Join us at a Tide Café; a relaxed, friendly gathering to chat about the sea, the tides and the many ways water shapes life in our city.

Come together over tea and cake, meet people, and chat about the sea, the tides and the many ways water shapes life in our city. No expertise needed. Just curiosity.

Everyone welcome, drop in for free refreshments. Booking non-essential.

What is a Tide Cafe?

A Tide Café isn’t a lecture, presentation or panel discussion.

There is no stage and no expectation that you need to know anything before you arrive.

Instead, local people will sit alongside artists and people with different knowledge and experience of Plymouth’s marine environment, sharing stories, observations, questions, memories and ideas.

You might know exactly when to walk a particular stretch of coastline before the tide turns. You might remember swimming somewhere as a child. Perhaps you fish, sail, paddleboard or walk the coast every week.

Or you might simply wonder why the sea sometimes seems incredibly far away and, just a few hours later, is almost at your feet.

All of those experiences belong in the conversation.

The idea is that everyone around the table brings something. The knowledge of someone who has studied tides for years can sit alongside the experience of someone who has watched the same stretch of water every morning for decades.

It might start with a question as simple as: What do the tides mean to you?

And from there, the conversation can go almost anywhere.

You can stay for ten minutes or settle in for longer, have a chat, listen to someone else’s story, enjoy a free cup of tea or coffee and a slice of cake, and see where the conversation takes you.

Plymouth’s relationship with the sea is obvious in some places.

Stand on the Hoe and it is right in front of you. Walk around the Barbican, Mount Batten, Devil’s Point or Royal William Yard and the movement of water is part of the landscape.

But the relationship between the city and the sea is also more complicated than that.

Tides create places that appear and disappear throughout the day. Mudflats emerge. Rockpools are uncovered. Birds arrive to feed. Harbour walls change height. Boats that were floating can suddenly seem much closer to the ground.

There is an entire landscape between high and low water that is constantly changing.

And the sea has a way of marking time.

People who live close to it often notice things without even thinking about it: where the water usually sits, when a beach becomes walkable, when a particular path disappears, or when the moon and weather seem to make the tide behave differently.

The Tide Cafés are an invitation to notice those things – and to hear what other people notice too.

Meet some of the people joining the conversation

Among those taking part in the first Tide Café at market Hall, Devonport will be artist David Cotterrell, whose work often explores how people understand the environments and systems around them.

David works across art, technology, moving image, installation and public space, creating work that encourages people to look differently at familiar places and ideas.

He has been spending time in Plymouth developing Intertidal, a major new artwork for Sea for Yourself.

We’re not revealing too much about Intertidal just yet. It has grown from David’s fascination with Plymouth’s relationship with water – including the movement of the tides, the boundary between land and sea and the ways the marine environment connects with the everyday life of the city.

Visitors to the Tide Café will have the chance to meet David, hear a little about the thinking behind the project and, importantly, share their own observations and questions with him.

Also joining the conversation will be journalist and former BBC local weather presenter Emily Wood.

Emily spent more than 15 years presenting the local weather on radio and television, sharing forecasts – including the tide times – with audiences every day.

She now works as a journalist across social media platforms and continues to tell stories connected with weather and our local environment.

Having lived and worked in and around Plymouth for more than 20 years, Emily has a strong connection to the area and its coastline.

At the Tide Café she’ll be sharing some of that knowledge and experience, but she is just as interested in hearing from other people.

What do you notice about the tides?

Do you plan parts of your life around them?

Have you watched Plymouth’s coastline change over the years?

Do you have a place where the incoming or outgoing tide completely transforms the landscape?

Those are exactly the kinds of conversations the Tide Café hopes to start.

Accessibility

Market Hall is fully accessible – with a wheelchair-friendly entrance, lift access to upper floors, accessible toilets, and an accessible bar. 2 Blue badge parking bays are available at the rear on a building and are available on a first-come first-served basis.

Intertidal is a commission by artist Davi

Description supplied by the event organiser.