Art, Culture and Experiences

Creative Expression at the Heart of the UK River Summit

People connect with rivers in countless ways—not just through policy or advocacy, but through art, music, storytelling, and performance. At the UK River Summit, we celebrate these creative expressions as vital to how we understand, protect, and reimagine our rivers. By bringing emotion, culture, and imagination into the conversation, creativity helps us reach wider audiences and inspire lasting change.

Elly Platt

We are delighted to welcome Elly back for the second year. Elly Platt is a textile artist whose creations are inspired by our interactions with the natural world.

Elly is currently creating work that draws attention to the UK’s water pollution problem. This body of work, centring around the River Wandle, draws attention both to the beauty of the natural environment and the man-made problems that affect it.

Pollution Portraits

This series of embroideries on fabric-printed photographs explores the problem of invisible pollution in the River Wandle. Colour-changing nitrate and phosphate testing kits provided by Earthwatch Europe revealed that the Wandle has more than double the ideal level of these invisible pollutants even in its healthiest-looking areas. The unnaturally bright colours of the test result, stitched over the water, contrast with the abundant greenery and suggest to the viewer that something may be amiss.

Continuing these tests with CamLab Nitrate testing strips, the Pollution Portraits explore the levels of pollution at different locations along the river, and reveal the impact of the Beddington Sewage Treatment Works on the Wandle.

Live Stitching:

Elly Platt will live-stitch a Pollution Portrait of the Wandle at Morden Hall on the day of the Rivers Summit and Festival. She will test the nitrate level of the Wandle in the grounds of Morden Hall, and use the test result to create an embroidered work of art on a fabric printed photograph.

Andrew Sanger

Originally from Detroit, Michigan, Andrew is a lecturer, researcher, artist, and activist working across dance, anthropology, and ecology in the UK. He completed his PhD in Anthropology from University College London studying under Hélène Neveu-Kringelbach and Jerome Lewis. He is currently a Lecturer in Dance and Contextual Studies at The Place | London Contemporary Dance School teaching on the MA Dance: Performance. Alongside teaching and research, he has been a company dancer with Jody Oberfelder Projects, and Vatic Theatre touring in the USA, the UK, and Germany. His research explores the development of environmental sensibility through dance practice, performance, and protest in the UK.

“Rivers have always been meaningful places of connection, respite, and creativity for me playing amongst the brooks and streams of Michigan as a child. After moving to London and living in Vauxhall and Woolwich, I came to know the Thames as a companion. In 2022, I moved to Colliers Wood and the Wandle became the river I now walk with my dog every day. I feel so blessed to live nearby a beautiful chalk stream and regularly encounter egrets, herons, and kingfishers on my morning walks despite living in a big city. I enjoy making tinctures, teas, and foraged food from the plants that grow nearby. UK rivers are confluences of biodiversity and need speaking up for to protect them from pollution and criminal sewage spills.

As an anthropologist and artist studying with UK performance artists and activists from over the last five years, I have come to believe that meaningful embodied encounters with landscape are crucial for developing an environmental sensibility and inspiring others to action. This is why I want to contribute to the UK River Summit, to share an artistic response to what the Wandle means to me and others who walk along its banks. Additionally, I believe spending time conversing with others who share this river can provide insight into the many meaningful relationships people have with rivers and their denizens while also informing conservation discourse.”

- Andrew Sanger

Meet Our Exhibiting Artists

  • Al Simmons

    Al Simmons is a photographer and fly fisher based in North London. The focus of his photography is landscapes and rivers. Al’s prints are made by hand using the cyanotype technique, and the work you see today is all made using water from the River Wandle as part of the process. Specifically, the water is from the stretch of the river where Al caught his first trout

  • Elly Platt

    Distraught and disgusted by the discovery that her beloved local river, the Wandle, was being routinely polluted by discharges of untreated sewage by Thames Water, local textile artist and costume maker, Elly Platt, started crafting a response to this ongoing problem, based on her observations of the Wandle. Among other works, Ellie will present her work which is inspired by the Earthwatch citizen science water testing.

  • Dexter Kazmierkiewicz

    As a dedicated fly fisherman, Dexter Kazmierkiewicz possess a deep reverence for the serene beauty of natural environments. His leisure activities frequently involve immersing himself in the peaceful wilderness, where he partakes in the refined practice of fly fishing, seeking wild trout in the small streams.  Fundamentally, he is an artist with a focus on creating intricate trout-inspired pieces.