Monthly:August 2026

July 2026 In late 2019 and early 2020 we recorded an incredible collection of oral histories with women in the Black Country who helped save the canals in the Black Country and surrounds. The project was funded by the National Lottery Heritage fund with additional support from Arts Council England at the next stage when we created a show sharing as many of those wonderful stories as we could fit into an hour long show! It had always been our […]

After five years of performing a show on the Thursday evening prior to the rally weekend we felt it was time to hand over to someone or something new – and a wonderful all women acapella group from Oxford we knew seemed like an excellent option. They have now done a show for the rally twice and continued our tradition of selling out the Thursday evening! Kate has taken on a more sharing stories on the ground, alongside anhistoric boat, […]

This year we weren’t at Crick – a mix of CRT outsourcing the entertainment programming and budget cuts. We were sorry not to be there alongside the historic boats bringing some of their stories to life. However, the first of the heatwaves meant we were actually just a little bit relieved when it came to it. But we were there in spirit, with a Virtual Crick Fringe, broadcast from under a (well several, moving with the shade!) tree. Kate opened […]

At Cavalacade Kate performed Roses and Thorns supported by Polly Boccongelli providing music and song – glimpses of the lives of women across a century and several hundred miles of canals. From Annie Brooks talking of the period around 1910, standing on a block of wood to ‘shove tiller over, so I learned to steer the boat when I was 7, along Barnston Wood coming to the Potteries’ to Rose Ramlin getting married in 1921 in Banbury – knowing everything […]