Our Changeprint
Our Changeprint can be measured by number of attendees and community engagement in festival events; increased public awareness and grassroots commitment to act and improve the river's health; and our example for others to follow of ‘micro-bioregioning’ in practice.
Our story
Inspired by bioregional principles, the two lead co-facilitators (both ‘climate and nature leads’ for their respective parish councils, Freshford and Winsley) facilitated a collaboration of around 12 parish councils and their communities along the Bristol River Avon, between and including Bradford on Avon Town and Batheaston.
This group organised a grassroots River Festival, called the Wild Waters Festival, in June 2025, to celebrate the river and its local communities. Our aim was to draw attention to the pressures on the river due to climate change and biodiversity loss, and to encourage local people to take positive action to help.
Our advice
Our steering group met three times. Participants included town/parish councillors and representatives from local nature groups. Each town or parish council agreed to host a minimum of three community events during the festival.
Events were to be on a ‘river’ theme, with a climate and/or nature focus, seeking to engage local people in the issues and to enable them to take positive action in response. We suggested that each parish approach their church, school and local nature organisations to host events as a starting point, but a wide range of other community groups were also involved, from film clubs to pubs, boat clubs to local charities.
We took a deliberately grassroots community-led approach, in the expectation that the events that will be developed by each community are relevant to each community. We asked organisers to aim for a wide range of event types and target audiences, and to make the events as accessible as possible.
Our festival dates were chosen to coincide with the Great Big Green week and to run in parallel with B&NES’ planned river festival in Bath (with support from the BANES team).
