When a place is described as ‘intertidal’ it exists forever between tides, becoming land or water in a rhythm orchestrated by the moon. Here in Barry, we see this in how the coastline is not static but always moving, rocking back and forth in cycles beyond our human-made models of time. Beaches that stretch out far into the horizon later become submerged entirely by water. A place you might walk soon becomes home to watery worlds where you might swim. The edges of Barry are alive in ways which are remarkably entangled, mixing together an abundance of life forms which coexist and adapt as conditions shift with each tide.     

Through thinking with Barry’s watery edges, SWAY aims to cultivate a fluid framework for creative, collaborative research with artists, curators, researchers, writers and residents.  Here, the intertidal is approached as a place to build and hold new ideas, practices and understandings. Unfolding in partnership with locally based coastal organisations and community groups - including the Watchtower Waders and Wales Coastal Monitoring Centre - SWAY is committed to the idea that intertidal places can help us to collectively change our ways of thinking. When we can so often feel disconnected from each other and from the ecology of everything that surrounds and sustains us, the attempt to imagine otherwise feels essential. Entangled intertidal places offer us a place from which to begin. 

Across convening, corresponding and commissioning, SWAY intends to create the conditions for moments of intimacy - towards a present with more connection and communality; and to cultivate our habits of noticing - towards a future intertidal constituency, where our attention seeds multiple ways of being, imagining and creating. SWAY emerges in correspondence with others and their places, listening out from Barry for resonances, echoes and signals.