Art, Culture and Experiences
Creative Expression at the Heart of the UK River Summit
People connect with rivers in countless ways—not just through policy or advocacy, but through art, music, storytelling, and performance. At the UK River Summit, we celebrate these creative expressions as vital to how we understand, protect, and reimagine our rivers. By bringing emotion, culture, and imagination into the conversation, creativity helps us reach wider audiences and inspire lasting change.
Journalists will be at the UK River Summit to share previously unheard stories with the public face-to-face in the next unique News on Stage event.
Reporters will tell their exclusive stories to attendees and passers-by and answer questions from 12.30-2.30pm on 8 July around the venue at Morden Hall on the River Wandle. All the stories - from the Valencia floods to the joys of cold water swimming - will be related to the Festival's theme.
Journalists will also bring the audience some breaking news, in person, in the style of the old town crier. Come and chat to our journalists as part of our project’s aim to democratise the news. We also hope to encourage more female journalists and raise their profile. It follows last year's successful News on the Street event at Speakers' Corner in Nottingham
News on the River is a project supported by City St George's, University of London Higher Education Innovation Fund and directed by Dr Glenda Cooper, head of the journalism department there and co-founder of News on Stage.
Meet the News on the River Journalists
Dr Glenda Cooper is the current Head of the Journalism Department at City St George's, University of London. She founded and co-produces the News on Stage live journalism events project, and is also co-director of Contemporary Narratives Lab. She has produced six live journalism events including last year’s ‘News on the Street’ in Nottingham and ‘It’s Criminal’ at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow in 2023.
Verónica Muñoz Martínez is a Spanish journalist who has been based in the UK for the past seven years. She graduated with a degree in Journalism from City St George’s, University of London and has built a portfolio covering humanitarian crises, migration, environmental disasters and politics for The European Correspondent and Politics UK. She is also the host of the wellness podcast 'Everybody’s Lost'. Last year, Verónica covered the floods in Valencia — a deeply personal story for her as both a journalist and a Spaniard., reporting first hand from the scene.
Scarlett Stokes, a multimedia journalist is, finishing up her MA in International Journalism. She loves audio, has several podcast productions and features under her belt, and hosts a radio show. She is an electronic music fanatic, writing music reviews and DJing in her free time. As a journalist, she loves telling human interest stories with an intersectional focus.
Ruth Broadbent
Ruth Broadbent is an artist and educator, based in the UK. Her creative practice is inspired by nature and ecology, lines of landscape, and line in drawing and sculpture.The process of walking and movement is central to the way that she creatively responds to place.
Recent works explore ground and water, from a material engagement with the surface of the ground and its multi-layered stories, to responses to seas, rivers, rainwater puddles, hail and snow. She exhibits her work internationally, is a member of drawing, walking and ecology artist networks, the founder of walk.draw, and a Co-Director of Walking the Land CIC.
Jim Murray MBE
British actor, artist and activist Jim Murray presents his paintings of The River Test and the River Itchen, close to his home. His work aims to raise awareness of the plight of endangered wild Atlantic salmon in rivers across the UK.
“Art speaks a truth that goes beyond words. It reaches into the hearts and minds of people where mere facts cannot.
It ignites emotion, inspires change and, in keeping with the River summit’s goals, creates an invaluable connection between culture and the collective consciousness.”
Elly Platt
We are delighted to welcome Elly back for the second year. Elly Platt is a textile artist whose creations are inspired by our interactions with the natural world.
Elly is currently creating work that draws attention to the UK’s water pollution problem. This body of work, centring around the River Wandle, draws attention both to the beauty of the natural environment and the man-made problems that affect it.
Pollution Portraits
This series of embroideries on fabric-printed photographs explores the problem of invisible pollution in the River Wandle. Colour-changing nitrate and phosphate testing kits provided by Earthwatch Europe revealed that the Wandle has more than double the ideal level of these invisible pollutants even in its healthiest-looking areas. The unnaturally bright colours of the test result, stitched over the water, contrast with the abundant greenery and suggest to the viewer that something may be amiss.
