Dear city: water and nature in Cambridge

Join Dr Anastasia Badder & co. for a day of discussion, walking, hands-on activity and film to learn about and connect with water in our catchment.

Throughout history, the rivers around Cambridge have been the focus of pilgrimage, healing, enjoyment, and community. These waters connect all bodies inhabiting the city – both human and non-human alike.

But today our rivers are in crisis, facing the challenges of pollution and over-abstraction from ongoing rapid development and demand. Watercourses struggle through low flows and algal blooms, stresses which echo across the ecosystem. At the same time, many beings across the city are excluded from access to local rivers.

This workshop brings together academic and practitioner knowledges and relations with water to think about how we might reimagine extraction, access, conservation and better water futures.

Across the day, we will hear from water-attentive academics and practitioners in diverse fields, dig our hands into a rain garden demo, walk along a local water course and reflect on the ways that water is the thread connecting our city. Our day concludes with a screening of a film that invites viewers to look more closely at the waters around us.

This event is a collaboration between Water Sensitive Cambridge, the Cambridge Interfaith Programme and CRASSH.

Practicalities

This event has been identified as suitable for participants aged 12 and upwards. Registration closes on 31 March.

A detailed programme including information about the contributors can be found on the CRASSH website.

This event will be followed by a free screening of the film Rivers of Light at 5pm, part of the 2025 Cambridge Festival.