Riverworks

Riverworks

Prosperity Through Community on the River Lea

Edited by Joseph Cook and Maurizio Marinelli Riverworks: Prosperity through Community on the River Lea

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Cover art by participants of the Rewilding Healthcare group at Cody Dock, facilitated by artist Laura Copsey and researcher Sarah Yardley

Riverworks

Prosperity Through Community on the River Lea

Edited by Joseph Cook and Maurizio Marinelli

Prosperity and the River Lea:

Confluence, Community, and Co-Creation

Joseph Cook Maurizio Marinelli

the river lea, cutting its path from Bedfordshire’s chalk hills to its east London confluence with the Thames, is no mere line on a map.

It is an ancient lifeblood, a witness to millennia of human history, and a dynamic arena where urban change, ecological resilience, and community aspiration converge. Its banks cradled Neolithic settlements, marked Anglo-Saxon lands, and powered medieval London’s vital mills. The Industrial Revolution transformed it into a crucial artery, its waters channelled and its valley remade by factories, but it suffered neglect as deindustrialisation took hold. Today, the Lower Lea, winding through London’s most diverse and rapidly evolving boroughs, stands as a compelling microcosm where the question of what constitutes a genuinely prosperous future is actively explored and reimagined. This collection, Prosperity and the River Lea, gathers voices that challenge conventional metrics and illuminate more holistic, just, and sustainable understandings of prosperity.

The volume is rooted in a wider re-conceptualisation of “prosperity.”

Dominant narratives often equate it with relentless economic growth, a narrow yardstick that obscures social inequalities and ecological harm.

We advance a different understanding: genuine prosperity extends beyond material wealth to encompass quality of life, ecosystem vitality, communities’ strength and inclusivity, rich cultural and creative lives, and robust democratic participation. Prosperity is a lived experience, co-created from the ground up, attentive to local contexts, and pursued within the planet’s finite capacities. This collection spotlights such

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grounded prosperity along the River Lea through innovative, communityled initiatives that test alternative futures in tangible ways.

Waterways like the Lea offer revealing lenses on richer notions of prosperity. They are vital ecological systems, supporting biodiversity, absorbing floodwaters, and providing blue–green corridors in dense urban fabrics. The recurrent theme of riverways’ ecological regeneration becomes a cornerstone of sustainable prosperity rather than an afterthought. Beyond their physical functions, rivers hold cultural significance, becoming forms of living heritage reinterpreted by successive generations. Along the Lea, projects reanimate historic watercourses as public and cultural spaces, treating the river not simply as infrastructure but as a setting for shared memory, creativity, and everyday practices of care.

Cross-cultural perspectives, including those drawing on Chinese artistic and literary traditions centred on water, remind us that waterways can be sites of deep heritage, affective attachment, and creative flourishing. Confucian philosopher Xunzi’s insight deepens this understanding: “The ruler is the boat; the people are the water,” emphasising that popular support sustains or overturns authority.

Recasting this image for the River Lea, we see the river as the vessel, shaped by the “waters” of surrounding communities. Collective action can “carry” the river toward ecological health or, through neglect and extraction, “overturn” its vitality. This underscores a symbiosis: the Lea’s natural systems and human societies are intertwined. The pursuit of prosperity cannot be separated from the waterway’s condition, nor from questions of who has the power to shape its future.

The social and symbolic power of rivers has long resonated in literature, art, and social thought. Urban political ecology probes the entanglements of power, inequality, and environment in waterside regeneration, asking who benefits, who is displaced, and whose visions prevail. The concept of “the commons” offers further insight.

Commons theory illuminates how communities can govern shared resources such as waterways through collective action and locally rooted arrangements, challenging assumptions that they must be either tightly state-controlled or fully privatised. Many initiatives 4

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documented here embody the “commoning” spirit, seeking to steward the Lea as a shared, co-governed space of ecological, social, and cultural value.

Prosperity and the River Lea presents the river as a living laboratory, gathering narratives from organisations and individuals experimenting with “prosperity” along an urban waterway. We encounter grassroots efforts that transform former industrial sites into ecological and social commons, where disused depots and docks become spaces for rewilding, community gathering, and environmental education. Participatory processes reframe prosperity as collectively produced value-in-place rather than a top-down, abstract indicator. Arts-based initiatives animate canals and riverbanks through performances, exhibitions, and collaborations, weaving cultural and social value into the Lea’s everyday fabric while forging connections across communities and borders. Personal accounts from people living aboard boats offer ground-level perspectives on alternative urban lives, balancing intimacy with nature against resource constraints and precarity.

These newer voices sit in dialogue with long-standing initiatives along the river. Work at sites such as Cody Dock shows how industrial scars can be reshaped into heritage and biodiversity hubs, where ecological restoration, volunteering, and education intersect with local histories of labour and industry. Advocacy for accessible waterways presses for changes that allow people of varied abilities, backgrounds, and circumstances to share in the Lea’s benefits on equitable terms. River stewardship mobilises citizen science, clean-up activities, and habitat interventions—from monitoring water quality to planting reedbeds—to revive ecological health across the catchment while cultivating shared responsibility and collective capacity.

