Imaginary


Walthamstow Wetlands, London
with Arts Catalyst 
for Waltham Forest Borough Council Art Assembly 2019




Started in 2019, Myths for a Wetlands Imaginary is an ongoing project that engages with the global ecological habitat of wetlands to collaboratively explore new imaginaries of co-existence.  Wetlands, and the marshes, bogs, fens, reedbeds and reefs that make them up, tell complex stories of relationships of land and peoples, of settler colonialism, and of the capitalist and carbon imaginaries that have seen 70% of wetlands across the world destroyed in the last 50 years.

    We foreground the sharing and production of myth (a mythopoesis) as a method through which to draw together distinct experiences and knowlegdes of wetlands and to open up historically situated new wetlands imaginaries; with ecologists, writers, artists and communities.

Over a 3-month residency we devised and delivered a series of events including site specific performances and digital mapping and storytelling workshops. A performance walk took participants through the wetlands at Walthamstow, folding in voices from other places and times. 
   A storytelling workshop allowed participants to write myths for a wetland elsewhere in the world, identified through the RAMSAR global wetlands database. 
Collaborators:
Season Butler (writer)
Gary Stewart (sound artist Dubmorphology)
Dr Ian Crump (biodiversity officer)