Connecting Threads
Connecting Threads is the cultural strand of the landscape-scale initiative Destination Tweed. Led by the Southern Uplands Partnership, Connecting Threads is developing a 5-year cultural programme shaped by the River Tweed’s habitats and heritage.
Between November 2020 and October 2021 Connecting Threads is engaging with people as part of a 12-month development phase through one-to-one meetings, online events and pilot activities on and around the river. The team has been speaking to, learning from and working with communities in the Scottish Borders, Dumfries & Galloway and north Northumberland, alongside local and national cultural, environmental and educational organisations.
In the first six months River Tweed Cultural Curator, Rachel Hunter, and River Culture Animateur, Emily Cropton, met with over 100 individuals and presented at five online events, reaching a further 200 people. During summer and autumn, Emily is producing a series of pilot cultural workshops and activities on the river between Innerleithen and Kelso. These events aim to test out ideas for the proposed 5-year programme whilst engaging people with the river and the early stages of the project in an experiential way.
A workshop with St. Ronan’s Well’s Community Garden volunteers and Buglife explores connections between pollinators, plants and people whilst a summer school at the Old Melrose Estate invited students from Edinburgh and Galashiels to engage with the river through drawing, moving image and model making. A series of three professional development workshops is bringing together creative practitioners with those who have specialist knowledge of the river environment, and our pilot artist residency is seeing the artist Jules Bradbury embed herself within a new hay meadow in Upper Tweeddale. These are just some examples of the type of pilot activities that are being developed.
The response so far has been incredibly positive, with interests in our connection to nature, and the stories, heritage and future of the river being echoed in conversations from source to sea. Connecting Threads hopes to build on existing activity and interest to support a growing culture of stewardship, collaboration and shared learned. By October 2021 the team aims to have developed a proposal for the creation of a cultural ‘ecosystem’, connecting the hubs of Berwick and Dumfries through a network of cultural activity along and around the River Tweed. If the 5-year initiative is funded, two more River Culture Animateurs will join the team, working in collaboration with communities in the upper and lower reaches of the river.