0
Your cart is currently empty

Blog

Journal

the alarum blog
April 23, 2024

Wrapping up Braunston 1920s:2020s

Introduction Throughout the project we had many conversations as we addressed the challenges and teased out the best course of action to address them....

Continue Reading
June 24, 2022

Did you know? Five facts we learned from I Dig Canals Birmingham

We’ve just finished our I Dig Canals Birmingham project, funded by the John Feeney Charitable Trust. This project enabled us to interview and record...

Continue Reading
April 22, 2022

Why do we focus on women’s stories?

The stories we’ve been collecting recently have been wonderful in their richness and incredible in their detail. We’ve been able to speak to seven...

Continue Reading
September 24, 2021

Seeking stories from Birmingham’s canal women

Alarum hopes to step back in time once more through the memories of more women. Intern Louise Bradfield explains. When Birmingham comes up in...

Continue Reading
May 27, 2021

Five Most Memorable Moments from Alarum’s Five Years

Finally, the last five things on our list commemorating Alarum’s 5th anniversary – five moments from Alarum’s journey that stand out from the rest as...

Continue Reading
April 3, 2021

Five Most Unusual Venues from Alarum’s Performance History

Across our many shows and tours, a whole host of venues have become sites for performance, transformed through theatre magic to stage historical scenes...

Continue Reading
March 23, 2021

Five Quick-fire Questions for Kate Saffin

Our 5th anniversary blog series continues with another interview, this time on Alarum’s other co-founder: Kate Saffin. Alongside her projects with Alarum, Kate is...

Continue Reading
March 8, 2021

Five Quick-fire Questions for Heather Wastie

Today, March 8th, is International Women’s Day and, rather appropriately, marks the 5th anniversary of Heather and Kate’s first phone conversation. The moment they...

Continue Reading
March 4, 2021

Walking Through Waterways History

We are delighted to announce that we have been commissioned by Creative Black Country to run a project to engage and connect local people...

Continue Reading
February 1, 2021

Happy birthday to us! We’re five!

This year, 2021, marks Alarum’s 5th anniversary! To celebrate we gave our wonderful work experience student, Jess Saunders the task of summing up the last...

Continue Reading
December 7, 2020

A Sunny Day Filming at Titford Pump House

On the first day of the month, as December began, Alarum Productions were also starting something exciting …  Hello! My name is Jess, I’m...

Continue Reading
womens history network
October 26, 2020

Women’s History Network 2020 Community History Prize: ‘Highly Commended’

We have been Highly Commended by the Women’s History Network for our I Dig Canals project. Here’s what Chair, Elspeth King wrote: ‘The panel were particularly taken with...

Continue Reading
July 5, 2020

The ‘I Dig Canals’ project

We’ve done it! We have completed nine months of work capturing stories which are fascinating, touching, funny and occasionally heart stopping… like the moment...

Continue Reading
May 1, 2020

After the interval: an audience survey

How you can help – and no, we’re not asking for money… After the Interval survey Since 2016 we have proudly toured our shows...

Continue Reading
July 9, 2019

‘I Dig Canals’: Women’s Contribution to Waterways Restoration secures National Lottery support

We are delighted to announce that we have received support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund for the ‘I Dig Canals’ project . Thanks...

Continue Reading
September 22, 2018

2017 tour ‘Commended’ in the 2018 Living Waterways Awards

We were delighted to be finalists in the 2018 Living Waterways Awards and to be awarded a commendation. It’s a thoroughly rigorous process with...

Continue Reading
June 17, 2018

A week on the Chesterfield Canal

Last week we left Kate’s boat poised to start the journey along the Leeds and Liverpool (where we will be following the route worked...

Continue Reading
April 5, 2018

Spring tour underway!

On Tuesday night we packed out The Chestnut Inn, Worcester at the start of our Spring tour, following the route worked by Daphne March...

Continue Reading
January 3, 2018

We couldn’t have done it without you

Happy New Year from team Alarum! We’re currently looking ahead to touring plans for 2018 (more information shortly – or keep up to date...

Continue Reading
November 13, 2017

BBC Countryfile

BBC Countryfile have been interested in featuring the work of ‘The Idle Women’ for some time now. They contacted Canal & River Trust a...

Continue Reading
August 1, 2017

Local creative writing

Our Arts Council funding has enabled us to do several things we wouldn’t otherwise have been able to afford to do, like, for example,...

Continue Reading
July 30, 2017

Final week of the tour!

Over the last 14 weeks we’ve experienced a lot of what the original trainees would have gone through; stemming up, breasting up, learning to...

Continue Reading
July 5, 2017

 “TENCH” and her owner, Alex Bennett

As we recently went to the historic boat rally in Braunston with Tench we thought it would be a good time to tell you...

Continue Reading
May 24, 2017

It’s all about the conversations

The journey continues. This last week we’ve done several shows in Milton Keynes: at Lionhearts we met the owner of Ash, the partner of...

Continue Reading
May 14, 2017

Uxbridge to Leighton Buzzard

So much has happened this week, it’s hard to pack it all into one blog post. On Friday we were at Hillingdon Boat Club....

Continue Reading
May 5, 2017

Week 2

Week 2 began with shows at Cavalcade: tasters in the morning and shows in the evening. On Saturday, Kate performed Isobel’s War under extremely...

Continue Reading
April 28, 2017

Our first week

What a week! Saturday was launch day, after which we travelled from Bull’s Bridge to Limehouse for the opening night (Monday) which was also...

Continue Reading
April 21, 2017

Setting Off

From the family album…   I’m a landlubber. Kate is a live-aboard boater. We first encountered each other on Twitter in February 2016 and...

Continue Reading
September 14, 2016

Rewriting Richard: the final week

Well, here we are in the final week before Now is the Winter is on at the RSC The Other Place – time has...

Continue Reading
June 18, 2016

We nearly had a show!

Our first show should have been on Thursday at the Camp House Inn on the River Severn near Grimley (just north of Worcester). Unfortunately,...

Continue Reading
May 16, 2016

Current Production

Idle Women of the Wartime Waterways

Continue Reading