Housing and infrastructures along the Lea are being reimagined through experiments in cooperative living and circular economies.

Community-led housing projects on water explore models that foster security, mutual support, and affordability, challenging precariousness.

Ecological enterprises reframe waste streams, such as boater waste, as resources within circular systems that enhance community selfsufficiency and environmental responsibility. Other contributions Prosperity and the River Lea: Confluence, Community, and Co-Creation

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draw on the river as both metaphor and material presence to rethink care and health; arts-based collaborations with people navigating serious illness use water imagery and river journeys to reimagine healthcare encounters in more relational and humane ways.

Together, these contributions reveal interconnected themes: community agency’s power in revitalising environments and social bonds; symbioses between ecological health and human well-being; and shared challenges to think more expansively about value, moving beyond purely economic assessments. Creativity here is a means of unlocking new possibilities, enabling people to see and inhabit the Lea differently. Thus, the River Lea evokes “江湖” from the Chinese classic Water Margin“水滸傳 ”—an outsider space, a dynamic “scene” where alternative forms, practices, and visions of prosperity can emerge and evolve. Like the “ 江湖 ”, the River Lea is more than a geographical location; it is an eco-social system teeming with vitality and contradictions, at once cradle of community spirit and stage for power struggles, negotiations, and everyday tests of survival.

As this collection shows, the pursuit of prosperity along the River Lea is no straightforward undertaking. It is a process of negotiation, learning, and adaptation within a landscape shaped by histories of neglect, industrialisation, and uneven development. It demands both confrontation with those legacies and sustained commitment to more equitable regeneration. The initiatives and voices gathered here offer no simple panaceas: they provide critical, situated insights into the intricate, often challenging, yet hopeful work of fostering genuine well-being in relation to a specific urban river. They affirm that, by listening carefully to multiple perspectives, building robust collaborations, and valuing the dense interconnections among people, place, and nature, communities are actively forging more inclusive and ecologically sound futures along the River Lea. Maurizio Marinelli is a historical geographer, urbanist, and Professor of Chinese Development Planning at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL. Joseph Cook is an anthropologist and boat-dweller on the River Lea, and leads the UCL Citizen Science Academy.

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Thames21:

Fostering a Living Prosperity for the River Lea

the river lea, as it flows through the dynamic urban landscape of East London, presents both a rich ecological potential and a series of complex challenges. For this vital waterway to genuinely contribute to the prosperity of the region, dedicated efforts are needed to restore its health and connect it meaningfully to nearby communities. The environmental charity Thames21 is at the forefront of this endeavour, working collaboratively to transform the Lea into a thriving ecosystem that enhances both environmental well-being and community vitality, embodying a holistic vision of urban prosperity.

The goal of Thames21 is to create a “cleaner, wilder, and more accessible River Lea, benefiting both people and wildlife for generations to come”, we heard from Becca Turnpenney, the organisation’s Catchment Partnership Development Officer.

Thames21 operates as an environmental charity deeply embedded in communities across London and the Thames Basin, with a core mission to restore and care for rivers, water, and nature. Their work is geared towards improving these blue spaces for the mutual benefit of people and wildlife. In collaboration with local residents and partner organisations, Thames21 strives to give a voice to London’s waterways.

By mobilising thousands of volunteers each year, the charity actively cleans and greens the capital’s extensive 400-mile network of rivers and canals. A central aspect of their work involves transforming neglected river stretches into valuable, accessible spaces that everyone can appreciate and enjoy, often employing innovative approaches to engage and empower local communities.

A significant part of Thames21’s strategic effort involves hosting ten catchment partnerships throughout the Thames Basin. The London Riverworks: Prosperity through Community on the River Lea

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Lea Catchment Partnership, which spans from the M25 corridor down to the Tidal Thames, is one such critical initiative. This partnership convenes a wide range of stakeholders, including statutory bodies like the Environment Agency and Thames Water (the region’s water and wastewater utility provider), alongside local authorities, various NGOs, and numerous community groups. It functions as a vital platform for these diverse entities to collaborate on developing and implementing initiatives aimed at improving the River Lea and its tributaries.

Collectively, these partners work towards delivering the London Lea Catchment Plan. This plan is designed, to restore and protect a thriving, climate-resilient river system where communities are actively engaged in its care.” Through the power of strong partnerships, the objective is to enhance biodiversity, improve water quality, build climate resilience, and foster a deeper, more meaningful connection between people and the natural world.

The partnership actively engages with communities across the catchment to strengthen their bonds with the River Lea and its tributaries.

This involves supporting grassroots initiatives focused on restoring, cleaning, and monitoring these watercourses. By involving local people in monitoring and understanding the issues facing the London Lea, Thames21 helps to build a more comprehensive picture of the river’s challenges and the pollution hotspots most greatly affecting its health.

The urbanised character of the Lea catchment presents a range of difficulties. Pollution from wastewater systems and road runoff continues to pose a significant threat to water quality, aquatic life, and the broader ecosystems that depend on clean water. Urbanisation has intensified these problems, placing greater pressure on the river’s infrastructure and complicating effective pollution management.

