Storying the Avon

40 minute story-led audio-documentary exploring freshwater science and folklore

What happens when we listen to a river — not just as a resource, but as a voice?

Over the past year, I’ve been walking, listening and recording along the Bristol Avon River. What began as a research project has become something more like a conversation — between science and story, between people and place, and between the river and those who live alongside it.

Storying the Avon is a research-based audio piece weaving together science, story and lived experience along the River Avon. Through conversations with geologists, campaigners and river communities — alongside the voice of Avona, the river’s imagined spirit — it reveals a waterway shaped by both deep time and modern crisis. Moving between myth and reality, it asks what might change if we truly listened to the river.

🎧 Listen here

This project was made possible through Seedcorn Funding from The Brigstow Institute at the University of Bristol, in collaboration with researchers and community members who generously shared their knowledge, experience and time.

Making this piece has shifted how I encounter the river. I hear it differently now — in fragments of conversation, in birdsong, in flood and in stillness. Again and again, I was struck by personal people’s relationships to the Avon — and how much care, attention and imagination those relationships hold.

If you listen, I’d love to know what stays with you.

You can read more about the project on my website here.