In 2013 Claire Wallerstein set up Rame Peninsula Beach Care(RPBC), a successful beach cleaning and marine conservation charity in Cornwall. Prior to that she had worked for many years as a print and radio reporter, author and as a press officer for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, in the UK and abroad (Philippines, South America and East Africa). Claire also co-coordinates the Cornish Plastic Pollution Coalition and was a member of the 2018 'Sail Against Plastic' expedition to Svalbard, studying the impact of plastic pollution, but also experiencing the inescapable evidence of climate change on this fragile region in the remote Arctic.

In 2014 Rame Peninsula Beach Care collaborated with Dr Matthew Witt from the University of Exeter's Environment and Sustaiability Institute (ESI) on 'All Washed Up', a 2014 Creative Exchange exploring beach waste in Cornwall. The project saw volunteers working over several weeks to remove, categorise and count nearly 500,000 pieces of plastic from a single cove at Whitsand Bay, Cornwall. This culminated in an exhibition at the ESI which featured a variety of artworks by local artists created from different kinds of beach waste and a film 'The Big Pick' made by filmmaker Bryony Stokes.

As part of the collaboration, RPBC artist Liz Franklin also created a large abstract mural from beach waste for display in the ESI atrium, with help from a group of 100 school children. Dr Witt also worked with Claire Wallerstein from RPBC on a GPS tracking project to map and measure the distribution and concentration of different kinds of waste on Cornish beaches, providing hard scientific data that may later feed into discussions regarding policies around plastics and waste disposal.

Following her collaboration with the ESI, Claire teamed up once again with videographer Bryony Stokes to create Cornwall Climate Care, an environmental conservation charity which documents climate change in Cornwall and what communities are doing address it.

Bryony Stokes has been specialising in documentary environmental films for over 10 years and has previously worked with Greenpeace, the Centre for Sustainable Energy as well as the University of Exeter and Falmouth University. Prior to her move to Cornwall she worked for eight years in London for production company Salt Pictures, working as associate producer on projects in Bethlehem, Kenya and London. She then went on to work as Producer Director at CTVC, heading up over 500 short online films to start up Truetube, now a BAFTA-winning free online educational platform producing documentary, drama and animation films aimed at teachers, students and young people.

Together they began work on 'Cornwall Climate Stories', an eight part documentary series, co-produced with Rame Peninsula Beach Care, which showcases the positive and often ground-breaking work going on in Cornwall to tackle the climate crisis. The first episode focuses on the marine environment and opens with Dr Matthew Witt from the University's ESI talking about his research into basking sharks and how they may be impacted by climate change.

You can watch the trailer below.

As part of 'Catalyst' the pair are exhibiting four photographs of people featured in the opening eposide, which includes Dr Matthew Witt (from the University's ESI), James Doddrell (a scubadiver with ARC Marine), Fiona Crouch (currently leading the EU Life Recreation Remedies project) and Marianne Wootton (senior plankton analyst for the Continuous Plankton Recorder survey).

You can watch the full film here. To find out more about Claire and Bryony's collaboration with the ESI and see the photographs exhibited enter the virtual ESI gallery by clicking on the image below.

About 'Catalyst'

Showcasing nearly a decade of arts/science collaborations at the the University of Exeter's Environment and Sustainability Institute (ESI), Penryn, Catalyst features new work by twelve artists, all of whome have previously worked with researchers as part of the ESI Creative Exchange.