While some dedicated community partners have been working to improve the ecological and social value of the River Lea for several decades, recent years have seen a notable surge in public interest in the water environment. Issues such as sewage pollution, frequently highlighted in the media, have catalysed this growing awareness, leading to a larger and more vocal community advocating for the health of their local waterways. Thames21 actively supports and 10

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channels this increased involvement through initiatives like its ‘Leading Action for Healthy Rivers’ training programme. This scheme is designed to equip community groups with the knowledge and insurance necessary to deliver restorative work in rivers. Thames21 emphasizes that this sense of empowerment and participation plays a crucial role in creating long-term community stewardship of the River Lea. The work of Thames21 on the River Lea vividly illustrates a pathway to a more inclusive and sustainable urban prosperity. By placing community engagement and empowerment at the heart of ecological restoration, they are not only improving the river’s environmental health but also strengthening social fabric and enhancing human well-being. The revitalisation of the Lea, through the dedicated efforts of volunteers and the collaborative power of partnership, creates a shared asset that offers cleaner water, richer biodiversity, and more accessible natural spaces for all. This renewed vitality, fostered by active stewardship, defines a living prosperity – one where the health of the river and the health of the community are intrinsically linked and mutually reinforcing, promising a richer legacy for east London.

Becca Turnpenneay is the Catchment Partnership Development Officer for the London Lea at Thames21, an environmental charity that works with communities to restore and look after rivers, water and nature across London and the Thames Basin. For more information, please visit www.thames21.org.uk Thames21: Fostering a Living Prosperity for the River Lea

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Proposed Site of East London Waterworks Park

Reimagining Prosperity Along the Lower Lea:

At the heart of a transforming landscape, East London Waterworks Park (ELWP) is reshaping the narrative of the River Lea. On the proposed site of the park, the river splits in two—a striking contrast between the gentle curves of its historic course and the rigid lines of the man-made canal. This convergence reflects the Lea’s layered identity: industrial artery, ecological corridor, and route of migration. Yet, the story is far from over.

ELWP, a grassroots charity, stands as a vital force in this ongoing evolution. Through projects like The Listening Project, the organisation is reimagining the lower Lea not just as a site of natural beauty, but as a living ecological, cultural, and community asset for prosperity creation—where history continues to unfold, shaped by those who care for it.

“East London Waterworks Park is an idea conceived by local people. At its heart is a community group that wants to acquire and transform the 5.68-hectare (14.03-acre) exThames Water Depot on Lea Bridge Road in Waltham Forest into a brownfield rainforest offering people the opportunity to immerse themselves in nature.”

ELWP is a volunteer-run charity campaigning to transform a 14-acre Thames Water depot on Lea Bridge Road into a biodiverse, community-owned park. Organised sociocratically into six workstreams—Governance, Fundraising, Learning, Inclusivity, Design and Communications—ELWP has already raised £540,509 as of 28 February 2023. But beyond fundraising and planning, the project

Voices from the Listening Project

is driven by a deeper ethos: that genuine prosperity—measured not in financial returns but in quality of life—must grow from the lived experiences of local communities.

This ethos finds form in The Listening Project, a community-led research and engagement process led by the Inclusivity Circle. It began during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in autumn 2020, as a way to build diversity among project supporters and team members.

Quickly, it evolved into a key mechanism for ensuring the proposed park is shaped by those who will use and care for it. Through structured interviews, surveys and interactive workshops, The Listening Project explores what local communities value in urban green and blue spaces—and just as crucially, what prevents them from accessing or feeling ownership over them. Insights from these conversations feed directly into the work of the Design Circle— a collaborative team of architects, engineers, ecologists, gardeners and landscape designers who incorporate suggestions into the park’s blueprint. Community feedback is not a onetime input; it drives a living, iterative process.

Draft designs are returned to local residents, refined, and revised again. This loop builds not just a better park, but deeper connections between people and place.

A foundational aim of The Listening Project has been to amplify voices often excluded from urban planning: those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, people with global majority heritage, disabled people, LGBTQIA+ people, older adults, and youth. What began with a small group of three volunteers mapping

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nearby communities took a significant turn following a key piece of advice: economic intersectionality is a barrier to participation.

The team began compensating people for their time—recognising that true inclusion isn’t just about invitations, but access.

As Cathy McLoughlin, Chair of the Inclusivity Circle, recalls: “Otherwise, all you’ve got is middle-class volunteers because people on lower incomes are working longer hours to make ends meet, which reduces their capacity and headspace for volunteering.” That simple shift—paying people to participate—helped dismantle the assumption that volunteerism alone could build a representative future.

For Mary Powell, a regular wild swimmer and active volunteer, this inclusive work creates the conditions for people to see themselves not as passive visitors to a space, but as co-creators. “In open swimming, there’s a wonderful, unpretentious sense of community.

There are no models. Nobody cares about body shape or whether you’re competitive. But if you don’t see someone like yourself doing it, you’re not likely to try in the first place.” Her reflection aligns with a guiding principle of the charity: Nothing about us without us.

While ELWP’s founding team was relatively homogenous—white, middle-aged, middleclass—they were deliberate in seeking to grow a more representative volunteer base. Today, over 350 people are involved, spanning a broader range of backgrounds and identities.

