Reflections from swimmer and Professor of Human Ecology
University of Oxford Stanley Ulijaszek
following a screening of documentary film Rave On For The Avon
at Oxford's School of Geography and the Environment.
The River Avon is as complex as it is beautiful, and there is little wonder that people want to swim in it, and form deep relations with it.
The interests involved in complex river relationships are many – including property, waste management, farming, fishing, industry, ecology, nature, politics, recreation, and water-use of many kinds. The film ‘Rave On For The Avon’ reveals how these relationships are deeply entangled, from the perspective of an informal band of swimmers, the Conham Bathing Group.
It has a very personal perspective, showing the very real and caring concerns of everyday people (most of them swimmers) for the sick river they love and care about, and the ways in which they are expressing those concerns to big capitalism (Wessex Water) and bureaucracy (Bristol City Council). Sick river as in polluted, often too dangerous to swim in.
The film shows how, trying to get something done about water quality, citizen scientists have taken the initiative, collecting regular river water samples, getting it analysed, making data available to people that can act on it. Also to be told that there is no compliance indicator for making the water safe for swimming.
At several times in the film, big water business and the city council show that safe swimming is not on their agenda. The river is polluted, but according to the law, the water company is compliant with regulations. This beggars belief for many of the swimmers whose stories are told, as it should everyone. Swimmers are repeatedly discouraged, disincentivized, by the authorities from swimming in their favourite, often life-long, even more often life-changing waters. And ignored, when political push comes to shove.
When political push comes to shove, the people of Bristol have a tradition of pushing back with their own forms of often non-conventional politics. And so it is with ‘Rave on for the Avon’, whose central thread is the politics of Bristol swimming protest, which is extraordinarily creative, inventive and intuitive.
Memorable is the adventure mermaid swimming across the Mouth of the Severn, her support boat towing a giant inflatable turd. Memorable too is the marriage of a young woman to the river, to give it personhood. The title of the movie comes from another memorable scene, the rave on the doorstep of the Bristol City Council, when presenting a petition to the council to amend a local bylaw that prohibits swimming in the Conham stretch of the river.
There are snaps of often small, very local, interventions at Conham, by the River Avon. Adjusting words on signage from ‘Swimming prohibited’ to something like ‘Swimming encouraged, enjoyed, permitted…’ Building a nice bench to get changed on. It is these small acts in the film, of kindness, of community, friendship, that reveal something of the importance of swimming here, in all seasons.
The river swimmers are but little people in the framing of formal power relations here. Every one of them has their story, their reason to swim. Be it for community involvement, mental health, physical well-being, to be in nature, to get away from the rat race, to swim because they can’t not swim, or to swim because they always have. I have always needed to swim, and in the movie I see and hear my people, who are saying, loud and clear, that the river is not a dumping ground. Inasmuch as farmers, water companies, are dumping in the river, they are taking a dump on people’s private paradise, their individual utopias.
Images from Stanley of his local swimming spot in Oxfordshire.
In Oxford and Oxfordshire, where I usually swim, I know two people who have clearly articulated visions of a river swimming utopia. Both of them are different. I am sure if you scratch the surface of most outdoor swimmers, they will have a version of their own. A utopia is a state of ideal perfection, which in the everyday world is clearly impossible. But how do you make things better, if you don’t have a sense of what you want, however aspirational that might be?
What is crystal clear from the film is how the River Avon is, for most people who swim in it, a place to enact personal utopias. Utopias of mind, which bathing in nature, immersion in water, permits.
‘Rave on for the Avon’ shows how swimmers and other river users have mobilized creatively around bathing water quality. Outdoor swimmers are such a diverse range of people, and there are many versions of swimming utopia, but most can probably agree that open water and the practices of swimming and dipping have meaning for them. There may be as many swimming utopias as people, but having clean water to swim in forms the basis for enacting or approaching any of them. And a vision of utopia helps create some sense of what is being aimed for in terms of river health.
Like the adventure mermaid in Rave on for the Avon, swimming toward Clevedon Marine Lake, it is key to be able to set sight on where to get to. Swimming utopias can help make real the changes needed to make The River Avon a swimming paradise again, even if it seems to be a different world from the one we live in at the moment.
To cite anthropologist Margaret Mead
'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.'
So keep on raving for the Avon.
A note from Charlotte Sawyer, Director of Rave On For The Avon.
It was a joy to share a Q&A panel with Stanley and the other dedicated scholars on the panel (Grace Wright-Arora, PhD student at Oxford in Geography and the Environment and Water Science, Policy and Management MSc Greta Marke) who brought their depth of research and knowledge to this issue.
After a run of preview screenings in the South-West and appearances on Radio Four's The Today Programme I am now fundraising for the cost of a cinema rating to enable a cinema run of the film with the hope to inspire river lovers to campaign in their own unique and creative ways for rivers. If you hope to catch the film please join my mailing list for updates, or you're welcome to organise a community-led screening.
Thank you for your interest and to echo Stanley, keep on raving.
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