SESSION b

It Floats! Boating and the Practice of Heritage amongst Communities of Glasgow’s Forth and
Clyde Canal

In the recent decades of urban renewal, post-industrial waterscapes have been a focal point in future place-making, involving re-imagination and drawing on the past successes (Vallerani and Visentin,
2018). Yet, in such a context, transient communities living in proximity to water seem to have little agency in shaping the discourse and the environment they occupy (Gillick and Ivett, 2018). Drawing on concepts of beyond materiality (Ingold 2007, 2012; Bennett 2010) and more-than-representational (Muller 2014; Lorimel 2005), a collection of social activities embedded within a location, and notions of assemblages of human and non-human actants, this paper conceptualises the waterscapes of Glasgow as livescapes. Post-industrial waterscapes, with their tangible and intangible heritage assets, are theorised as places where the practice of the everyday informs an ever-changing living environment and heritage, when at the same time tensions in engagement appear amongst local communities.

This paper discusses how heritage engagement, in the Forth and Clyde canal in Glasgow, can provide a platform where social space, identity and sense of belonging activate the livescape. A series of creative workshops, celebratory events and participant-led exhibitions exposed tensions and gaps in the perception of the inland waterway livescape by its communities. More than hundred participants took part in a year-long case study in two different post-industrial heritage localities on the canal, engaging with traditional boat building and boating, revealing complexities in the engagement with the water and reflecting upon participants own positionality.

The paper discusses some of the ways in which traditional and technological skills and engagement with workshop environments can help to empower local communities within the heritage livescape, so they can gain their own ways of seeing the landscape and by making sense of the heritage they produce in it.

Speakers Bio

Eleni Koumpouzi, University of the West of Scotland, PhD Candidate  

Eleni Koumpouzi is a PhD candidate at the School of Business and Creative Industries at the University of the West of Scotland, a curator and an artist. Her research interests include engagement and inclusion in heritage environments. She has previously contributed in the book Festivals and the City, with a study of participation in two community festivals, the integration and opportunities which they offered to transient communities, and the livescape as an emerging frameworkI am an Art Historian specialising in Dutch and Flemish Art and Material Culture. I am Museum Association 2022 Emerging Museum Professional and current Scotland Representative. I work as a Gallery Assistant at the Burrell Collection with Glasgow Museums. I also spoke on the EMP panel at the MA Annual Conference in November. I wrote a review for the award-winning Curating Discomfort exhibition at the Hunterian Museum (University of Glasgow).