Still, inclusion remains a relational and ongoing practice. Cathy reflects: “Some of the people we interviewed became short-term volunteers but dropped off due to other life priorities. Others are waiting until the park is built to get involved.” The pause is telling— a reminder that inclusion is a long-term, relational practice.

What makes The Listening Project radical is not just who it includes, but how it shifts the terms of participation. Traditional public consultations tend to centre institutional 14

agendas, asking communities to respond to pre-made plans. ELWP flips that model— listening first, then asking: what do we need to change to make this work for you? It’s a rebalancing of power that redefines prosperity not as economic output, but as the right to shape your environment and feel at home in it. As Paola Castillo, another core volunteer, puts it: “Public consultations often only capture the voices of those already comfortable participating. Reaching out to those who might not otherwise speak up is essential for democratic space-making.”

This commitment to inclusion has revealed unexpected insights. Mary recalls how the team learned to recognise Latin American as a distinct identity group, and to understand Jewish identity as both ethnic and religious.

In a later phase of The Listening Project, transient boaters—people living itinerantly on the River Lea—were acknowledged as stakeholders, prompting budget changes and strategy shifts. Cathy laughs: “It’s a very dynamic process—we ourselves are always learning, through literally listening!”

The result is a community vision that goes beyond conventional design. Early questions about facilities and amenities have grown into complex, thoughtful conversations about both ecology and equity: from the placement of reed beds as natural filtration systems to same-sex bathing ponds for modesty and comfort, to accessible entry points for disabled swimmers.

“Without those personal narratives,” Paola emphasises, “planning can feel disconnected from the people it’s meant to serve.”

However, listening alone does not guarantee consensus. Different communities hold different values, and the ELWP volunteer team encountered a landscape rich with tensions.

While many participants shared deep care for nature, they often diverged on how that care should manifest. Some viewed dogs as disruptive to wildlife, while others saw them as companions in a shared natural space.

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Sports were welcomed by some as a way to connect with the outdoors, while others voiced concern about the impact of increased foot traffic. Even on matters of design, preferences ranged from complete rewilding to more structured, cultivated environments.

Rather than seeking to erase these contradictions, The Listening Project brings them into view. It creates space not just for consensus, but for complexity, coexistence, and care. As Paola Castillo reflects, “At some point, decisions will have to be made about which perspectives to prioritise, or how to merge conflicting views in a way that still feels meaningful. But while that’s a challenge, it’s also a testament to the richness of perspectives in the community. It shows just how many different ways people engage with and experience the same space—which is exactly why this kind of project is so important.”

In surfacing these nuanced perspectives, The Listening Project transcends its original role as a design tool. It becomes an ethic of empowerment—a process through which people discover not only their right to be heard, but their capacity to shape the world around them. The goal is not just an inclusive park, or even a more confident, connected community.

At its core, the project invites people to claim agency—to see themselves as co-authors of the spaces they inhabit. In this light, the River Lea becomes more than a landscape; it becomes a mirror of possibility, a living canvas for reimagining prosperity as a collective experience rooted in dignity, belonging, and shared responsibility.

In 2024, Phase 3 of The Listening Project concluded with 113 interviews conducted across 20 organisations, analysed collaboratively by 21 volunteers from the Inclusivity and Design Circles. As Cathy McLoughlin works on drafting the full report—slated for launch in Autumn 2025—the charity is preparing for its next phase. This includes a bold ambition: to hear from 100 people from underrepresented

backgrounds in each of four thematic areas— swimming in nature, learning in nature, inclusive circular economies, and community-led spaces.

This continued listening is not just outreach— it is a continuation of ELWP’s core commitment to co-creation. And if you are reading this and feel drawn to the vision, the door remains open: you are welcome to take part.

The story of the River Lea and the proposed East London Waterworks Park is still unfolding.

But already, it reveals a new model of prosperity —one not defined by market logic or property lines, but one anchored in community agency, care for the land, and participatory placemaking. The River Lea, viewed not as a boundary but as a connector, thus embodies the broader potential of participatory urbanism.

Thus, The Listening Project is not just about building a park: it is about reimagining the relationship between people, place, and power.

It is a quiet but radical blueprint for a more inclusive and life-affirming future.

Ultimately, prosperity in this context is not about economic development or increased land value—it’s about life: how people connect to each other, to nature, and to the places they inhabit. ELWP and The Listening Project are showing that when communities are not just consulted but centred, a more inclusive, vibrant, and sustainable kind of prosperity can grow.

Jinghann Wong is a MSc Prosperity, People and Planet student at the Institute of Global Prosperity, UCL. She volunteers with East London Waterworks Park in her spare time as the co-chair of the Learning Circle. Additional contributions to this piece were made by ELWP volunteers Paolo Castillo, Mary Powell, and Cathy McLoughlin. For more information about East London Waterworks Park, please visit www.elwp.org.uk

Reimagining Prosperity along the Lower Lea: Voices from the Listening Project

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Citizen Science for the Ongoing Prosperity of the River Lea

Having accessible knowledge and data to understand our environment around us can contribute to prosperity. Decision makers need the best quality data to make decisions.

