Part of Immaterial Terrain
2nd April - 23rd April 2023
An exhibition at Britten Pears Arts, The Stable Block, Snape Maltings, Suffolk, IP17 1SP
Immaterial Terrain is complemented by a series of three podcasts that developed out of long semi-structured interviews by Richardson and writer Jonathan P. Watts with people who live and work in and around Sizewell. Titled Histories and Futures, Isolation and Community, and Destruction and Conservation, they explore the past, present and possible futures of the east coast of Suffolk.
Although Sizewell is home to no more than fifty full-time residents, this isolated place raises some of the most urgent planetary issues of today, including our relationship to natural resources, energy security, conflict, global relations, and large corporate interests in competition with democratic processes.
Immaterial Terrain is an Arts Council England funded project made in collaboration with Jonathan P. Watts, Daniel Timms aka LOOM, Chris Watson and contributors from the Sizewell and Leiston area of Suffolk.
Histories and Futures is the first in a series of three podcasts that explore the past, present and possible futures of a small hamlet on the east coast of Suffolk called Sizewell. Although Sizewell is home to no more than fifty full-time residents, this isolated place raises some of the most urgent planetary issues of today, including our relationship to natural resources, energy security, conflict, global relations, and large corporate interests in competition with democratic processes.
Despite Sizwell’s miniscule size, it’s well known – infamous even – as one of six sites across England and Scotland actively generating nuclear energy. At Sizewell, there’s not just one nuclear power station, but two: the first, a Magnox reactor, known as Sizewell A, was completed in 1966; the second, a Pressurised Water Reactor, known as Sizewell B, was completed in 1995. The construction of a third, Sizewell C is imminent.
These podcasts developed out of a series of long semi-structured interviews by the artist Emily Richardson and writer Jonathan P. Watts with people who live and work in and around Sizewell. They compliment a new film by Emily, titled ‘Immaterial Terrain’, which documents the coast between Dunwich and Sizewell at an uncertain moment.
Drawing on research of Dunwich Heath, historian and farmer Richard Symes establishes a long-historial view, evoking an insurgent landscape fortified against smugglers and enemies, by turns noisome and tranquil. Boni Sones, Sizewell native, former nuclear correspondent for EADT, and author who has written on growing up in Sizewell, brings together a social history of the area attentive to work, social class and politics. Finally, Pete Wilkinson, founder of Together Against Sizewell C, in considering the so-called half-life of nuclear energy, its toxic persistence that requires careful management, urges us to imagine what sort of future others will inherit. What futures for the area are designed into the plans for Sizewell C?
Isolation and Community is the second of three podcasts that explore the past, present and possible futures of a small hamlet on the east coast of Suffolk called Sizewell. Despite Sizewell’s miniscule size, it’s well known – infamous even – as one of six sites across England and Scotland actively generating nuclear energy. Sizewell is characterised by a peculiar tension that makes itself apparent when you approach: large-scale industrial energy production by a global workforce occurs in an isolated area of outstanding natural beauty. To what extent is its continuing isolation in modern times due to its perceived threat? Immediately to the north of Sizewell, along the so-called ‘heritage coast’, Minsmere Nature Reserve is a site of special scientific interest owned and managed by the RSPB. Beyond that is Dunwich and the popular tourist beach Walberswick.
In this podcast we hear again from Boni Sones, former nuclear correspondent for the East Anglian Daily Times. Her prose and poetry has explored growing up in 1950s Sizewell – a feudal village. Despite the rigid class system that still characterised Sizewell at the time, there were progressive elements nearby. Summerhill, the experimental free school in Leiston founded by A.S. Neill, still open today. Illustrator and Communist party member Paxton Chadwick relocated from Manchester to teach art at Summerhill where he met his wife, Lee. Lee Chadwick would go on to be the UK’s first female county councilor. Lee was also a self-taught naturalist whose book ‘In Search of Heathland’ was the culmination of a ten-year study of the singular environment on her doorstep at Leiston Common.
In this podcast Paxton and Lee’s son, Peter Chadwick, and his partner Bridget Chadwick, introduce their lives and commitment to the environment and communities. And we hear from Bill Howard. Bill relocated with his family to Leiston in the late 1950s for a fitters job at Sizewell A. Through his involvement in the union and concern for workplace conditions, Bill found Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament which took him into activism and local politics. For many years he was editor of the Leiston Leader, a Communist community newsletter ‘for peace and socialism’, first produced by Lee Chadwick and Vivienne Morton in 1936.
Destruction and Conservation, the final in our series, we explore the complicated and sometimes bewildering entanglements of ‘Destruction and Conservation’ at Sizewell. If plans go ahead, Sizewell C will be sited next to ageing nuclear power stations in an area of outstanding natural beauty on an eroding shoreline beset by rising sea levels. Environmental stability, not merely economic stability, is required to ensure the safe maintenance of spent fuel and contaminated materials. Current models of the Suffolk coastline do not extend, Pete Wilkinson reminds us, eighty years ahead. In eighty years who will carry out this maintenance? Will there even be a shoreline to speak of? One thing is sure, Richard Symes warns in this podcast: Suffolk is sinking and coastal erosion is irreversible.
Pete recalls in this podcast first encountering nuclear waste dumps far out at sea while following anti-whaling expeditions on the Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior ship. Out of sight and out of mind, the sea a carpet to sweep things under. Except nuclear waste does not just disappear. As well as chairing Together Against Sizewell C, Pete sits on the government Committee On Radioactive Waste Management. He, like other interviewees in this podcast, notes the greenwashing of nuclear as ‘low carbon’ and is troubled by the ethics of leaving spent nuclear fuel for future generations to inherit – a kind of nuclear covenant.
Peter and Bridget Chadwick speak in this podcast about the legacy of Lee Chadwick’s environmental activism that has been instrumental in the conservation of light acidic heathland along the Suffolk coast known as The Sandlings. When Lee was making the case against Sizewell B she did not miss the irony of the recent designation of the heritage coast as an area of outstanding natural beauty. What is the value of this status if government can override it against popular will? The ‘heritage coast’ has been vaunted as ‘the energy coast’: how will the long-established tourist economy be affected by the interruption of Sizewell C?
Nuclear, Pete tells us, is after all already an old technology. Resources should be directed to developing green, sustainable renewable energy. While windfarms are being erected at sea, Belinda, who we hear from, is concerned that infrastructure to bring energy to land is carving up yet more protected environments along this stretch of coast. Belinda urges the necessity of joined-up thinking between energy providers, precisely as Chadwick did in the early eighties.
There are many reasons to feel optimistic. This podcast begins with the veteran environmental activist Pete Wilkinson offering advice and encouragement to younger generations of activists.
Credits:
Produced by Emily Richardson and Jonathan P. Watts
Contributors: Richard Symes, Boni Sones, Belinda and Paul Chandler, Bridget and Peter Chadwick, Noel and Pat Cattermole, Bill Howard, Pete Wilkinson.
Made with kind support from Arts Council England 2023