Journal
the alarum blog
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
‘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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
“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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...