Recent concerns about the future of the UK’s Census suggest that without such data, we will struggle to understand social life in the UK, let alone the economy, and the experience of those people living here. Citizen science is an approach that can assist with generating locally relevant knowledge and data from different perspectives rather than just top down official statistics. Citizen science involves the active participation of the public in research.

This means not only data collection but also in formulating initiatives and questions to focus on, as well as potentially in data analysis, dissemination, awareness raising and action on particular issues.

Citizen science projects can be initiated with a range of goals and outcomes in mind. For example, across the three cohorts of projects supported during the IMPETUS accelerator programme to kickstart new citizen science initiatives across Europe, there are numerous projects focused on generating insights about the prosperity of different rivers and water bodies across Europe. Some of these can provide inspiration for citizen science for prosperity along the Lea. River PRO, based in Italy, in Sicily’s Simeto River Valley, is designed to empower local communities through citizen science. By collecting data on water quality and river usage and fostering collaboration among residents, businesses, and institutions, the 16

project aims to promote a more collaborative management of the River. The project is working towards assigning responsibilities for land and water management in a legally binding way, by working with local administrators to establish a community pact for multi-level governance on the river. The Citizen Observatory of Apuan Waters assessed the quality of water resources, including rivers, spring waters, thermal waters and underground waters in the Apuan Alps in Italy that are affected by marble quarry pollution to demand protection of this waterrelated ecosystem. Empowering Underserved Communities through Freshwater Citizen Science seeks to empower underrepresented communities in Coventry and Warwickshire, UK, to monitor freshwater quality in River Severn tributaries. Through citizen science, the initiative aims to improve data access, support skills development, and co-create a scalable, community-led model for environmental monitoring and long-term river stewardship.

With the River Lea in mind, there are so many different types of relevant data to understand the prosperity of the river – from official statistics on water quality, to biodiversity data about the species along the Lea’s banks, to data about those living on the water (both boaters and non-human species) and even sound data to listen to the health of the river.

Building on the work of the Citizen Prosperity Index to help decision makers and communities to understand what prosperity means and identify strategies for local investment and action is the way forward. The Index encapsulates meaningful data at a level that makes sense to communities, and which can

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then be relayed back to government for decision-making. Through citizen science carried out by those living and working in neighbourhoods, the Citizen Prosperity Index reports on factors that local people say support prosperity and quality of life in their neighbourhoods.

As part of the IMPETUS programme and specifically for London Data Week, we organised a data walk focused on monitoring river health from different perspectives.

Bringing together those interested in exploring what makes for a prosperous and healthy river to walk along the banks of the River Lea, we set out to explore different types of data used for monitoring river health, and to reflect on some questions: What does a healthy river mean to you? Who are we monitoring for? Why are we monitoring river health?

As with citizen science, it’s about so much more than just data. Citizen science contributes to the health and prosperity of the river by bringing people together to do research together and to learn from sites along the Lea about what works and what doesn’t in terms of restoration. This involves learning from non-human agents too!. There is a growing movement globally to recognise the rights of nature and this trend has finally reached the UK. In February 2025, the Lewes District Council adopted a decision to support the principles of a Rights of River Charter for the River Ouse, in Sussex. The River Rights movement seeks to grant rivers their own rights such as to be free from pollution, free to move and flow, and free to be home to different species, amongst other rights.

Lots of citizen science initiatives generate large volumes of data about particular bodies of water, including the River Lea. But to become really prosperous, we need to think through how to make the data meaningful.

‘It’s about translating what the river’s telling us and making the case for what needs to be done next.’ advised Gino Brignoli, Biodiversity

Manager at Cody Dock. Citizen science can do this, in the way it helps to build trust, strengthen relationships and transform the way we collaborate. Citizen science is a crucial approach to presenting diverse perspectives, different types of knowledge and to raise questions about whose data counts. Such approaches allow for greater prosperity in the way they enrol different members of the public in doing research and answering these questions together.

Alex Albert was a Senior Researcher at Nesta, leading work on citizen science and supporting wider research into other collective intelligence such as participatory AI. Founded in 2023, London Data Week is a citywide festival of data – a week of free (or a small fee) events, interactive workshops, discussions and fun activities across the city. It is designed to include new London communities and people in meaningful conversations around data and AI. For more information, please visit www.londondataweek.org

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NBTA London:

Prosperity Through Solidarity

the waterways of london, including the historic River Lea, are not only ecological corridors and recreational spaces but are also home to a unique and growing population: an everevolving and transient linear community living on boats. For its residents, whose numbers in London have almost doubled in the last decade, the river represents a solution to the city’s housing crisis, a path to a less conventional lifestyle, and a connection to a unique cultural heritage.

This fluid neighbourhood, stretching for miles along the towpath, is increasingly under pressure. The National Bargee Travellers Association (NBTA), a volunteer-run organisation of boat-dwellers, stands as a crucial voice of collective action. Their spirited campaigning is a powerful pursuit of a distinct form of prosperity – one rooted not in fixed addresses but in community resilience, housing security, and the fundamental right to a nomadic life.

