Welcome to Tweed River Festival! Join us in Peebles in the Scottish Borders, on and alongside the River Tweed, for three days of river-focused creative activities – from workshops, film screenings, music and performances, to drawing installations, readings, walks, talks, discussions and more.
The festival’s inaugural edition is the culmination of Connecting Threads’ 2025 programming theme, Watery Commons. Across the year, we’ve been charting connections between the local and the global, the bodily and the systemic, the material and the metaphorical – in recognition that there can be no meaningful thinking about rivers or the commons which is not at the same time political.
The festival’s second day concludes with an evening of film and discussion, centred on the premiere live performance of Jessie Growden’s new film, Bodies in Water, which has emerged out of Jessie’s month-long residency with Connecting Threads this summer. For its first outing, Bodies in Water is accompanied by a live narration.
Bodies in Water is suitable for people aged 15 and over. The film includes themes around climate anxiety; discussion of nudity, death, dealing with the UK Home Office, body image anxiety, foot fetishes, and animal abuse.
Access
Please see the Connecting Threads website for detailed access info for Peebles Burgh Hall.
7.30pm – 9pm
- Jessie Growden, Bodies in Water (2025) 30 mins
Bodies in Water is a story in film and on paper, partly a document of wild swimming, partly a diary of a summer spent longing, partly a fun fictional future of the rivers and the fish of the Tweed. Featuring live narration. - Q&A with artist Jessie Growden
- LOTs, Arab Fluids (2025) 7 mins
Arab Fluids documents qanats in Palermo, still used in what is left of the prosperous
Conca d’Oro citrus orchards, and the abandoned subterranean canals - both integral to cultural heritage yet largely unacknowledged.
- Julia Parks, Wool Aliens (2023) 28 mins
A journey into the historical and tactile entanglements between sheep’s wool, migrant plant seeds and the River Tweed. Made as part of a residency with Alchemy Film and Arts.
All tickets for Tweed River Festival are on a pay-what-you-can basis. We believe that everyone should be able to attend our programme. Paying for your ticket(s) will help support our continued activities.
