The Mouth of the Thames,


how can the estuary survive and thrive?

Held on Saturday 28th September 2013, 01:00pm to 06:00pm


Venue - The Coal Hole, 35-36 High Street, Leigh Old Town

We are a group of local people from Leigh-on-sea who have been thinking about how we can use our skills and local and international networks to help make the estuary survive and thrive the many pressures that confront it. We want to see if, along with our friends we can make a difference to how the Estuary is thought about and while talking to local fisherman, sailors, business and ecologists, your name came up as someone with a special interest in the Thames.


We would very much like to invite you to a non-political, non partisan workshop of people who have an interest in, or passion for the Thames Estuary; including fishermen and others who navigate it, people who watch the wildlife, run business by its side and simply local people who have brought up generations in the shadows of its ebb and flow.

Background to the workshop.

The Estuary is thought about in many ways at the same time, as a tourist, leisure, fishing zone, a potential airport or river crossing, a container port, a rubbish dump, a wilderness, the site of the new Thames barrier, a potential power source. The thing all of these ways of perceiving the Thames Estuary have in common is that they are contested by forms of scientific modelling by the authorities that help with governing it. We are trying to see if local knowledge can act to resist changes we might not like. Or can we use the information that's already out their in interesting ways?

Speakers:


Steven Ellis & Steve Meddle, Local fishmonger (V Mattocks) and fisherman who has been diving on the wreck of the London)


Paul Huxter, Local horticulturalist – Eelgrass; Natures’ Caviar of the estuary.


Andy Freeman, Local resident, Goldsmiths College, University of London. (Specialist in Automatic Identification System (AIS) - experiments in ship tracking)


Graham Harwood, YoHa, local resident, Member of the Belton Way Small Craft Club, Goldsmiths College, University of London, international artist, specialist in media systems and databases.


Prof Peter Hobson, Principal Lecturer in Conservation Management at Writtle College, Essex.


Prof Steve Kurtz, Critical Art Ensemble, USA, who focus on the exploration of the inter-sections between art, critical theory, technology, and political activism.


Dr Jenifer Gabrys, Goldsmiths College, University of London. (Specialist in Smart cities, sensing the environment, e-waste)


Nicola Triscott, Arts Catalyst, London, Commissions art that experimentally and
critically engages with science.