Tail of the River Bourne celebration weekend
Join us for a long weekend of making, sharing, demonstrations and more.
We’ll be screening our first four animations inspired by community stories of flood resilience. Come along and help us make our fifth, finale film this weekend!
You’ll be able to make things, help film, record character voices, and play with green screen.
Open Friday – Sunday, 11am-3pm.
Special celebration and screening
Saturday 25 12-2pm
Thank you to Hampden Park Shed, Eastbourne Community Scrapstore, The Makers Studio and Printers Playhouse for hosting workshops and supporting the project, and to the Beacon for giving us the Gather for 3 days.
Tails of the River Bourne has been supported by the Blue Heart Community Fund (and we love your work, Lucy & Sarah!)
Waterlevels Walk 2
Join Charlotte Still and Clare Whistler (Watercycle) on a walk exploring the water levels around Pevensey – past, present and future – with storyteller Annalie Seaman. This time you’ll be walking down to the sea!
Along the route we’ll meet our guest speakers:
- Andrew Durling from Pevensey and Westham Community Forest Garden
- Pauline von Hellerman, environmental anthropologist
- A member of the team from the Pevensey to Eastbourne Coastal Management Scheme
We’ll also be listening to Mary Hooper’s sound piece ‘waesse’.
Practicalities
We’ll meet and finish at The Mint House in Pevensey. The walk is about 4.5 miles in total.
Please wear appropriate clothing and boots, and expect some stiles!
Sorry no dogs.
If you’re planning to come along, please email charlottestill@btinternet.com so Watercycle can manage numbers.
About Watercycle
Watercycle is an engagement project conceived and delivered by Charlotte Still and Clare Whistler, the founders of Waterweek. It is supported by the Blue Heart Community Fund.
@waterweekwatercycle
Visit the Museum of Water
Do you know where the water in your local water source comes from, and where it goes?
The Museum of Water brings together these journeys in a display of unique water samples from sources around Eastbourne, Polegate and Pevensey Levels. We will be exploring the untold stories of the waterways that they came from, and the science behind their composition.
The display invites us to reflect on our relationship with the water all around us; so precious yet often overlooked. How can we better understand, value and care for it in the future?
Created by Compass Community Arts and Strandliners, supported with a grant from the Blue Heart Community Fund.
Original photograph by Clive Jarman.
The BIG Futures Show
Members of the Blue Heart team will be at BIG Futures to share their own experiences and talk about the wide range of roles and skills involved in Flood Risk Management – there’s more than you might think!
Find Tegan and Lindsay on the Southern Water stand.
Spring Fair – celebrating our precious water
We’ll be sharing a stand with Strandliners at the Spring Fair on Western Lawns organised by Plastic Free Eastbourne – come and say hello! Get involved with our creative activities, and have a chat with us about water, nature and flooding.
Waterlevels Walk
Join Charlotte Still and Clare Whistler (Watercycle) on a walk exploring the water levels around Pevensey – past, present and future – with storyteller Annalie Seaman and nature-friendly organic farmer Martin Hole, chair of the NFU.
As we walk, our speakers will share stories about the Pevensey Levels and their archeological history, farming on the Levels, re-wilding, power sources, and flooding. Always curious, our speakers welcome questions and contributions from members of the group.
We’ll be looking out for wild orchids in bloom and enjoying poetry written on the same walk by five eco poets, published in Wetland Eco-Body. On the way back to Mint House there will be the chance to rest and recaffeinate at Chilley Farm cafe.
This walk is focussed on inland waterways and landscapes; another on July 3rd will concentrate on the coast.
Practicalities
We’ll meet and finish at The Mint House in Pevensey. The walk is about 4.5 miles in total.
Please wear appropriate clothing and boots, and expect some stiles!
Sorry no dogs.
Got a question about this event? Please email: charlottestill@btinternet.com
About Watercycle
Watercycle is an engagement project conceived and delivered by Charlotte Still and Clare Whistler, the founders of Waterweek. It is supported by the Blue Heart Community Fund.
@waterweekwatercycle
Blue Heart Community Conversation
We’re inviting all the projects supported by the Blue Heart Community Fund, the groups we’ve worked with (and the groups we’d still like to work with) to a day of celebration, reflection and imagining a more resilient and connected future.
We’re holding the event in March so that there’s still time for us to support new collaborations and projects that come out of the day’s conversations, before Blue Heart finishes in March 2027.
If you’ve not been contacted yet but would be interested in taking part, please email us at: contact@blueheart.org.uk.
Organisations attending include:
Community Action East Sussex
Compass Arts
Eastbourne Allotments
Eastbourne EcoAction Network
Eastbourne Foodbank
Eastbourne Food Partnership
Eastbourne Scrap Store
Nature in Our Hands
Pevensey and Westham Community Forest Garden
Pevensey to Eastbourne Coastal Management Scheme
Plastic Free Eastbourne & Refill Eastbourne
Polegate and District Model Engineering Club
Rooted Community Food
Snapped Arts CIC
Strandliners
Treebourne
Waterweek Watercycle
Wealden District Council
Celebrating water
Celebrating the final Watercycle event of 2025 at The VOLT gallery, with an eclectic evening of watery music, film, ritual and treats.
With Ian Powell @iamacelebrant, musician Kit Bula and the ‘Watercycle’ with Clare Whistler and Charlotte Still.
All welcome.
OCEAN with David Attenborough, screening and director’s talk
Join us for a special screening of OCEAN — the stunning David Attenborough documentary — followed by an exclusive talk and Q&A with the film’s award-winning director Keith Scholey.
Through spectacular cinematography and Sir David Attenborough’s unmistakable narration, OCEAN reveals the wonders and vulnerabilities of our planet’s blue heart. After the screening, Keith Scholey will share behind-the-scenes stories about the making of the film, his experiences filming in some of the world’s most remote marine environments, and the urgent environmental issues it brings to light.
Listen to Keith’s talk and Q&A here.
About the speaker
Keith Scholey is a multi-award-winning wildlife filmmaker and co-founder of Silverback Films, the world-leading production company behind Our Planet, Wild Isles, David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet, and The Mating Game. His work combines breathtaking storytelling with deep environmental advocacy, inspiring global audiences to understand and protect the natural world.
About your hosts
This event is jointly hosted by Blue Heart and the Pevensey to Eastbourne Coastal Management Scheme.
Blue Heart focusses on inland flooding (from rivers, groundwater and especially surface water flooding) across Eastbourne and southern Wealden, while the Pevensey to Eastbourne Coastal project is working to mitigate the risk of flooding from the sea. Together, the projects are helping local communities connect with, and adapt to, a changing water environment — from the ground beneath our feet to the ocean beyond our shore.
OCEAN free for educational purposes
National Geographic is making the documentary film available to educators at schools, universities, museums, and libraries, and for educational and charitable conferences and events for non-commercial purposes. Apply via the National Geographic website.
The film is also available to view on Disney+ and Hu
Tails of the River Bourne animation workshops
Snapped Arts CIC are continuing with their old-school stop motion animation project – fancy joining in?
We are creating a fun series of short films that tell stories based in fact, but played out in a fantasy world of creatures that live in Motcombe park, on the banks of the River Bourne.
We’ll be making models and scenery but also experimenting with filming rainstorms, flooding gardens, bees chatting to the Neptune statue that comes alive.
Book or just drop in!
Supported by a Blue Heart Community Fund grant.