Rave On for the Avon

In September 2021, Lindsey Cole, a Bristol-based activist, writer and ‘adventure mermaid’, swam a 50-mile stretch of the River Avon to raise awareness of sewage pollution. ‘An advert popped up on Facebook,’ Charlotte Sawyer recalls, Director of the new film. ‘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 original OSS Swim Champs in 2019 – made her 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, but this 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 and jumped at the chance to meet them. I even took my camera along to the first meeting 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, once we could all go outside again to exercise. I’d spent lockdown either alone or in difficult house-shares, so swimming became a lifeline. I swam in skins all winter for the first time, but I also began to learn about sewage pollution.’ 

‘There is 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 the same time, the River Wharfe in Ilkley had just become the first place to receive Designated Bathing Water Status and there was some debate as to whether we should do the same here. I was happy to lead this project, thinking it would just take a few months over the summer to put together an application. 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 … except we also needed the landowner’s support – in this case, Bristol City Council.’ 

You may 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 petition to amend a local byelaw which prohibits swimming in this stretch of the Avon – a petition which gained over 5,000 signatures in just 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 five-minute speech, then the Councillors stood up and expressed their support, then the Mayor had a chance to respond. We had tried to prepare for all the counterarguments, but the Mayor just declined to respond – and we were told to expect a decision in two weeks instead, during which time we actually had some of the worst pollution we’ve seen.’ 

But Rave On for the Avon is about much more than the setbacks of a single campaign. ‘This is a film about LOVE,’ Charlotte insists, ‘the love we all feel for this river and how it inspires us to take action.’ The film even takes its name from a surprise rave which Lindsey arranged outside Bristol City Council, with a sound system and swimsuit-clad supporters who kept dancing 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.

Charlotte suggests this is part of a wider ecofeminist approach to activism, ‘where action is linked to love, as opposed to the masculine approach, which is still wonderful and important, but where action is linked to honour’. 

There are moments like this throughout the film. We catch up with Lindsey again for a beautiful sunrise swim across the Bristol Channel, while towing a giant inflatable poo, but just before she sets off, we catch a glimpse of another swimmer who touches the land before his timed attempt. ‘Official swims are so last season,’ Lindsey teases, before being fed cheesecake with a wooden spoon during her own seven-hour swim. 

In a poetic but 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 which is required each day to swim, but which ‘spills over into every aspect of your life.’ 

But perhaps the climax of this approach is the final scene, where we meet Meg on the beautiful June day when she gets married to the Avon, surrounded by her friends, family and fellow river-lovers, all chanting a traditional Māori phrase, ‘From the mountains to the sea, I am the river and the river is me,’ before Meg vows ‘to care for [the river] as best I can until the end of my life, just as [the river] will help me’.     

Rave On For The Avon premiered at Kendal Mountain Festival in November 2023, before the full launch at PYTCH in Bristol last month, with 300 people who laughed, cried, booed and cheered along to the film, followed by – what else? – a rave, with Bristol-based musicians and DJs. 

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• WANT TO WATCH IT? The film isn’t available to stream just yet but Charlotte and Aggie intend to stay true to the film’s values, with a community license so that people can screen the film in local spots as a tool to gather people around local issues and campaigns. If you have any questions about the community license or you’d like to arrange a screening in your own local community or as part of a local campaign, you can find out more and contact the team here.