to London anyway. After spending its last day in London the Saturday before last, Slow Boat is now in Birmingham. A few hours prior to its departure from Chisenhale Gallery a few Saturdays ago, I was lucky enough to catch the last few moments of Graham Fisher MBE's live discussion about radio networks, the waterways and their heritage in Britain.

Perched on the boat's bow, I listened intently as Graham spoke in his dulcet Black Country tones extensively to the audience about the usage of the inland waterways since they were first conceived. The atmosphere in the cabin was beautifully intimate, even with the added presence of microphones and sound recording equipment. On coming to talking about the birth of the canal, Graham used this rather pleasant analogy of comparing those (who mapped out Britain's canals) to artists; how they essentially treated Blighty as their canvas when plotting out the routes canals would take.

Slow Boat London Launch (notice how my hair blends in with the walls...) Img  © Chisenhale Gallery

Speaking specifically about the Black Country and how it was interesting that "no matter where you go, if you throw a brick it will go in a canal" he informed is that up until 1835 the Midlands and Liverpool had been hit by a wave of 'canal mania' as he called it- there was an absolute abundance of canals everywhere. 

The boat softly rocked from side to side as the tone shifted towards the great inland waterway acronyms (BW, CRT etc). We spoke about the excellent shift for British Waterways recently becoming a charitable trust, and re branding themselves as the Canal and River Trust, with Graham commenting that "the future has been opened up, and this is an exciting time [for community radio]"

Graham has done extensive research into the relationship between canals and the glass making industry, which interestingly enough lead to back to his current residence in Stourbridge. A pioneering town for the glass and its heritage (many of the techniques employed throughout the industry actually originated here), Stourbridge will be celebrating this with their annual festival of glass, which I will undoubtedly be checking out when I head back up home this weekend. Like Cadbury's chocolate and Wedgwood ceramics, apparently glass was also regularly transported along the inland waterways back in the day. I guess this was because, like the former two it has extremely delicate qualities and could not be risked being put on a rickety train.

I was also jammy enough to be on the boat as it headed back on the first part of its epic journey to Birmingham. Well, we only managed as far as Kings Cross in the 6 hours left of that day, but it was a terrific experience nonetheless. I remember we were chugging along in Hoxton next to a swanky apartment screening the Olympics and literally just before Usain Bolt had sprinted across the finish line, we broke down due to a piece of material getting entangled in the propeller!

Making shadow puppets in a Caledonian Road tunnel

Approaching the London Canal Museum

Dusk was upon us...

...St. Pancras in the distance as we moored up for the night

You can see the Raison D'être why they [the canals] were there in the first place... it's just beautiful.

Graham Fisher, 11 August 2012.

Labels: ART DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE