Listening to the Bees

Elise Guillaume & Ridgeway Users

  1. 2023
  1. Beneath the Pavement, The Marshes

    Listening to the Bees workshop with Elise Guillaume with the Ridgeway Users and Bumblebee Conservation Trust

    Saturday 19 August, 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM
    Ridgeway Path

    The Listening to the Bees workshop with Elise Guillaume began with a group listening experience, where people were invited to listen, feel & explore the Ridgeway Path in Thamesmead, using microphones that let us hear the amazing sounds of local bees, insects & birds up close.

    We also learnt about the new Pollinator Corridor being created along the Ridgeway, which will provide a network of habitats for pollinators in the area to thrive; including the endangered Shrill Carder Bee, one of the rarest bees in Britain.

    Throughout the workshop Elise photographed the environment using 35mm film and developed the images using plants foraged together from the Ridgeway, and recipes for sustainably processing film using plant-based developers will be shared.

    A very special thank you to Nikki of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, Uy from the Ridgeway Users, and the excellent Elise for hosting a wonderful listening experience for us all.

    We had a lot of wildlife spotted and heard on the way, including some of England's rarest species of bumblebee — we even got to touch the back of a few. Here's a list of what we came across: Bumblebees: Moss carder, brown-banded, common carder, buff tail. Other species: frogs, ants, wasps, horseflies, spiders, crickets, grasshoppers, hoverflies. Flora: black horehound, evening primrose, white dead nettle, hare 's-foot clover, bramble, St. John's wort, hedge mustard, hawthorne, nettle.

    This workshop is part of "Beneath the pavement, the marshes", 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.

    Elise Guillaume is a Belgian artist and filmmaker whose work explores our complex relationship with nature. Interested in the connections within our (eco)systems, she uses audio-visual mediums to create contrasting narratives to question what it means to be human in a time of crisis and extinction.

    Ridgeway Users is a community group committed to improving the habitats of the Ridgway, a footpath running between Crossness and Plumstead in South East London.

    The Bumblebee Conservation Trust is an organisation in the UK that makes efforts to monitor and conserve bumblebees and their habitat.