The first Sunday in September marked the Grove Park Carnival at Chinbrook Meadows. The event is a family friendly event with a dog show, funfair, parade and a variety of stalls including some that were teaching the public about the River Quaggy and the animals within it. Thames21, Friends of Chinbrook Meadows, The Quekett Microscopical Club and ChART were all in attendance.
Our friends The Quekett Microscopical Club have written a wonderful blog all about the day HERE on their website.
Back in 2021 Dr Louise Rondel and colleagues at Goldsmith’s University captured a series of interviews and sounds along the River Quaggy, exploring the soundscape of the urban River Quaggy.
The project strived to understand how the river impacts the local area and vice versa through an interactive app, the public contributed their own field recordings at the participatory workshop and sound walk, and talks from resident scientific and cultural experts, including John Drever and Emma Jackson, about the importance of the river to both the community and local eco-system.
Learn how people interact with the Quaggy and how this heavily engineered South London river is becoming re-naturalised. All done in conjunction with the Quaggy Waterways Action Group (QWAG).
Listen and explore the soundscape at https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/sounding-the-river-quaggy_679393#14/51.4599/0.0087
A WaterBlitz is a water sampling event that helps provide a snapshot of pollution issues across a river’s catchment area.
This event is for local people and citizen scientists to take water samples of points of interest to them across the Ravensbourne Catchment (which includes the Ravensbourne, Pool, Chaffinch Brook, The Beck, Quaggy, Kyd Brook) to identify ongoing pollution issues impacting the catchment’s water quality. This event will also be an important opportunity to sample areas in the catchment that generally have relatively good water quality to understand how poorer quality stretches of our rivers could perform throughout the catchment in the absence of pollution challenges.
There is booking page for people to sign up
Thames21 are holding a couple of Ravensbourne Catchment Improvement Plan consultations and are looking for your thoughts and opinions.
Rivers and People 