Exeter Stories

Exeter Stories is a local interview series with a quietly expansive sense of what civic life includes. It pays attention. Rather than treating Exeter as scenery, the show looks at the people and projects that shape how the city is lived in, cared for, argued over, and imagined. Paul Batterham’s conversations usually begin with biography, then widen into purpose. A guest’s route into Exeter becomes a way to understand a festival, a support service, a theatre company, a library, a science centre, or a heritage estate. The pacing is measured, giving room for work that takes years rather than moments. That suits the subject matter. Light Bear Lane’s arts and heritage work, for example, becomes a conversation about creative placemaking, orchards, memory, and how people can see familiar streets differently. The episode with Charlie Courtney links Powderham Castle, the Earl of Devon, the river, Exeter’s history, and present questions about the relationship between a city and its rural surroundings. CoLab Women brings the show into more difficult territory, focusing on flexible, relationship-based support for women affected by domestic abuse and sexual violence. CoCreate shows circular economy thinking as social practice, with waste timber, bike restoration, workshops, and routes back into purpose. Exeter Respect Festival gives the series one of its clearest pictures of belonging, activism, and the idea of a city as a mosaic. The Exeter Science Centre conversation turns research into public participation, from school water testing to citizen observation of local streams. Exeter Library becomes a case study in breaking old rules so more people can use a public building without judgement. Quirk Theatre adds play, futures thinking, and imagination to the same civic map. Across these episodes, the show keeps returning to access, dignity, memory, and place. It is earnest without becoming glossy. Its best moments come when a practical project reveals a larger question: who gets to belong, who gets supported, and what a city can become when people keep showing up for it.