Changing Tides was a cultural programme aboard Sailing Barge Raybel in June 2025, inspired by the cultural diversity of the heritage and communities of the Thames, and celebrating social movements and expressions of rebellion, freedom and joy.

The programme was devised by artist and musician benjin, in collaboration with Raybel Charters. It featured a series of live events aboard Raybel at Queenborough Harbour and Benfleet Yacht Club.

It culminated in a performance voyage from Canvey Island to the Isle of Sheppey by Mataio Austin Dean and Sonny Brazil, recalling the political tradition of maritime folk, with songs on the allure of mutiny and freedom, the convoy of ‘transports’ taken to the other side of the world for perceived sedition, the isolation of remote whaling stations, the evil of trafficked people inherent to colonial history. But also songs celebrating work done together or the silliness of a drinking chant. All deeply entwined with the history of this River Thames which Estuary Festival celebrates and commemorates.

Featured artists

Benjin

BENJIN is a multi-instrumentalist, artist and story teller. His solo compositions use classical guitar, cello, harp, clarinet, vocals, nyckelharpa, field recordings and found sounds. Aside from regular concert performances, benjin's music has been featured on BBC Radio 6 Music, Radio 3 and at the TATE Galleries. 

He performed ‘Last Days of Sail’, exploring the multiple ways in which his instrumental compositions, song poems, and dense sound collage improvisations have been informed (and quite literally formed) through a lifetime of working on the Thames Estuary. Drawing upon pieces written for cello, classical guitar, nyckelharpa and voice the programme will highlight the importance of immersed 'authentic' perspectives within folk music traditions. 

https://benjinmusic.bandcamp.com/ 

David Nettleingham

Dr DAVID NETTLEINGHAM is a sociologist and multidisciplinary artist from the Isle of Thanet. In his social research, community facilitation work and creative practice, he is interested in how the power of storytelling, collective memory, and ideas of ‘heritage’ shape our actions and understandings in the present. 

David is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent and has been a guest tutor at a number of local arts institutions, emphasising both an arts-led approach to sociology and a sociologically-led approach to the arts. He is Co-Director at Hold Creatives Spaces gallery and studios in Ramsgate, and founder of Thanet Experimental – a scheme to promote experimental art practice through funded exhibition opportunities. He runs regular workshops for community oral history training, and local map-making (and countermapping).

He presented a specially commissioned work for Estuary Festival, casting a critical eye over the politics of heritage work in North Kent, and discovering if there are parallels in South Essex. Also, how post-industrial decline has forever changed our relationship to class, traditional skills and the sense of community. 

https://davidnettleingham.com/ 

Cirenne

CIRENNE play new, experimental music at a cross-cultural intersection of klezmer, chamber jazz and free improvisation, Cirenne is a singular combination of violin, viola, trumpet and electronics. Playful and cinematic, deadly serious and sometimes pretty silly, Cirenne’s music reflects upon borders, real-world conditions and explores imagined utopias. They weave scenes and soundscapes that are at once dense, rich and mellifluous, spacious, dancing and angular. Hailing from Bristol, UK, the duo brings together Celeste Cantor-Stephens (TORU, Shabbos Ranks) and Caelia Lunniss (Spindle Ensemble, Terra Coda).  Cirenne won the Bubbe Award's People's Choice Award for Best New Klezmer Composition (2022), and have been featured on BBC Radio 3. 

Based in Bristol, the duo comprises Celeste Cantor-Stephens (trumpet / electronics / toys / compositions) and Caelia Lunniss (violin / viola).

https://cirenne.bandcamp.com/album/cirenne

Mataoi Austin Dean

MATAOI AUSTIN DEAN sings folksong primarily from the South of England. He is best known for his work as a member of the nine-piece folk group, Shovel Dance Collective. He sees his singing of folksong as part of a decolonial process: centring notions of locality, class solidarity, and international exchange, and rejecting totalising, imperialistic structures of Britishness and whiteness. Born in 1996 to a Guyanese mother and an English father, and educated at the Slade School of Fine Art, Mataio’s practice extends across visual art, poetry, music, and activism. He creates images, often intaglio prints, which explore England and Guyana’s darkly intertwined histories, throwing light upon moments of resistance whilst unearthing stories of coloniality and rebellion embedded in English landscape and architecture. 

Mataio performed work specifically developed and produced for Estuary festival, based on his artistic research and ground breaking work on sea shanty songs and their African origins.

https://www.mataioaustindean.com/ 

Goblin Band

GOBLIN BAND formed from sessions of the same name run out of the HobGoblin Music shop in central London, organised by a collection of young queer folk obsessive friends and shop employees looking to forge their own way into folk music. This gave rise to a band of multi-instrumentalists firmly rooted in the folk music of Britain, interpreted via the leftist tradition concerned with folk’s relationship to the history of the working classes, capitalism, and colonialism. Through a fusion of harmony singing, fiddle, squeezebox, hurdy gurdy, recorders and more, Goblin Band deliver a charismatic alternative expression of English traditional culture in a way which is at once riotously joyful and deeply sincere.

https://goblinbanduk.bandcamp.com/album/come-slack-your-horse

Sonny Brazil

SONNY BRAZIL  is a Folk singer and Squeeze Box Player from the south east of England. Sonny lives entrenched in the world of english folk culture, working as a crew member on Thames Sailing Barges and living on the Canals; they are one of the founding members of the folk collective Goblin Band.

Sonny's unique style of folk performance stems from the Queer folk scene in south London. In keeping folk music alive and viewing it through a queer, anti colonial, anti capitalist lens, Sonny does their bit to carry on the living tradition in a way that sparks new energy into the old songs.