Continuing these tests with CamLab Nitrate testing strips, the Pollution Portraits explore the levels of pollution at different locations along the river, and reveal the impact of the Beddington Sewage Treatment Works on the Wandle.
Live Stitching:
Elly Platt will live-stitch a Pollution Portrait of the Wandle at Morden Hall on the day of the Rivers Summit and Festival. She will test the nitrate level of the Wandle in the grounds of Morden Hall, and use the test result to create an embroidered work of art on a fabric printed photograph.
Andrew Sanger
Originally from Detroit, Michigan, Andrew is a lecturer, researcher, artist, and activist working across dance, anthropology, and ecology in the UK. He completed his PhD in Anthropology from University College London studying under Hélène Neveu-Kringelbach and Jerome Lewis. He is currently a Lecturer in Dance and Contextual Studies at The Place | London Contemporary Dance School teaching on the MA Dance: Performance. Alongside teaching and research, he has been a company dancer with Jody Oberfelder Projects, and Vatic Theatre touring in the USA, the UK, and Germany. His research explores the development of environmental sensibility through dance practice, performance, and protest in the UK.
“Rivers have always been meaningful places of connection, respite, and creativity for me playing amongst the brooks and streams of Michigan as a child. After moving to London and living in Vauxhall and Woolwich, I came to know the Thames as a companion. In 2022, I moved to Colliers Wood and the Wandle became the river I now walk with my dog every day. I feel so blessed to live nearby a beautiful chalk stream and regularly encounter egrets, herons, and kingfishers on my morning walks despite living in a big city. I enjoy making tinctures, teas, and foraged food from the plants that grow nearby. UK rivers are confluences of biodiversity and need speaking up for to protect them from pollution and criminal sewage spills.
As an anthropologist and artist studying with UK performance artists and activists from over the last five years, I have come to believe that meaningful embodied encounters with landscape are crucial for developing an environmental sensibility and inspiring others to action. This is why I want to contribute to the UK River Summit, to share an artistic response to what the Wandle means to me and others who walk along its banks. Additionally, I believe spending time conversing with others who share this river can provide insight into the many meaningful relationships people have with rivers and their denizens while also informing conservation discourse.”
- Andrew Sanger
Wandeling
Created by Dr Andrew Sanger, Wandeling is a performance devised from ethnographic inquiry and pilgrimage along the river Wandle in SW London. Through interviews, reflection, and somatic practice, the research sought to learn more about local narratives on the Wandle and what the river means to different members of the community. The performers then created excerpts of verbatim dance theatre translated directly from interviews with people who live or work along the Wandle. This event is a work in-progress, featuring a sharing of a research-informed performance making practice.
Meet Our Exhibiting Artists
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Al Simmons
Al Simmons is a photographer and fly fisher based in North London. The focus of his photography is landscapes and rivers. Al’s prints are made by hand using the cyanotype technique, and the work you see today is all made using water from the River Wandle as part of the process. Specifically, the water is from the stretch of the river where Al caught his first trout
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Elly Platt
Distraught and disgusted by the discovery that her beloved local river, the Wandle, was being routinely polluted by discharges of untreated sewage by Thames Water, local textile artist and costume maker, Elly Platt, started crafting a response to this ongoing problem, based on her observations of the Wandle. Among other works, Ellie will present her work which is inspired by the Earthwatch citizen science water testing.
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Dexter Kazmierkiewicz
As a dedicated fly fisherman, Dexter Kazmierkiewicz possess a deep reverence for the serene beauty of natural environments. His leisure activities frequently involve immersing himself in the peaceful wilderness, where he partakes in the refined practice of fly fishing, seeking wild trout in the small streams. Fundamentally, he is an artist with a focus on creating intricate trout-inspired pieces.