Making a Splash with Amber Butchart
9 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 2 years ago - ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsWelcome to Making a Splash: the arts and culture podcast that celebrates swimming and the sea. Host Amber Butchart is a keen but incredibly unaccomplished sea swimmer, who wants to investigate how swimming and the ocean inspire art, literature, design and culture.
Covering areas including myth & folklore, health & wellness, pop culture, literature, art & design, environment & sustainability and natural history, this is the podcast for everyone who has an affinity with water.
Guests range from circus performers to curators, designers, historians, scientists and writers, who discuss how the sea inspires their work, and share their stories of swimming and open water, including how it impacts their mind and body.
So whether you love to swim or you’re a thalassophile who’s never so much as dipped a toe in the ocean, this is the podcast for you.
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Episodes
Gemma Cairney - Making a Splash
September 23, 2021 15:26 - 37 minutes - 86.5 MBWelcome to the last in the current series of Making a Splash. My guest this week is Gemma Cairney: a broadcaster and author who you may know from her shows on Radio 1 and 6Music, as well as her current TV show Landmark on Sky Arts. Gemma is a devoted sea swimmer who’s currently turning her hand to sustainable swimwear design. Tune in as we discuss the language of the sea, swimming through rainbows, meeting Grace Jones, and the best music to swim to. As well as the magic of swimming in the ...
Sacha Coward - Making a Splash
September 16, 2021 16:32 - 40 minutes - 92.9 MBThis week I’m diving into the super interesting history of queer mermaid mythology with Sacha Coward. Sacha is a queer historian, tour guide and escape room designer who has been working at museums and heritage sites across the UK for over a decade. He is also a folklorist with a passion for the hidden histories of mermaids and mythical creatures. At the moment he is working on LGBTQ+ tours along the river Thames with the Brunel Museum as well as developing a series of virtual tours about vi...
Ferren Gipson - Making a Splash
September 09, 2021 07:00 - 33 minutes - 75.9 MBThis week I’m exploring the cult of swimming in revolutionary China, with Ferren Gipson: art historian, writer, presenter, and a doctoral researcher in Chinese art at SOAS, University of London. Ferren is the host of the Art Matters podcast, and the author of The Ultimate Art Museum, with a forthcoming title for Quarto Publishing on the way. Tune in as we discuss the function of rivers and seas in Chinese propaganda poster art, Mao’s cult of swimming and the dawn of the Cultural Revolution,...
Dr Heather Massey - Making a Splash
September 02, 2021 07:00 - 35 minutes - 80.2 MBThis week I’m diving into the science of cold water swimming with Dr Heather Massey, a Senior Lecturer in the Extreme Environments Laboratory at the University of Portsmouth, where she spends a lot of her time researching the science of cold water immersion. She’s published a number of studies that make up some of the nascent scientific research into the benefits of cold water swimming for physical and mental health. Heather LIVES extreme environments as well as studies them, so tune in as...
Matt Lodder - Making a Splash
August 26, 2021 07:00 - 44 minutes - 101 MBThis week I am exploring maritime tattoos as art history. My guest is Dr Matt Lodder, an art historian and curator who specialises in the history of western tattooing from the 17th century to the present day. He is Senior Lecturer in Art History and Theory, and Director of American Studies at the University of Essex, and his latest major exhibition, ‘British Tattoo Art Revealed’ began at the National Maritime Museum Falmouth in March 2017 and toured through to 2021. His book - a history tol...
FIDM Museum Sporting Fashion - Making a Splash
August 19, 2021 07:00 - 38 minutes - 88.4 MBThis week, one of my favourite topics: the history of swimwear! My guest is Christina Johnson, Associate Curator at the FIDM Museum at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in California. Christina is co-curator of the excellent exhibition, ‘Sporting Fashion: Outdoor Girls 1800 to 1960’ along with FIDM Museum Curator Kevin Jones, and is the co-author of the accompanying publication. The traveling show ‘Sporting Fashion: Outdoor Girls 1800 to 1960’ was organised by the American Fe...
Marawa - Making a Splash
August 12, 2021 09:14 - 41 minutes - 94.2 MBThis week, swimming and the showgirl! My guest is the exceptional Marawa: an international showgirl, hoola hooper extraordinaire, circus star, roller skating queen, author and clothing designer with her own range of stretchy clothing to help you move and feel your best. Marawa has been swimming all her life, from growing up in Australia to her travels all over the world and her current home in LA. Tune in as we discuss the swimming showgirl, vintage swimwear as costume inspiration, the joy ...
Nell Frizzell - Making a Splash
August 05, 2021 09:54 - 45 minutes - 103 MBThis week, I dive into the literature of swimming with journalist, author and Vogue columnist Nell Frizzell. Nell worked for a while as a lifeguard at the Hampstead Ladies’ Pond, which she wrote about for the Daunt books anthology, At the Pond, and she has written numerous articles about the joys of swimming outdoors. Her second book, The Panic Years, with an accompanying podcast, was out earlier this year. Stay tuned as we discuss writing and reading about swimming, water rituals, the mos...
Making a Splash Trailer
July 14, 2021 18:59 - 1 minute - 3.36 MBWelcome to Making a Splash - the arts and culture podcast that celebrates swimming and the sea. I’m your host Amber Butchart, a dress historian and keen but incredibly unaccomplished sea swimmer. The sea has always been a source of inspiration for me, from writing books about the maritime origins of our clothing, to researching the link between stripes and the sea. So I wanted to find out how the ocean inspires other people too. I’ll be talking to circus performers, curators, designers, ...