Community of Ivybridge Project

Ivybridge, and the beautiful River Erme Valley is at the southerly edge of Dartmoor National Park, in Devon. It was a very small village but earned the title of the fastest growing town in Europe in the early 1990s. It now has a population of 15,000 and, I believe, has a sense of disengagement in Community participation, brought about by this rapid growth and change in population. The Town Council held an open day, unfortunately only one person turned up and they were not from our Town.

Having already studied community groups during Social Arts Practice and Social Ecologies on my Masters at Dartington College, I invited representatives from clubs in the Town to take part in a collaborative re-mapping of the River Erme. The purpose was to share our own expertise of how we see our environment. This could be in a multi-sensory way.

The first walk of the River Erme was on 25th August 2007, through Longtimber Woods above Ivybridge. The short distance of two miles allowed a closer reading of the environment and greater participation across age. It was a collaborative participatory event and representatives came from Environmental Action, the Town Council, Art & Crafts Society, Bedford Alliance, Crooked Roots Folk, Climbing Club along with individual adults and children.

The second walk was held on 2nd September 2007 from Princetown to Ivybridge over Dartmoor National Park. We followed the River Erme from the watershed, seventeen miles and was in collaboration with Ivybridge Walking Club.
The dialogue over the day included contributions of local history, archeology, geology, environmentalism, creative arts and so much more.

As a facilitator, I purposely did not take a video camera to either event, but individuals took photographs, and I recorded natural conversations.

Two dvds were compiled from the contributions as a way of recording the events. These were presented to the Community at Ivybridge Town Hall and the "Soundscape"was on air at SoundArt Radio.