Going on Taw - Courage Copse Creatives

Going on Taw grew out of Katy’s desire, as a storyteller, to really understand the valley where she lives. This led her to explore the engineer that had created this landscape – the river Taw.

Katy travelled from the source down to the estuary. As much as possible, she travelled actually in or on the river rather than simply viewing it from the banks. The river became so much more than a moving body of water, it became a creative partner with an editorial voice. It was crucial that Going on Taw ‘gave back’ to the Taw rather than viewing it, as usual, as a resource to be exploited, as a thing to ‘take inspiration from.’

As Katy travelled the Taw she gathered stories, knowledge from ‘experts’ and local gossip from those who use or depend on the river and seven community groups geographically linked to it. Central to the creative process was to listen deep & diligently to the Taw, to not just re-tell stories, but embody them – to get dirt under the nails, make the tellings grimy, raw & true.

Going on Taw. Source – Belstone (1of 7)

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ah
I’ve
ah
Been here before
my path riven from landscope

perpetual cycle and return
– the cards have been shuffed
I am the last one

Going on Taw gently opened the conversation around climate emergency, water ownership & quality, river pollution & land access. However, a meaningful conversation needs more than one voice! The project brought together multiple voices from multiple stakeholders, especially those who didn’t realise they were stakeholders, bringing a vibrancy to the conversation, prompting dynamic, creative & productive exchanges. Barnstaple Memory Cafe, Barnstaple Youth Centre, ESOL students from Sunrise Diversity & primary school pupils from Bishops Tawton, Umberleigh and Chulmleigh all took part. In total, 172 community participants were given the opportunity to play an active role in the creation of creative content through a series of workshops & poetry pen-pal exchange. The participants also engaged in Citizen Science activities facilitated by Westcountry River Trust.

27. Bishops Tawton – Observation ‘clock’ poem

25. Bishops Tawton – Observation ‘clock’ poem

Being a child of land and water

she had field and river as play mate

She grew strong and fluid.

The River Taw became a co-creator in the making of poems. Pupils wrote on thin stips of silk and watched as the river moved the material – which words were hidden and which remained visible? The order of the lines in a poem was determined by playing Poetry Pooh-Sticks. And how does a poem sound when its spoken underwater?

Going on Taw – The Fish and the Ring Part 1 (2 of 7)

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Breath in

Breath out

I can on longer feel the bottom. I have no choice but to swim. All I become aware of is my breath, I am a bag of air floating down the river, I lose sense of my limbs. I am mouth and lungs. I enter water to discover River but am confronted by breath. Breathe in, breathe out.

And then I think, is that not so strange? Isn’t water two gases squeezed together? And then I think if there is a finite amount of water in the world that is constantly being recycled though a matrix of processes and I am made up of roughly 70% water, then surely during the entire lifetime of the water in me right now, at some point it must have been part of the Taw. Is that why humans feel such an affinity with rivers and streams because we were once part of them?

Going on Taw – Sticklepath – North Tawton (3 of 7)

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The Taw, the constant engineer of the landscape remoulds and reshapes and will think nothing of doing the same to you.

The Number SEVEN became an important touch stone that Going on Taw creatively returned to again and again;

70 km long Taw

7 community groups

7 week long exhibition 7 podcasts

7 films

7 line poems

7 objects on the storytellers belt 7/8 music time signature

Going on Taw – The Fish and The Ring Part 2 (4 of 7)

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Now at last in the canoe I am both bag of water and air

Going on Taw – Eggesford – Barnstaple (5 of 7)

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The community participant’s thoughts and imaginings about the river were written on the hand-made, skin-on-frame canoe that Katy paddled down the Taw. The ash used to make the canoe came from North Devon.

Each time I visit the Taw, I make an observational ‘clock’ poem, turning 360 degrees, it becomes my way of saying hello to the river. In the centre I note the readings from the citizen science kit; temperature, parts per million, phosphate levels & river height.
These ‘sketch poems’ become the foundation for the podcast and live performance scripts.

Plastic adorn the trees –

agricultural wrap, shopping bags, wet wipes,
hanging like discarded prayer flags,
to the God of No Environmental Consequences.
Decoy duck, orange hazard traffic barrier,
buckets offerings to the f***-it attitude.

He tried just as he had done fifteen years previously to throw the woman to the waves.But being a child of field and river she fought back.

During 2023, the official figures for the amount of raw sewage South West Water legally released into the river Taw was 8,048.13 hours

EIGHT THOUSAND AND FORTY-EIGHT POINT THIRTEEN HOURS!

The consequences of our actions circle back around to meet ushead on. There is no escape

The River – the toilet gutter, drain, waste channel. What we try to flush away, to make disappear, always comes back bubbles up stinking of sewage and our rotten fallibility and self centred righteousness

The consequences of our actions circle back around to meet ushead on. There is no escape

The River – the toilet gutter, drain, waste channel. What we try to flush away, to make disappear, always comes back bubbles up stinking of sewage and our rotten fallibility and self centred righteousness

Going on Taw – The Fish and the Ring – Part 3 (6 of 7)

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Going on Taw – Barnstaple – Instow (7 of 7)

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ah I’ve ah

rivered

Five letterss two syllables
a word too large to pinpoint the preciseness of detail
a word too small to describe the enormity
of water slipping through landscape
a word too shallow to explain the depth of feeling.

Between the two R’s
there’s I’ve

I have the land in my slippery fluid hand
I have the power to pound metal from rock
I have the home of the salmon and the slick of the otter
I have the buoyancy to keep you afloat

Exhibition: 7-week exhibition at Museum of Barnstaple & North Devon May – July 2024

Podcasts: Seven podcasts were produced. Each episode covers a different aspect of the river and Katy is joined by an ‘expert’ as she learns more about the river and the challenges it faces. Listen to them here

Performances Belstone & Eggesford

Performance: A one-hour live performance, a combination of travelogue, spoken word and storytelling; found and specially created tales was performed at four different locations along the length of the Taw. The audience were taken on a journey from source to sea.

Locations: Belstone, Dartmoor. Fox and Hound Country Hotel, Eggesford. Museum of Barnstaple & North Devon, outside Queen Annes Cafe, Barnstaple.

Performances Barnstaple inside & out