Feral Practice

🌿📢 Welcome to the third feature of our new WaterLANDS artist-in-residence spotlight, where we shed light on the important work of the #WaterLANDS artists across the different Action Sites! This week, we spoke with @lauraharringtonaw and @feralpractice (Fiona MacDonald) working at our UK Action Site, the Great North Bog. Their work, conceived and developed as Tenderbog, focuses on touch and the body and on the arenas of damage, degradation, and healing within both peatlands and human bodies. “We understand bodies as diverse multispecies communities, and their health as inextricably enmeshed across human and nonhuman spheres.”- Laura Harrington and Feral Practice 📖 Read the full article with Laura Harrington and Feral Practice on the website! Thanks to Yorkshire iCASP and everyone who is involved in the restoration actions at the UK Action Site for collaborating with Laura and Fiona.

What do rivers do for us? What will we do for rivers? No river in England is in good ecological condition. No river in England has plentiful clear water full of healthy diverse life. Rivers are abused and making the news, are on our minds and in our hearts. 'Tonal', which launched yesterday with a podcast, is Feral Practice’s contribution to the increasingly passionate debate and campaigning for a better relationship with water in the UK. For a year we have been walking, talking and audio recording with people shaped by water. Initially we conceived of the one-to-one riverside conversations as private research, but as the project grew it seemed like the interviews audio could become a deep and diverse archive of river knowledge. We have interviewed water industry professionals, witches, regulators, fishers, politicians, activists, artists, lawyers, conservationists, farmers, otter spotters and pathologists, poets... Every episode deals (in an informal, detailed, fairly fun way) with the big issues that are facing our rivers and streams, with an ear to the River Tone in Somerset - pollution, barriers, climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, flooding, rights of nature, access. The podcast (available on all good podcast providers) is called 'Tonal - Rivers Beyond Sewage' because while public attention starts with shit in the river, the problems are SO much wider, more complex, and, actually, more interesting. My approach has not been adversarial but listening and learning. So much learning! The podcast launches with five episodes, with MP and wild swimmer #gideonamos , @helenwakeham Director of Water, Environment Agency, #anitaroy, writer and activist, artist @jamesaldridgeart artist and #jopearse of the Somerset Otter Group. Have a listen, subscribe if you fancy, get in touch, let's talk about the rivers we are and we love. 🐳 🌊 There will be a new episode each week-ish. Visit tonal-uk.com or search Tonal - Rivers Beyond Sewage. #tonal #rivertone #riversbeyondsewage We are so grateful for the support for Tonal through a bursary from @fcditaunton 💪and to our producers @ginkgoprojects 🌟plus the website designer @cityeditionstudio 🔥

Tenderbog - very happy to share images from our @feralpractice and @lauraharringtonaw work from the opening moments of the show ‘Unbounded Within’ which is in at @linnagalerii in Parnu in Estonia. Curated by @eloliiv who is the Estonian @waterlandsart artist in residence. One of the highlights of this ambitious EU wide project has been the generous and creative interaction we’ve had with the other Waterlands artists, so it was a total treat to see their works in real life and work together to make this show, which includes Estonian artists alongside all the Waterlands team. The two sound sculptures bring together our dialogical research into specific parallels between human health care and peatland restoration. Bodies that can be wounded. Portals into biodiversity. Wrapping, mending, looking closely. Flows. Empathy. We are a bit tired and soggy right now 💦after a morning of meetings, an interview by Estonian tv, then a long rainy bog walk to see an action site, we’re on a bus to Tartu for the remainder of the Waterlands annual assembly. Thank you and congrats to Elo for making it happen! 🌟

Tenderbog - all bodies suffer, get damaged, and wounds can arrive from outside or inside. Peatlands have suffered hugely at the hands of humans over centuries. @feralpractice and @lauraharringtonaw ran a workshop about wound healing across human healthcare and peatland restoration. There are strikingly similar issues in these very different contexts around flows (of water, lymph, blood) that get out of balance - too much or too little, blockage or flood. And how these hydrological flows are entangled with other flows - of money, profit and power. The motivations of capital that destroy health and distort practices of care. We were honoured to host nurses, researchers in wound care, people with lived experience of chronic and traumatic wounds, peatland conservationists and hydrologists to share their expertise and ideas across disciplinary boundaries. We had a brilliant discussion whilst creatively engaging with materials used in wound care, making sculptures that responded to ideas around flow and constriction. ⚖️ Top tip - correct compression is key to the healing of chronic lower limb wounds.🦵 These conversations and many more inform one of our sound sculptures that is going to Estonia, and is part of our 4-year @waterlandsart residency.

