Clootie Bridge: An Art Ritual to Awaken our Ecological Selves

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Clootie Bridge: An Art Ritual to Awaken our Ecological Selves

By Ratnadevi
July 2, 2025

We make art to leave a mark for the future, a slight kink in the river of stories, which flows too fast and wildly for any of us to comprehend. (Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky, p. 456)

”River, my friend, my life—thank you for providing calm, nature and space in our city.” “I see you every day in all the seasons—flowing through me as vital as blood.” “Thanks for listening to my dark thoughts.” “I love the way you run free.” “Please keep supporting the wildlife.” “We rise and fall together.”

These are some of the messages people wrote on strips of material before tying them to the railing of the footbridge over the River Kelvin. Cloutie means cloth or rag in Scots and there is a Celtic tradition of clootie trees near holy wells. The strips of cloth tied to the branches are imbued with wishes for whom or what needs healing.

I am part of the G20 Artist Collective and each year we push ourselves beyond the comfort of our private work spaces to contribute to a public art trail, based in our Glasgow postcode area. Last year it was “canal conversations,” and I offered passers-by the opportunity to be part of an impromptu performance with sticks on the newly completed Stockiefield Bridge. I wrote about interconnectedness as the driving inspiration of the preparatory process and the improvised action on the day.* This year’s theme was tenement streets and I found myself drawn to another footbridge, over the River Kelvin, just down from where I live—a much-treasured natural resource for the locals. Again, I wanted to stimulate participation, drawing neighbors and passers-by into a collective venture, calling on our shared love and concerns for the environment. It was close to what people often do anyway—leaving bunches of flowers with messages for the recently deceased tied to the railings—a public expression of significant feelings and thoughts. Without making it explicit, I saw this clootie bridge ritual as a way to engage people in what Joanna Macy calls the Great Turning, from business as usual towards a way of life that is more respectful and sustainable.

On the day, it was raining heavily and I was glad to borrow the gazebo of our residents’ association, plus willing neighbors to help transport it down to the river and set it up. The student who lives on the other side of our landing was ready in his water proofs when I knocked on his door, early that Sunday morning. “I love doing things like this,” he said, with a gleam in his eye. Living in tenements, we have to navigate the complexities of connection, sometimes seeking safety and privacy behind our locked doors and sometimes opening toward the comfort, fun, and adventure of community.

The project forced me to be more visible than was altogether comfortable—standing for hours next to a bridge asking people to write something on strips of fabric, anything could happen. I was mugged on the Kelvin walkway a few years ago, and there’s a rough housing estate not far from here. (On the day, nothing more taxing occurred than a passer-by muttering “This is superstitious.”) I embraced this challenge as part of what Jonna Macy calls “eco-sattva training.” She said, “Because of the darkness and immensity of the dangers we’re creating and wrecking our world with, there are tendencies to close down or erupt and turn on each other.” One of my fears regarding the unravelling of our world that we are witnessing now is the breaking down of peace-holding social structures—I really don’t want us to turn against each other and I trust that in some small way this collective action plays a part in laying the foundations for that.

I talked about our feelings of vulnerability with my photographer friend and next-door neighbor Kirsty, who is also a member of the G20 artist collective. Her project involved encouraging the neighbors to come out at a set time for a group photo—another exposing, courageous thing to do. There was a palpable buzz as people gathered for the shoot, much laughter, story-telling, and introductions. The final portrait will be donated to the University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections—a message from today’s community to the future.

Both of our contributions were designed to open windows into an expanded sense of self, including other generations and lifeforms. One of the inspirations for the clootie bridge project was Robert MacFarlane’s new book Is a River Alive? (W. W. Norton & Company 2025). In a recent interview in Emergence Magazine, MacFarlane said:

A river is not a human person, nor vice versa. Each withholds from the other in different ways. To call a river alive is not to personify a river, but instead further to deepen and widen the category of “life,” and in so doing—how had George Eliot put it?—”enlarge the imagined range for self to move in.” . . . . My own spiritual observation has been that a small ”self” suffers and causes suffering, that a love of the living world lets single identities and selfhoods expand and encompass other beings, entities and whole landscapes, such that the self becomes a spacious thing.

