A new creative programme bringing artists, activists and ecologists together with local environmental and community groups working in north Bexley, to explore the ground beneath our feet.

Beneath The Pavement, The Marshes will focus on how wetland environments shape, and are shaped by, the communities living along the river between Thamesmead and Slade Green, an area of London built on reclaimed Thames marshlands.

Wetlands are complex environments that can encompass marshlands, estuaries, mangroves, peat bogs and grasslands. Up to 75% of the world’s wetlands are now lost, and so is the rich biodiversity that inhabits them as well as the histories that they carry.

Throughout 2023 and 2024 the programme will present a series of artist projects and creative workshops, walks and podcasts, responding to the unique habitats of Crossness and Erith Marshes, including foreshores, wetlands, woods and urban gardens, and will attempt to surface the sinking histories contained within them by testing out different ways of sensing and learning with our local environments to imagine new ways of relating to them.

The programme will bring together artist and researchers working at the forefront of arts and ecology such as Elise Guillame, Fungi Futures, Calum F. Kerr, Victoria Knoakes, Maia Magoga, RightsFor Weeds and Felix Taylor with local environmental groups caring for the marshes including Crossness Nature Reserve, Crossness River Action Group (CRAG), Friends of Lesnes Abbey and Woods, Ridgeway Users and Thamesmead Edible Gardens.