Tenderbog… it’s been a busy couple of months for @lauraharringtonaw and @feralpractice as we are now in the final year of our @waterlandsart residency. We have been relishing making big sculptures in the studio. They will be heading to Estonia shortly for an exhibition looking at our interdependence with wetlands, in Pärnu on the Baltic coast. One is made of spruce bark (the plates ping off like plane trees) and latex, the action of gathering and glueing to form a protective ‘armour’ inspired by the Caddisfly larvae we’ve loved meeting in bog pools. Spruce is especially appropriate as plantations of Sitka or Norway spruce have been the fate of many of northern England’s bogs, just one of many ways people have tried to make them pay. Instead of letting them be the powerhouses of biodiversity and carbon capture they are naturally. 🌲🪾 The other is made of wool, felted by many hands, and feet (!), from the Swaledale and Shetland sheep who are also deeply intertwined with the fate of upland peat bogs. Many bogs were drained to make sheep pasture. Now peatland restoration workers are working with farmers trying to find new ways to make a living from sheep that can help, not harm, the bogs. The sculptures will hang from the ceiling in a circle, a ‘Tenderbog embrace’ which visitors can enter, and listen to sound works that mingle voice and field sound. More on them soon.

Fighting for Nature with ‘Barrister for the Earth’ Mónica Feria-Tinta 🌎 When we heard that Mónica Feria Tinta was coming to Bath to promote her new book ‘A Barrister for the Earth’, we grabbed our chance to meet her for a conversation on the banks of the Avon. Mónica is a leading expert on environmental and climate change law. She has crafted daring new legal arguments that draw on constitutional, human rights, and international legislation. We talk about her winning cases that have hit the headlines, such as the protection of the Los Cedros cloud forest in Colombia against a Canadian mining company. With no indigenous people inhabiting the forest to represent, Mónica’s client became the forest itself. On the basis of detailed scientific research that showed how irreplaceable the forest was in terms of biodiversity, she successfully claimed them as a legal personality, able to take up law against their own destruction. Los Cedros has become a beacon of hope for people in Britain, as we fight to end the pollution of rivers and desecration of lands and trees. Many groups now look to Rights of Nature law with hope, and in the case of Love Our Ouse (see earlier podcast with Matthew Bird) Mónica was a key advisor. What are we doing to the world? A lot of harm. Why do we seek happiness in the acquisition of things instead of living a good life? Mónica brings passion to the legal process with values that draw on her Andean ancestry (she moved to the UK as a refugee from the civil war in Peru) and her love of nature in England. She lives in Surrey and speaks movingly about her grief at the loss of her friend the oak tree outside her bedroom window, and how it helped her understand the fight for Chester, a London Plane tree in a coastal town in Essex that was under threat of felling for development 📣 New podcast episode at tonal-uk.com Maybe the last podcast, at least for a time, as other projects are pressing. We’re proud and grateful to Monica for making it such a powerful piece. @internationallawbarrister

In the Autumn we spent a wonderful couple of hours in the company of Richard Adeney, learning more about the river Tone through some of her tiniest and shyest inhabitants, the riverflies. It’s taken us rather a time to make that experience into a podcast. But now we have, and it’s live action of the gentlest sort, available at tonal-uk.com or wherever you find your podcasts, search Tonal - rivers beyond sewage. There’s something so magical about seeing these wee beasties, who stay hidden in the mud and gravels, feeding up and moulting, often for a couple of years, before emerging resplendent one Spring morning to take part in their fleeting but gorgeous romantic drama in the air. Mayflies famously only ‘live for a day’ in their adult form, though their exact lifespan varies between species their Latin genus is Ephemera for that reason. But this ignores their much longer life in the river! Riverflies are known as the ‘canaries in the coal mine’ of river health as they are very sensitive to pollution, including silt, which sometimes gets seen as ‘natural’, but is pretty disastrous and mostly a result of intensive farming practices. For more info do check out @riverflypartnership

I am standing with the collective action by international contemporary artists who are committed to the environment during COP30 #unitedartistsforclimate want to place culture at the heart of climate action. Yes! Climate, biodiversity and culture are totally entangled. The call for TFFF (an international protection of the worlds tropical forests) speaks to me especially powerfully because trees, woods and forests have nurtured my being since I can remember, and are woven through all aspects of our thinking and work. May the forests unite through art! Our current research into temperate rainforest here in the southwest of England is in conversation with all that we learned in Brasil and Finland, and in hope for a larger international project that focuses on forests, on ‘how forests think’ in Eduardo Kohn’s words, or in Jay Griffiths’, ‘the wet and current knowledge of the forest mind’. @cop30nobrasil — 10-21 nov 2025 @artofchange21 @labverde @unitedartistsforclimate

