Panel Discussion: What Matters Short Film
27 September, 12.30-1.15pm
Join us for a panel discussion and screening of Josh Bilton’s short film What Matters, as part of the Cambridge: Rivers of Film Festival. The discussion will also mark the launch of Bilton’s I Felt I was a Bird, a publication created in response to the film. On the panel, Josh Bilton will be joined by Veronica Sekules, Director of Groundworks Gallery.
Engagement and awareness of our waterways and their pivotal role in our global ecology has featured significantly in a recent creative project with artist Josh Bilton and pupils from Arbury Primary School in Cambridge.
What Matters was a project and collaboration taking place in 2024/2025. The resulting artworks were displayed at Kettle’s Yard as part of the young people’s exhibition, Paint What Matters, in February 2025. This event will celebrate the project, and provide an opportunity to share the thoughts, reflections and creative responses of these young people with our wider community.
About the film
What Matters is a film created by artist Josh Bilton and commission by Kettle’s Yard for the community exhibition Paint What Matters, generously supported by Arts Council England and High House Residency Programme. What Matters is a 16mm video and series of collaborative texts made by children in Year 4 at Arbury Primary School in North Cambridge. Through six ecologically focused workshops devised with choreographer Daisy May Kemp, the children have responded to two conservation sites in Norfolk – Holme Bird Observatory along the East coastline of England and the River Nar, a globally rare chalk-stream that flows through the Downs and Fenland of Northwest Norfolk.
Returning to traditions of folklore, the children have expressed their thoughts and feelings about the people, places, colours, words and environment’s that matter to them today through painting and storytelling. Their hand-painted journeys are layered with 16mm footage of the River Nar, Holme Bird Observatory and the hands and gestures of female ornithologists. Transforming into birds, rivers, seeds, seasons, weather and characters they met along the way, their texts touch upon themes of care for self, community and the increasingly fragile balance of our ecologies. Each text is carried by a bird that has rested at Holme Bird Observatory in Norfolk along its migratory route from places as far away as Syria, Nigeria and Israel.
About Cambridge Rivers of Film Festival
Rivers of Film Festival seeks to celebrate and inspire action through fresh perspectives, innovative techniques, and new audiences for river films and rivers themselves. Place-care, creativity and curiosity are at the centre of our thinking about rivers and other water bodies. We share ideas to broaden our moral imagination and provide pathways for achieving clean, healthy rivers for generations to come.
Taking place for twelve days at the end of September and early October in unusual places – museums, community centres, lecture theatres and medieval churches – and never in cinemas, the Rivers of Film Festival seeks to bring rivers, aquatic ecosystems and their guardians into public view. Our festival uses the medium of film in all its forms: documentary, short and long-form films, talks, walks, workshops and more. This includes nine specially commissioned shorts from filmmakers around the UK.
- The galleries, where exhibitions are shown, and all areas of the Clore Learning Studio (level -1), the Research Space (level 1) and the Ede Room (level 2) are fully accessible.
- We have wheelchair accessible toilets on the lower ground (level -1), ground and first floor (level 1).
- There is a lift giving access to all floors located past the galleries, just beside the Clore Learning Studio on the ground floor.
- Kettle’s Yard welcomes assistance and service dogs in all areas.
- We have large-print versions of the wall text available.
- We can lend visitors small folding seats for taking around exhibitions or using at non-seated events. Please ask a Visitor Assistant for help finding a seat.
