Rave On for the Avon is a feature-length documentary which captures one community’s love for the Avon and explores the importance of rivers in modern life – all set to a Bristol soundtrack.
In September 2021, Lindsey Cole, a Bristol-based activist, writer and ‘adventure mermaid’, swam a 50-mile stretch of the Avon to raise awareness of pollution. ‘An advert popped up on Facebook,’ Charlotte Sawyer recalls. ‘There was a mermaid looking for someone to film her swimming down the Avon, so I called Lindsey and said, “You’re going to swim right past my house. Are you still looking for a filmmaker?”’
Lindsey – one of The Outdoor Swimming Society’s original Swim Champs – made this swim the subject of a children’s book and film, The Mermaid, the Otter and the Big Poo, which premiered at Kendal Mountain Festival in 2021. This chance but fortunate encounter also provided the starting point for a new project when Lindsey introduced Charlotte to the Conham Bathing Group. ‘I had already heard of the Conham Bathers,’ Charlotte explains, ‘and jumped at the chance to meet them. I even took my camera along and asked if I could film – and they said, YES, come join us!’
You may also have already heard of the Conham Bathing Group – a team of three women, Becca Blease, Em Nicol and Eva Perrin, each with expertise in environmental policy and communications, who have taken matters into their own hands, testing the water at this much-loved stretch of the Avon and sharing the results with local swimmers.
Becca tells me how the trio first met. ‘I started to swim at Conham during the pandemic. I’d spent lockdown either alone or in difficult houseshares, so swimming became a kind of lifeline. I swam in skins all winter for the first time in my life, but I also began to learn about sewage pollution.’
‘There’s a really vibrant and sociable swimming community in Bristol,’ Becca continues. ‘We have a WhatsApp group with over 200 people who swim in the Avon, where I began to read all these messages about sewage. But like so many other people at the time, I just hadn’t heard about this issue before.’
‘Around this time, the River Wharfe had just become the first UK river to secure Designated Bathing Status, thanks to an amazing local campaign. We started to wonder if we should do the same here. I was happy to lead this project. I asked for some help on social media – that’s where I met Em and Eva – and the three of us got to work, with over 900 responses from local swimmers.’ But the Conham Bathing Group soon discovered they’d also need the landowner’s support – in this case, Bristol City Council.
You may also have already heard of the Conham Bathing Group – three women, who have taken matters into their own hands, testing the water at this much-loved stretch of the Avon and sharing the results with local swimmers.
Rave On for the Avon follows the Conham Bathing Group’s struggle to secure Bristol City Council’s permission. The problem? A local byelaw which prohibits swimming in this stretch of the Avon. So the Conham Bathing Group launched a petition to amend or remove the byelaw – a petition which gained over 5,000 signatures in two weeks, well beyond the 3,500 needed to secure a Council debate.
‘But it wasn’t much of a debate,’ Becca admits. ‘We made a quick speech. The Councillors all stood up to express their support. Then the Mayor had a chance to respond. We’d tried to prepare for the counterarguments, but he declined to give any response there and then. Instead, we were told to expect a decision in two weeks, during which we actually had some of the worst pollution we’ve seen.’
But Rave On For The Avon is about more than the limitations of local democracy and setbacks of a single campaign. ‘This is a film about LOVE,’ Charlotte insists, ‘the love we feel for this river and how it inspires us to take action.’ The film takes its name from a surprise rave which Lindsey arranged outside Bristol City Council to support the Conham Bathers, with a sound system and swimsuit-clad activists who danced all afternoon, despite the October cold.
This is a film about LOVE – the love we all feel for this river and how it inspires us to take action.
Throughout the film, Charlotte explores what it means to love a river. At one point, we follow Lindsey for a sunrise swim across the Bristol Channel, this time towing a giant inflatable poo. Before she jumps off the boat, we catch a glimpse of another swimmer who touches the land to mark the start of his own timed swim. But – ‘official swims are so last season,’ Lindsey teases, before splashing into the water where she’s fed cheesecake from a wooden spoon during the course of her own seven-hour marathon.
In a bittersweet scene, we meet Frank, who shares his struggle with depression, anxiety and PTSD over the years, before reflecting on his friendship with the Avon – ‘you could never encapsulate [the feeling] in words’ – and the effort required to face up to the cold but which ‘spills over into every aspect of your life’.
In the final scene, we meet Meg, dressed in white, on a beautiful June day when she marries the Avon, surrounded by friends, family and fellow river-lovers, who chant a Māori phrase: ‘From the mountains to the sea, I am the river and the river is me.’ Led by her parents, Meg walks down the bank, where she vows ‘to care for [the Avon] as best I can until the end of my life, just as [the Avon] will help me’.
Rave On for the Avon premiered at Kendal Mountain Festival in November 2023, before a full launch at PYTCH in Bristol in March 2024, with an audience of 300 who laughed, cried, booed and cheered along to the film, followed by a rave (duh!), with Bristol-based musicians and DJs.
‘It was so much more than a screening,’ Charlotte says. ‘It was a continuation of the energy that went into the film and a celebration of the rebellious Bristol spirit – people not accepting the status quo and taking things into their own hands. But we also wanted to take this energy beyond Bristol.’
Charlotte created a new community license, so that groups and campaigns up and down the UK could find a venue and use the film to gather people around a common cause or goal. She also designed a crowdfund campaign to pay for a film classification, so that cinemas could start to programme the film, without the need for small volunteer groups to find a suitable venue. Since then, the film has been screened all over England, in venues big and small, from Mousehole to Penrith.
To accompany these screenings, Charlotte is darting all over England to take part in panel events with local activist groups. ‘What’s amazing is that the film is always relevant to local issues and campaigns, whether that’s water quality or mental health.’ The team has already organised events with The Rivers Trust, Surfers Against Sewage, Patagonia Bristol and Oxford University’s School of Geography and the Environment, with lots more to come! A scene from the film was even beamed out to the 15,000 people gathered in Westminster for the March for Clean Water in November 2024.
