In 2020-2021, whilst living in Gravesent, Kent, I took part in this project which was part of the Estuary 2021 programme.
“The Water Replies is a participatory journaling and creative writing project, shaped and led by poets Selina Nwulu and Caroline Bird.
“The project invited creative responses in the form of journals from people of all ages living in the towns and villages along the estuary coastlines of Essex and Kent. 450 journals were sent out to capture life by the estuary with words and images in March 2020 – just before the first UK lockdown was announced.
“The feeling of connection to the estuary among those taking part has given the project heightened significance and importance for many during this first, and subsequent lockdowns.”
For every single journal, a film was made to document and share the experience of reading and looking. View the film of my journal below:
About my journal:
Living on the South side of the Thames, I saw the River from my window every day.
I approached this project a little differently to the traditional ‘journal’ which can imply an element of chronology and a gradual filling of pages over a period of time. Throughout May – July I was completing my MA dissertation which involved writing a lot about water, landscape, geography, time and memory and included a section written as a letter to the Thames. I was also looking at and photographing the River daily – getting even more familiar with it during lockdown. Once I finished my dissertation, the journal was still empty. I chose to print the text and all the imagery I had collected to make a sort of scrapbook which doesn’t run with any particular timeline, but is instead tied together by the writing, physically fragmented and placed alongside the images, their physicality in paper having been manipulated in a few different ways throughout the book.
Posters and Murals
A selection of quotes from journals from Essex and Kent were chosen to be made into posters and murals by designer Rose Nordin, and displayed on buildings, bus stops and train stations across both counties, as well as in London. A sentence from my journal was included in a large-scale poster display at London Bridge station.
Find out more detail about The Water Replies here