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2025 is bringing us new opportunities in Stoke on Trent and Market Harborough, a return to much loved venues and a chance to finish off previous work around the stories of canal restoration in the Black Country. Restoration and maintaining our waterways isn’t merely a thing of historic interest and we have joined the Fund Britain’s Waterways campaign as campaign supporters.
Back in 2019 Heather and Kate created the I Dig Canals show and book, based on oral histories collected from women who helped save the Black Country canals in the 1960s and 70s. We planned our recordings would have a permanent home in the Canal & River Trust Waterway Archives where future writers and researchers could access them. But Covid, lockdown, staff changes, and several water sprites got in the way! At last however the project has got moving again because we’re linking up with Bill Bevan, a heritage specialist, who is interviewing key people involved in the early days of canal restoration in the West Midlands.
Bill’s focus is on the engineering aspects of restoration so what he finds out so will complement our stories of the amazing women who campaigned, took part in protest cruises, helped at working parties, fed armies of diggers and helpers, went to early waterways festivals and embarked on romantic entanglements.
His oral history recordings will go to the Waterways Archive and we’re discussing links to our podcast series being available on the CRT heritage webpages too.
In the meantime you can listen to them all here:
As many boaters will be aware canal rescue and restoration projects started in earnest in the last 1940s and June marks the 75th anniversary of the very first IWA Festival (being organised by the IWA Leicestershire Branch) which was held at Foxton Locks. We have been catching up with our friends at the Foxton Canal museum, planning how we can contribute to this year’s commemorative event with a new show. Funding dependant (of course …) but we hope to see you there, 6th to 8th of June.
For our next update, fingers crossed that we can tell you about our new radio drama! Early days but one of Kate’s ambitions has has always been to create audio dramas from material we have performed over the years. Look out for our next blog.
Before we set sail on radio waves, see you on the waterways. We have a return booking for Crick at the end of May and maybe some other gigs before then, and hopefully a Stoke on Trent outing in September as part of the Stoke City 100 years celebration as well as our regular appearance as part of the Banbury Canal Festival in October.
Kate and Joanna
