Inter/Tidal took place on Sagar Island in the Bay of Bengal, in association with Kolkata based arts company Ranan and funded by Wales Arts International. It built a personal connection between the two communities linked by the Lighthouses and their tidal data streams by co-walking and exchanging gifts, knowledge and observations across time and place.

Workshops took place on Sagar in July 2022 with students from the island, where they explored their intertidal zone, a space that is rapidly shrinking as the island is eroded by rising sea levels. For these young people, climate change is a normal part of their lives, they adapt and make the best of what little they have, and enjoy their local festivals and family life. For many, this was their first visit to the seawall that holds back the ocean from their villages. They experimented with expressing themselves through print, dance, and film and created gifts for participants in Wales, which were exchanged with residents of the Gwent Levels as the beginning of a two month creative conversation between the two communities where we shared photographs, knowledge and stories about the landscape, the plants that grow there, the animals that inhabit it, and how it is affected by the changing seasons and weather patterns. In October 2022 the project concluded with lantern processions in both countries- carrying the lights inland to mark the inevitable passage of future tides.

Our Guidebook Vol 2: Where Gangasagar Meets Môr Hafren documents the exchange and is available in local libraries on the Gwent Levels and on Sagar.

You can also view this film made by the creative team who visited Sagar – Prarthana Hazra, Amlan Chaudhuri, Kunal Chakraborty, Debashree Bhattacharya & Vikram Iyengar.