The National Bargee Travellers Association’s work is driven by a clear conviction: that the nomadic way of life for itinerant boat dwellers is a legitimate and valuable part of Britain’s heritage that must be protected.

They see this lifestyle as being under threat from policies they argue are designed to gentrify the waterways and displace established communities, and they campaign vigorously for the rights of all boaters to navigate the canals and rivers without undue restrictions.

The NBTA was formed to give voice to the UK’s itinerant boater community, often referred to as Bargee Travellers. In London, its role has become increasingly vital as the liveaboard population has surged.

The Canal & River Trust (CRT), the charity managing most of England’s waterways, has noted this dramatic rise, making the River Lea a key artery for this linear community—a place of both refuge and intense contention.

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The core of the NBTA’s work involves campaigning and legal action to protect the rights of boaters without permanent moorings, who are required by their license to engage in “continuous cruising”. This requirement is the very essence of their transient lifestyle. Much of their advocacy challenges CRT policies which, they argue, make it harder for this mobile community to function. This has led to highprofile legal challenges and sustained community organising against what the NBTA terms CRT’s “cull of boats in London.” Disputes often centre on mooring time limits, the required range of movement, and new restrictions that limit mooring space in popular areas like the Lea Valley, effectively disrupting the flow of this evershifting neighbourhood.

The NBTA’s approach is one of defiant and joyful collective action.

They organise vibrant flotilla protests, where fleets of decorated boats navigate the canals to raise awareness, and energetic demonstrations outside CRT offices. Beyond confrontation, they are dedicated community builders. They host events like the Boaters’ Spring Fayre, which brings the community together with music, food stalls, and shared activities, fostering the solidarity essential for their political struggles.

This campaigning is intrinsically linked to a multifaceted vision of prosperity. Firstly, it is a fight for housing security. By resisting attempts to displace them, the NBTA is defending the homes of thousands of families and individuals who form this floating community. In a city where secure housing is a primary determinant of well-being, their work is a direct contribution to a fundamental aspect of prosperity.

Secondly, the NBTA’s work is about preserving cultural prosperity.

The tradition of living nomadically on Britain’s canals is a unique part of the nation’s heritage. The NBTA seeks to protect this way of life from policies that they argue favour static, high-fee residential moorings.

They defend the right to a different rhythm of life, one that embraces movement and change, offering a form of well-being that stands in contrast to a more settled, consumerist culture.

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Thirdly, the organisation fosters a powerful form of social prosperity.

Building and maintaining social networks is a unique challenge for a community that is always on the move. The NBTA is a formal expression of this fluid solidarity. By organising collectively, sharing vital information on mooring spots and navigation changes, supporting each other through legal difficulties, and celebrating together at their fayres, they strengthen the social fabric of the waterway. This resilience and collective agency, maintained across a linear and everchanging geography, are crucial components of a thriving community.

The situation on the River Lea has often been a flashpoint for these issues. As the area has undergone significant regeneration, the pressure on towpath space has intensified. The NBTA has been highly active in challenging new mooring restrictions along the Lea, arguing that they disproportionately affect the established liveaboard community.

Their campaigns highlight a fundamental tension in the vision for the river’s future: is it to be a polished backdrop for static development, or a dynamic, living space that can accommodate the ebb and flow of a transient and diverse population living affordably on the water?

The campaigning of the National Bargee Travellers Association provides a vital perspective on the future of the River Lea, championing a community that is both ever-present and everchanging. Their struggle for the rights of liveaboard boaters is more than a series of legal disputes; it is a profound statement about what constitutes a just and inclusive city. By defending their homes and their nomadic lifestyle through vibrant protests and strong community gatherings, the NBTA insists that any vision of urban prosperity must make room for fluid and alternative ways of living. Their collective action ensures that the conversation about the river’s future is not dominated solely by developers and regulators. They remind us that a genuinely prosperous waterway is not just about fixed assets, but about the flow of life itself – a dynamic, socially equitable, and diverse linear community in all its complexity.

The National Bargee Travellers Association (NBTA) is a member-led organisation of travelling boat dwellers – “Bargee Travelers” – and their supporters.

For more information about the NBTA please visit www.bargee-traveller.org.uk NBTA London: Prosperity through Solidarity

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Cody Dock: Cultivating Urban Prosperity Through Ecological Regeneration The tidal stretch of the River Lea, long shaped by the people who lived and laboured along its banks, carries a layered modern history of utility, inconvenience, neglect, and abuse. But in the past 15 years, a quiet transformation has begun, spearheaded by the ambition to reclaim and reimagine this long-overlooked waterway. Central to this revival is Cody Dock and the charity headquartered there, the Gasworks Dock Partnership. Their journey is a testament to how forgotten industrial architecture can be nurtured back to life, cultivating a new form of urban prosperityrooted in ecological health, community engagement, and rediscovered heritage.

We asked Gino Brignoli, Cody Dock’s Biodiversity Officer, to tell us a bit about how his work, and that of his colleagues, is supporting the river to become an environment providing prosperity for both human and non-human inhabitants: The tidal Lea is no longer a natural river.

Between the 17th and 19th centuries, its oncemeandering braids, gullies, and pools were straightened and channelized to aid navigation and protect surrounding land from flooding.

