Introduction
East Cambridgeshire is a rural area undergoing rapid development and demographic change, with a combination of housing development bringing in residents who commute to Cambridge and London, and high numbers of migrant workers taking up opportunities to work on the land. The village of Sutton-in-the-Isle is experiencing many of these changes first hand and at an alarming rate. Sutton in the Isle is in a period of transition. It is on the cusp of change from small, rural village to a larger commuter town, as the East Cambridgeshire Plan projects that more than 6000 new homes need to be built in the area over the next 18 years. The existing village community is multifarious, including people who live and work in the village and are a visible part of its community life, and commuters who live in the village but travel out to work in the surrounding areas. There are old and new communities, people who have lived there for generations and those who have recently moved in, including migrant workers. Within this context there are the old traditions of the Fenlander, the ancient folklores and new knowledge as well as stories brought by other cultures, all combining to influence a sense of place and identity. How will the village’s identity be shaped by these influences?

In this context Proboscis was commissioned by ADeC (Arts Development in East Cambridgeshire) to “create a space where local residents have the room to explore place and identity through creative activity that is based in both the physical world and on-line. That has an existence in the real world and virtual spaces.” In response to this we created Sutton Grapevine.

Sutton Grapevine is not about access to technology but about using physical activities and online technologies to reveal the texture of life in the village. It is an experimental project using a variety of media to reveal the flavour of the life, place and identity in a rural village undergoing change. One of the aims of Sutton Grapevine was not to present solutions, but to explore and illuminate the issues; and in particular to demonstrate the role of cultural space and cultural activity in enabling that process to take place.

Sutton Grapevine is an example of what could be done by local people using readily available medias and transferrable techniques. In the process we’ve gathered stories through interviews and chance encounters, running workshops and events, conducting interviews, attending clubs and groups, visiting events, working with a youth group, organising a BBQ, exploring the local area by bike, foot and car, staging an exhibit in the Babylon Gallery Ely and through stttongrapevine.org. We heard talk of Winston Churchill’s uncle, Clement Freud’s first election to Parliament and rumours of Princess Margaret. There were tales of Sutton schoolteachers and flying blackboard rubbers, of lying at the end of the Mepal airfield runway watching the bombers take off and of elusive landlords; from ice skating on the Hundered foot Drain down at Sutton Gault to the day the Sutton Tandoori came to town: from being squashed by cows, rampant bulls and one legged milking stools to duck races, inland tides, kakaking on the river, homebaking and how four years of dedication and careful archaeology revealed an ancient burial urn.

We have met with many groups and individuals and been grateful for the warm welcome we have been given. We have never ceased to be inspired by how hard people work for their community as volunteers. In many ways large and small we felt that the stories of Sutton seemed to be a microcosm of the stories of the UK.

The stories gathered are available on line and as an archived on an audio cd and the story of the project is available as an eBook to download print and make up. A number of these will be distributed throughout the village and Proboscis will continue to maintain Sutton Grapevine as a project site.