Tonal is all about water and rivers, of course. It is also a celebration of, a chance to learn about and amplify the work of many people in the UK who are honouring and fighting for rivers. The third and final Tonal radio episode is about our human relationship to water and rivers. We’ve been talking to people about how, if rivers are indeed alive, can they be seen as legal persons, and/or are they sacred beings? Tonal would be nothing without the wonderful people who have shared their time, passion and knowledge. It has been a fascinating journey, and a real privilege to meet so many people who are leading the way towards what we hope will be a better future for our waterways and our watery ways. The broadcast features excerpts from our podcasts with author and convenor of the 'Living Waters' cooperative enquiry Peter Reason; author and chair of Transition Town Wellington Anita Roy, poet Graeme Ryan, spirit practitioner and river pilgrim Jane Embleton, lawyer for nature and river guardian Paul Powlesland, and Love Our Ouse co-founder Matthew Bird. We timed it to come out this week to coincide with Our Earth Week, a climate awareness initiative with a focus this year on water. It is an endeavour for local radio stations by @crenvironmentnetwork which is run by the seemingly inexhaustible Penny Southgate. 'Tonal - River Being' is airing tomorrow on 10Radio and on FromeFM next week, plus other stations around the country. It will be available at from tomorrow. @loveourouse @peterreason #graemeryan #anitaroy @wellingtontransition #janeembleton @paul.powlesland @lawyersfornature @rightsforriversuk @riveractionuk

I spent a morning with Matt Wheeldon, Director of Infrastructure Development at Wessex Water at the Bradford on Tone sewage treatment works. He’s a passionate advocate for change in our sewage system – ‘We’ve got a rainwater problem, not a sewage problem.’ As we got deeper into the topic, it seems we have a politics problem, a development problem, a consumer problem, a carbon footprint problem, a farming problem, a knowledge problem. Lots of problems! As far as actual sewage goes, it isn’t rocket science, but it is expensive, in carbon terms as well as in ££. Follow our trip around the treatment works and our wide ranging conversation about it all on the new podcast episode. Follow link in bio to @wessexwater_ @ginkgoprojects #rivers #sewage #cleanwater #surfersagainstsewage #riveraction

New mushrooms, venerable trees, ancient rocks, big seas. One of the best things about moving to Somerset is all the incredible places that are now on our map doorstep. A week off - half in a very soggy Dartmoor and half by the beach near Bigbury. We saw this Orange Pore fungus, new to us and a recent addition to Devon, it’s invasive in the paleotropics apparently, I don’t think that extends to SW England but still, it feels bizarre considering how tiny and pretty it is. That was by the sea, the Yellow Club fungus was up in the top of the moor. So many ancient trees in Dartmoor, thrilling. Where we were staying they had surrounded their wonderful huge oak with a circle of … bins. We found this upsetting. It might be more offensive to human than oak sensibilities, probably all the cars driving around and parking on their roots felt worse, both spoke of a sad lack of love for the land and her beings and gods. Richie loved the beach, but was scared of the sea. We all played dare the wave. I had a couple of swims, one was more like being tossed around by the waves than actually swimming, exciting, intense and a bit scary. I’m in awe of surfers!

The next episode of Tonal on the radio is all about rivers’ flow and flooding, barriers and constriction, with a special focus on eels and salmon. 10 Radio 105.3FM and – The Community Show by Pauline Homeshaw and Andrew Norris Friday 17 October at 10am or thereabouts, then various repeats through the week. Frome FM 96.6FM – Sustainable Frome with Mike Grenville - Monday 27 October 8pm live on FM or www.frome.fm, then streaming on Mixcloud With Dr Bel Deering of Somerset Rivers Authority, artist James Aldridge, angler and scientist Simon Ratsey, Oliver Hill of the Environment Agency, artist Anne Marie Culhane of Tidelines, and Vanessa Becker Hughes of the Somerset Eel Recovery Project. Meanwhile for a deeper dive, there’s a new podcast up, an interview on the banks of the Exe with @annemarieculhane who is an amazing artist, she works with Jo Salter and others on the project @exetidelines , which brings together arts, science, action and research working with communities and the public to celebrate and care for the Exe estuary and coast, and to find ways to adapt and respond collectively to the changes caused by climate breakdown and species loss. Anne Marie tells us the amazing story of the Salmon, who hang out in the Exe estuary while they adapt from salt to fresh water, before they swim upstream, or try to, where the few extraordinary survivors who get over fifteen weirs and escape the predatory seal get to spawn in the beautiful shaded upper reaches of the Exe. We also learn about the Tidelines project Salmon Run, a community relay race, or ultramarathon for the ultrafit, along that 45 mile journey to raise awareness of the salmon and their plight. 🐟🌡️🌊 #eels #salmon #letitflow #flow #rivertone #riverexe Tonal is supported by @fcditaunton and produced by @ginkgoprojects