River of Stories is a film about the Pymmes Brook and its people.
The Pymmes BrookERS, a community group that looks after the Pymmes and Salmons Brooks in north-east London, realised that where the Pymmes Brook runs through heavily urbanised areas, people don't even know it's there - so they're not going to understand, enjoy, love and look after it. We walked this stretch of the river with communities, walking and talking the river into being. What people said about the river became the soundtrack of this film.
Between October 2021 and July 2022 Alison Archer and the Pymmes BrookERS led five walks "finding the Pymmes Brook", the river that passes through Palmers Green on its way from Hadley Common to its confluence with the Lea in Edmonton.
The walks explored the lower reaches of the Brook in Edmonton, starting in Tile Kiln Lane near Oakthorpe School, passing beneath the Cambridge Roundabout, between Silver Street and the North Middlesex Hospital, then through Pymmes Park and onwards, discovering "where it’s flowing beneath our feet, where it’s beautiful - and where it’s not!" As well as walking, people talked, finding out "what you think about the river, how well you know it, what it means to you, and what it feels like to discover new stretches of this vibrant river".
Film maker Wendy Charlton and writer and narrator Abe Gibson have woven the stories that people told during the walks into a film, River of Stories, that premiered in October at Silver Street Community Church, almost on the banks of the Brook, with the people who had walked and talked the river forming the audience.