Marshes that had once seeped out from its edges were drained for agriculture. Later, during the Industrial Revolution, the river was repurposed as an open sewer, saturated with effluent and a toxic cocktail of pollutants.

The result was the degradation of a oncevibrant ecosystem. Where there had been a dynamic tidal landscape – rich with reedbeds, 22

salt marshes, riparian vegetation, and a diverse array of birds, fish, mammals, and invertebrates - there was now a depleted waterscape, stripped of much of its life.

As industry along the river evolved, so did its relationship with the people who relied on it.

The extractive and manufacturing operations that once dominated its banks largely moved overseas. In their place came new warehouses and industrial units, built for utility rather than connection to the water. The river was hemmed in by steel sheet pilings and concrete, its flow engineered for efficiency, not ecology. For many new occupants, the river was an afterthought – something to be fenced off, hidden behind hoardings, or ignored entirely.

It was behind one such hoarding that Cody Dock was rediscovered - the aforementioned disused Victorian coal dock, long severed from the Lea and choked with fly-tipped waste. That accidental encounter sparked the founding of the Gasworks Dock Partnership. At its heart was a community determined to reclaim this feat of Victorian engineering and neglected chapter of the city’s heritage.

As the dock was cleared and restored, it became clear that the river had not been entirely lost. Life clung to the margins – hidden in the reeds, sheltering in crevices of rotting timber, and echoing in birdsong along the water.

This unexpected ecological resilience was profound - not only for its abundance but for the way it galvanized people. Thousands of volunteers have since joined ongoing surveys and monitoring efforts, identifying more than

Riverworks: Prosperity through Community on the River Lea

800 species of plants and animals, some of which are nationally rare or scarce.

This growing catalogue of non-human life is more than a biodiversity record – it’s a guide to the types of habitats that still thrive here. From it, a new ecological blueprint for the Lower Lea is emerging. Over the next 15 years, the river will once again be reshaped by human activity.

This time, the pressure will come from largescale residential development, with thousands of apartments and amenities planned along its banks.

Yet, embedded within this change lies opportunity: to create a new kind of urban river – one that integrates the needs of both wildlife and people, fostering a shared prosperity.

A key component of this vision is the expansion of reedbeds along the tidal Lea. These reeds create vital nesting grounds for migratory

birds such as reed warblers and teal, while also providing an important food source for seedeaters like house sparrows and goldfinches.

Beneath the water, their dense stems and rhizomes offer shelter for juvenile fish including European eel, flounder, grey mullet, and sticklebacks – species that are themselves prey for larger fish, cormorants, kingfishers, and even seals. The reedbeds also support a thriving community of invertebrates – dragonflies, damselflies, mayflies, moths, beetles, clams, mussels, snails, and many more.

These invertebrates, in turn, sustain thriving populations of bats, sand martins, and fish.

Beyond their ecological value, reeds help shape the river itself. Acting as leaky barriers, they slow the water’s flow, encouraging sediment to settle and increasing habitat complexity – conditions that support even more life. Reeds also filter more than litter from the water’s surface: they absorb and accumulate heavy

River Lea: View from Cody Dock by Jim Osley Cody Dock: Cultivating Urban Prosperity through Ecological Regeneration

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metals through phytoremediation and efficiently sequester carbon. Establishing new reedbeds along the tidal Lea will not only improve biodiversity but also soften the river’s hard edges. By ‘greening the grey,’ riverside living can become more attractive, healthier, and cleaner – key components of local well-being.

Could we even see the return of water voles, bitterns, oysters and otters? Could we begin to bend the curve of biodiversity and habitat loss, creating a richer natural heritage for future generations?

In addition to interventions in the river itself, there are broader actions to consider. The creation and management of open mosaic habitats (including post-industrial brownfields and sustainable urban drainage features such as ponds and swales) can significantly enhance biodiversity along the river’s edge. Together, these spaces could form a continuous bluegreen corridor running through East London from the Thames into Hertfordshire, offering recreational and ecological benefits.

At Cody Dock, this habitat creation is already underway. It is sustained by a community of volunteers; people with a personal connection to and emotional investment in a vision that leaves the tidal Lea better for all living beings.

The transformation of the Lower Lea is not just a story of restoration - it is a story of reimagining. What was once dismissed as a forgotten industrial backwater is now being recognized as a vital living system, worthy of care, creativity, and long-term stewardship.

If this vision succeeds, the river’s next chapter could be its most life-giving since before it was first channelised.

Cody Dock stands as powerful proof that the tide can indeed turn, but it underscores the urgent need for collective action. The future health of the Lower Lea, and of urban rivers like it, hangs in the balance. As pressures mount from development and climate change, the choices made now will shape the future for generations of people and wildlife alike.

This is where a new understanding of prosperity emerges – one that moves beyond mere restoration. It calls for a reconception of our role as active stewards, not just users, of the natural systems that sustain us.

What happens next on the tidal Lea, driven by the spirit of community-led care and responsibility fostered at places like Cody Dock, could set a precedent for cities everywhere: demonstrating that even the most damaged places can be transformed back into thriving ecosystems that bring prosperity to the lives of humans, non-human animals, and nature more widely.

