Stuart Bowditch Podcasts Stuart Bowditch

In 2009 I joined my friend, artist and activist Nicola Field on a March for Palestine through the streets of London to the Israeli embassy. Occupation persists and grows. Marches persist and grow. Hope persists and grows. Ceasefire now! X

In 2016 I was recording a variety of locations for the Essex Record Office Sound and Video Archive 'You Are Hear' project https://www.essexsounds.org.uk . One of the threads of interest were 'Quiet Places' so I headed out to the sea wall at Paglesham, near the final resting place of The Beagle (Darwin's Ship), next to the abandoned oyster beds, overlooking Potton Island across the River Roach. As I lay on the sea wall soaking up the warmth of the sun, 10 minutes or so in to the sounds of swaying grasses and foraging bees, my reverie is broken by the sound of a PA system being plugged in some distance away. Sound checking ensued and the moment of peace was gone. So I walked back to the Plough and Sail public house which was heaving with people so I followed the sound of the crowd. In the car park a Barn Dance had been set up and in the middle of it all was a man that I knew, Keith Baxter. He's a lovely guy, great musician and a member of the Famous Potatoes https://famouspotatoes.co.uk , and as it turns out a fantastic Barn Dance host.

A week before lockdown came in to force in the UK I recorded an interview with artist Terry Flower for the series of podcasts I did for Visit Stour Valley (available on Soundcloud and other platforms). He directed me to a lovely spot across the fields in some woods beside Belchamp Brook. I sat there for half an hour soaking up the atmosphere and contemplating the impending doom. There is plenty of spring bird activity including Chaffinch, Blackbird, Green Woodpecker, Great Tit, Pheasant, Jackdaw, Robin, Linnet, Blue Tit and Wren, plus a field full of sheep and some bird scarer explosions.

I put a call out for sounds, or suggestions of sound, from the borough of Tendring in Essex. Geoff, a volunteer at the High Lighthouse in Harwich, agreed to let me inside to make some recordings. I meet him on a very blustery and rainy day and he kindly let me spend some time alone in the building to capture the sound of the lively weather filtering through the building. The only internal sound you can hear is the fire alarm that needed its battery changing.

During a trip to India in January 2010 to stay with my housemates uncle in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, I visited the Ashram in Sabarmati, one of several ashram's that Gandhi stayed at between 1917 and 1933.
www.gandhiashramsabarmati.org/en/

It had been several years since I was on Wallasea Island, so I was pleased to be back in one of my old haunts. I went with a very good friend that I was visiting over the festive period and we decided to go and watch the sunrise over Foulness Island, which is itself somewhere I have recorded and made work. https://essexmeme.fandom.com/wiki/Essexmeme_Wiki

We arrived just as the gate to the RSPB reserve was opening (luck!) and parked up and made the half an hour trek along the sea wall to School House Viewpoint, the most easterly point of the island. The last time I was here the conveyor belt that was in place to unload earth extracted from beneath London during the construction of Crossrail was still in place. The tunnelled material was used to landscape the interior of Wallasea Island before the sea wall was breached to let the sea in and develop the area as a wetland for wading birds. For the Essexmeme project in 2014 we interviewed a farmer on Foulness Island who was incredulous... 'We've been trying to keep the sea out for hundreds of years, and now they want to let it back in!'

The scheme was certainly working as there were plenty of birds within earshot including Green Winged Teal, Stone Curlew, Meadow Pipit, Black Bellied Plover, Curlew, Oystercatcher, Redshank, Water Pipit and Canada Goose.