Bathing Status Pools

Rivers, lakes and seas should be clean enough to swim in safely, but sewage pollution and inadequate water treatment means that this is often not the case in England.  Currently in the UK, ‘Designated Bathing Water Status’ (DBWS) is awarded to areas recognised as popular sites for outdoor swimming.  Once an area achieves this status, close water monitoring is carried out and sewage released within the area must be treated to a higher standard.   The awarding of DBWS is one way to force water quality improvements in an area.  Bathing Status Pools improves the water quality by filtering water through its walls.  Clean water attracts open water swimmers, whose collective presence reinforces the sites importance.  The site gains DBWS and efforts are required to maintain the water quality; leaving a legacy of cleaner waters and a culture of open water swimming.  This entanglement of the environmental and the social through the practice of open water swimming highlights the collective relationship between shared experiences, environmental processes, the human and the more-than-human in forming sustainable public space.

>>>This year we have been investigating how landscapes can be redefined through collective practices, this has been framed in multiple ways.  We have been engaging with human and more-than-human beings, with materials, policy and environments to speculate on how collective, situated and radical landscape practices can bring about change.