Filmmakers Xenia Glen and Antosh Wojcik explored the Camel Estuary’s cultural and environmental heritage through film, poetry and animation. They highlighted both traditional and modern conservation efforts whilst also illustrating the local community’s evolving relationship with the estuary.
Introduction
Leeside was a creative collaboration between Natural England and its Protected Site Strategies and Arts and Culture, University of Exeter, taking place between November 2024 - July 2025. This initiative supported creative practitioners to explore nature rich Sites of Specific Scientific Interest with a broad range of stakeholders, bringing together University of Exeter research academics, Natural England officers and a range of local communities to undertake creative explorations of the protected sites and their surroundings and generate engaging creative outputs.
Impact and legacy were key priorities for the commissions, with the intended outcome of encouraging community empowerment for future engagement in the management of protected sites, and informing relevant policy around protected site strategies.
One site selected was the Camel Estuary in Cornwall. This commission was awarded to filmmakers Xenia Glen and Antosh Wojcik of Sleepwalker Studios. They explored the Camel Estuary’s cultural and environmental heritage in their film, Camel Before The Storm.
I was thrilled to partner with Natural England on this project, bringing our expertise in Arts and Culture to the collaboration. Ultimately, our shared goal was to serve the diverse communities who live on and near these natural environments and encourage new ways of connecting with nature and heritage through the arts. Based on feedback from stakeholders, partners and contributing artists, I believe these goals have been achieved. We look forward to sharing our learning with others looking to work in this way.
About the site: The Camel Estuary
The Camel Estuary and its tributaries span over 600 hectares. It is a site of interest due to its diversity, including intertidal rock zones and mud and saltmarshes, as well as hosting several protected species, including the European eel, and wading birds. Near the mouth of the estuary are Padstow town (to the West) and Rock village (to the East). Five miles inland, Wadebridge town is located on the River Camel.
Now, more than ever, we need to generate and renew meaningful bonds between people, places and biodiversity that sustain us, and the arts are crucial to revealing the wonder and complexity of those relationships.
About the artists
Writer-director Xenia Glen and Antosh Wojcik, poet, drummer and cross-disciplinary artist are co-founders of the Dorset-based filmmakers’ collective Sleepwalker Studios. Formed in 2017, Sleepwalker is also a production company, dedicated to producing subversive films that explore unusual stories inspired by real experiences. It has grown to include film creatives from across London, Dorset, Devon and beyond.
About their commission
Their creative approach is community-centred filmmaking - a collaborative approach to filmmaking that involves local communities actively in the process of creating a film. This approach empowers local people to participate in decision-making, storytelling, and the technical aspects of production under Xenia and Anthosh's guidance. This creative approach promotes organic authentic representation, with the view to uplift underrepresented voices and stories. This is paramount to their practise. The filmmaking style, subject, and story is at the ideation stage and will be honed during the research and development phase involving the Camel Estuary community.
Research and Development
Xenia and Antosh worked along the Camel Estuary engaging with local communities from Wadebridge, Rock, and Padstow, and examining the site’s ecological, historical, and social dynamics and learning its stories.
They met with volunteers from Wadebridge Museum, talked to Becky Hughes (Senior Adviser on Landscapes and Nature Recovery Networks at Natural England), met with Dr Dan Bloomfield (Nature Recovery and Food Systems (UofE Penryn Campus) and spent time with Dan and other members of Cornwall Birds at Walmsley Sanctuary. They walked and explored the coast with James Scourse (Professor of Marine Science at the UofE).
Xenia and Antosh returned to work with Prof Scourse and his team at their Penryn campus laboratory. They filtered sand samples they had collected along the Camel estuary, photographing and studying them under microscopes with varying strengths – with a crash course in foraminifera and silica. They also observed how shells record time, using both the conversations and the images captured to shape the final work.
Online workshops
Ekphrastic Estuary
Antosh and Xenia ran a two-hour online creative workshop, exploring some of the moving images from their work-in-progress film. Participants discussed process, ekphrasis (writing in response to visual art) and took part in writing exercises.
EQ’ing the Estuary
Antosh and Xenia ran a two-hour online creative sound design workshop. Participants could bring along their preferred DAW (digital audio workstation) like Audacity, Logic, Ableton.
The Film
Camel Before The Storm is an experimental film that explores Cornwall’s Camel Estuary through spoken word, documentary interviews, and experimental landscape visuals featuring thermal imaging, infrared cinematography, scannography, microscope photography, and animation provided by a collaboration with Saskia Tomlinson. The work also centres around poetry created in response to community workshops and academic research.
“The film is a lyrical collage intersecting ecological and sociological issues - we hope it stirs moments of revelation, reflection and enjoyment for audiences as we play with the estuary’s many elements, images and voices on screen.”
“Making Camel Before The Storm has been an enlightening process. It’s been wonderful exploring the Camel Estuary and collaborating with people from the area.”
Creative Collaborators
Saskia Tomlinson: Animation Designer
Nick Murray: Sound Artist
Jamie McCulloch: Edit Supervisor
Lily Baldwin: Production Manager and Handheld Scanner Operator
Yemi Adegbulu: Producer and Sleepwalker Company Director
Jan Trevethick and Robin Engelhardt: Cornish language translation
The commission is funded by Natural England, and delivered through a partnership between Natural England and Arts and Culture, University of Exeter, with support from the University of Exeter’s Biodiversity and People Network.
University of Exeter
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