I was set up with a table under my gazebo with long strips of torn bedlinen in watery blue-green shades, which I had salvaged from local charity shops. I sacrificed my loved old Ikea duvet cover because its orange color range provided the perfect contrast to the lush greenery flanking the river. These are kingfisher colors, I realized later. These birds have been spotted in recent years flying under this very bridge. This Glasgow river has had its fair share of pollution in the past and is not doing so badly now, in contrast to most rivers in the UK and worldwide that are in bad health and not fit for drinking or bathing—polluted by plastic, industrial run-off, sewage spills, pesticides, fertilizers, and pharmaceutical substances. Their health is essential for the florishing of the ecosystems they are braided into, including us humans. The poster accompanying the action explained some of that and then went on to say:

Take a moment to stand on the bridge and feel the living presence of the river. Is it saying something to you? Then write something on a strip of cloth and tie it to the railing.

Possible starting points:
Thank you, river for . . .
I love this river for . . .
I am sad (frightened, angry, etc.) because . . .
What the river and I have in common is . . .
I wish that . . .

These gentle prompts were loosely following the four stages of “the spiral” of the Work That Reconnects: gratitude, honoring our pain for the world, seeing with new and/or ancient eyes, and going forth. People of any age and social background were moved to pen their contribution and an outpouring of gratitude was particularly noticeable—people are full of appreciation for the calm the river provides in the midst of the city. Several people whom I approached with my strips said they didn’t have any money to give. Nor were there any petitions to sign. Was this a missed opportunity or was the fact that there was no other obvious agenda than the river ritual, or work of art, in itself part of the message? Sometimes, even in the face of widespread degradation, it is enough to do something simple, lovely, and contemplative, like standing on a river bridge and listening to what the water is saying to you. In that quiet act, we may begin to become more river-like beings ourselves. I like to think that the emotionally accessible and aesthetically engaging nature of this action will make it more likely that people will support further, more direct political campaigns. We care for what we love and many people are becoming increasingly intolerant of the ruthless exploitation of waterways in the pursuit of profit. It is heartening to see how many river-protecting initiatives there are, leading to results such as giving legal rights to rivers worldwide, including the River Ouse in the southeast of England. Let’s hear Robert MadFarlane once more:

It has been in the interests of monetization to flatten and delete those forms of good relation with rivers that are reciprocal, that recognize individuality, the voice of particular rivers, the names, the identities of particular rivers. Because once they’ve been reterritorialized and homogenized, it’s much easier to extract from them, and harm them, to be short. So a reinvestment in an emotional infrastructure is what is beginning to happen in this country in really thrilling community-based ways and in ways that are changing power as well.

Among the many ways we can stay in line with our values and contribute to the Great Turning, art helps us to listen differently, gather meaning in a non-linear way, closer to the wondrous, ungraspable way things are. When we are grounded in this interconnected way of being, or in flow with it—to stay with the river resonance—we are more likely to keep our hearts open to the hazardous aspects of humanity and take action where we can, with others, and in ways that use our particular skills and talents.

Finally, you may enjoy a video-rendering of this well-loved Native-American song:

The river is flowing,
flowing and growing
The river is flowing
back to the sea
Mother carry me
A child I will always be
Mother carry me
back to the sea (YouTube)

* Relax – And Become Part of the Improvisation: Interconnectedness in Art and Life (BDG)

References

Shafak, Elif. 2025. There Are Rivers in the Sky. New York City: Vintage Books.

Ratnadevi

Ratnadevi is a mindfulness teacher, trainer and retreat leader based in Scotland. She is the author of Bringing Mindfulness to Life. As a qualified coach she offers a range of one-to-one services, including online mindfulness teaching, mentoring and supervising. She is a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order and wrote an arts-based PhD thesis looking at the place of ritual for Buddhists practicing in the modern world. Bringing Mindfulness to Life is published monthly.

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