Protesters touring UK in fight against river sewage

Open water swimmers campaigning against raw sewage discharges into public water are touring the UK with a giant puppet they created to represent rivers.

Avona is being designed and made by members of Bristol's Conham Bathing and local artists, and will be taken to events around the country.

The group regularly samples the water quality of the River Avon, and are campaigning for it to have legal personhood status similar to rivers in New Zealand.

Member of Conham Bathing, Charlotte Sawyer said: "We want to create a spirit for the river because it just helps you to think 'Is the river alive? Should it have rights? Is it a person? Maybe we can think through that creatively."

The group was founded in 2021 to highlight the amount of people getting sick when they swam in the river, and now has around 90 members, with 45 citizen scientists.

So far, they have surveyed the River Avon five times this year, with recent surveys showing some E. Coli bacteria, which comes from either raw sewage or agricultural pollution.

Their tests indicate the river meets minimum standards to swim in.

"Our overall mission is to build that picture of of what kind of pollutants are in the water and to demonstrate to the public what power we all have in our hands to make a difference, to make a change," group member Megan Trump told BBC Radio Bristol.

Ms Trump "married" the river in 2023 as part of efforts to highlight pollution.

She said the puppet will be loosely based on the stories of the goddess Avona, and will be "beautiful, but also have fangs, as rivers can take away as much as they give".

The puppet will be made in a series of workshops at The Puppet Place on Bristol's Harbourside, before being taken to a procession at Green Man Festival later in August.

It will then appear at Bristol Aquarium on September 28 to mark World Rivers Day as part of a public art exhibition.

Follow BBC Bristol on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630.