Announcement: Tweed River Festival 2025!

Connecting Threads is excited to announce Tweed River Festival, a new annual creative celebration of the River Tweed. This year, the festival will take place across multiple indoor and outdoor sites in Peebles in the Scottish Borders, on and alongside the River Tweed. Join us for three days of river-focused creative activities – from workshops, film screenings, music and performances, to drawing installations, readings, walks, talks, discussions and more.

Envisioned as a gathering of river-loving communities, the festival’s inaugural edition is the culmination of Connecting Threads’ 2025 programming theme, Watery Commons. Across the year, we have been charting connections between the local and the global, the bodily and the systemic, the material and the metaphorical – in recognition that there can be no meaningful thinking about rivers or the commons which is not at the same time political.

Taking place in Peebles, this first edition of the festival is situated towards the upper reaches of the River Tweed. Subsequent editions in 2026 and 2027 will take place towards the middle and lower stretches of the river as it makes its way from its source in the hills above Moffat, through southern Scotland and north Northumberland, and out into the sea at Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Full programme announcement coming soon.

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Artists and partners

We are delighted that our six Watery Commons artists in residence will be sharing work in progress at the festival.

Our 2025 artists in residence are: Anna Chapman Parker, Emily Cropton, Georgie Fay, Sam Gillespie, Jessie Growden, and Miwa Nagato-Apthorp. These six artists have been spending time in, on and along the Tweed this summer, navigating river stories and experimenting with new ways of working. Tweed River Festival is a rare opportunity to engage with works in progress as they continue to develop.

In addition to our artists in residence, a full line-up of creative practitioners will be sharing work and guiding us through three inspiring days of river-centred activities. Confirmed artists include: Craig Aitchison, Lucy Baxandall, Rosemary Everett, Kat Gollock, Zoe Hamill, Kirsty Law, Bint Mbareh and Anne Waggot Knott. 

The programme will also include a special event in collaboration with: Tweed Forum, Culture for Climate Scotland, Scottish Borders Climate Action Network and CABN (Creative Arts Business Network).

Day by day

Each day of Tweed River Festival invites exploration of a different theme, one flowing into the next.

On Friday, 31 October, we begin with the personal and local: gathering around stories of the Tweed and reflecting on personal connections to its mythologies and histories. Friday evening will culminate in a musical celebration of the river, featuring musicians, performers and songwriters inspired by the Tweed.

On Saturday, 1 November, we focus on community and the river catchment: through ideas of carrying, crossing, and commoning,we think about the river as both boundary and connector, shaping cultures and landscapes. Saturday evening will have a focus on film, bringing together ways of imagining rivers from the Tweed and beyond.

On Sunday, 2 November, we emphasise planetary connections. Holding the understanding that we are all interconnected through watery arteries, we explore issues of climate, pollution, and access to rivers, land, and clean water from across the world and back to the Tweed.

Watery Commons book

Tweed River Festival will be accompanied by a printed publication, which explores questions relating to the ‘Watery Commons’ theme and delves into the thinking of our six artists in residence.

Designed by Emily Macaulay of Stanley James Press, the publication will feature writing by Emma Balkind, Milo Clenshaw, Daisy Hildyard, Justin Hopper, Mai-Anh Vu Peterson, Sarah Shin, Marianna Tsionki and Andrew Wang. The publication will be available for visitors to Tweed River Festival.