Gino Brignoli is the Biodiversity Officer at the Gasworks Dock Partnership, a registered charity and social enterprise formed to act as a vehicle for the community led regeneration of Cody Dock and its surrounding waterways. For more information, please visit www.codydock.org.uk 24

Riverworks: Prosperity through Community on the River Lea

Surge Co-op: Finding Prosperity Through Community Action In east london, the inherent dynamism of urban waterways – networks of rivers and canals – is increasingly seen as a fitting backdrop for social action and creative forms of community building. One organisation embodying this spirit is Surge Cooperative.

Located on the Channelsea River, a tributary of the historic River Lea in East London, Surge is dedicated to reanimating this once-thriving waterway through community-led initiatives, demonstrating how collective effort can foster a unique form of local prosperity.

“Community-owned moorings are an opportunity to be proactive about an important part of our future on the canals,” explain Hannah White and Stephen Shiell, two of Surge’s founders. “It’s about not solely relying on navigation authorities to provide everything we want from the boating ‘product’.”

This vision has fuelled Surge Cooperative’s emergence as a vital force in celebrating, restoring, and raising awareness about London’s often-neglected riverways. The cooperative began its work on the Channelsea River,

establishing its first mooring in 2018. Its founders, with years of experience living on or near the river, had witnessed the decline of a vibrant waterway. Their intention was clear: to reverse this neglect by initiating and supporting community projects that reopen the riverside for moorings and communal use. Crucially, this includes advocating for the creation of genuinely affordable homes on the water – a pressing need in the expensive capital, where a significant number of people live on houseboats (liveaboards) often facing precarious housing situations.

The journey of any boater seeking a permanent place to moor their liveaboard vessel in London is often fraught with insecurity and challenges involving landlords and the various authorities managing the waterways. Surge Cooperative’s own story began with this urgency, as founding members needed a new home for their boat, The Madorcha. Their search involved paddling up and down the river at high tide, scouting potential locations. These exploratory journeys catalysed a long-held ambition: to establish affordable cooperative moorings along the tidal River Lea. Thus, Surge Cooperative was born, initially through a vision document outlining underused wharves along this stretch that could address the critical need for waterside homes.

A breakthrough came via a friendly connection with a factory owner on the Channelsea River.

In the spring of 2018, co-op members and supporters immersed themselves in the challenging work of clearing the riverbed.

The sheer volume of debris told a story of

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prolonged neglect: keyboards, computers (believed by the co-op to have come from the adjacent Channelsea House during its conversion from offices to flats), an entire motorbike, vast quantities of wet wipes (often flushed into the sewage system and discharged during overflows from infrastructure like the nearby Northern Outfall Sewer, a major part of London’s Victorian-era sewage network), and peculiar, unidentifiable ceramic items.

Yet, amidst this discarded history, nature persisted. Reeds whispered, wagtails flitted, and the incoming tide brought gulls, geese, ducks, and swans. Nearby, on Channelsea Island – untouched by humans since its abandonment in the 1960s – herons and egrets continued to nest. This juxtaposition of degradation and resilience underscored the potential for renewal.

In August 2018, The Madorcha navigated the high tide to its new home, beyond the bend by the Channelsea Bridge on the Greenway (a public walking and cycling path built partly on top of the Northern Outfall Sewer). This marked the beginning of the ongoing effort to create a permanent haven – a vision for six large, affordable cooperative boats that continues to evolve. Progress included forging a positive relationship with Thames Water, 26

the private utility company responsible for London’s water supply and wastewater services. This led to an agreement by Surge for a 125-year lease on a small piece of land for mooring access. The co-op also took on the stewardship of an area beside a Thames Water pumping station on the Channelsea’s banks, collaboratively creating the Long Wall Ecology Garden. This space now hosts monthly creative workshops and conservation events.

To date, their tangible achievements include creating eight floating habitats, planting a community orchard, designing and building a solar-powered water pumping and filtration system, beginning to tackle the invasive pennywort (an aggressive aquatic plant that can deoxygenate water and impede navigation), and constructing an accessible compost toilet with fellow cooperative Compost Mentis.

These actions represent not just environmental improvements, but the building blocks of a thriving, self-sufficient community.

However, finding security on the water has been far from straightforward. While the relationship with Thames Water remains positive, Surge reports that progress is often frustratingly slow, hampered by the operational and financial constraints resulting from the company’s privatised status and associated

Riverworks: Prosperity through Community on the River Lea

staff cutbacks. Obtaining the necessary licences for planning approval presents another hurdle.

Surge’s small-scale, low-impact project is subjected to the same rigorous – and expensive – processes as large housing developments.

Consequently, the co-op is currently fundraising to support this phase.

An even more significant challenge arose concerning the ownership of the riverbed itself.

Early in their site scoping, Surge researched the ownership of the riverbed to identify whom to approach with their plans. When the Port of London Authority (PLA) – the body responsible for managing and supervising navigation on the tidal section of the River Thames and its tributaries – approached Surge for an estates licence, claiming ownership, the co-op could find no Act of Parliament to support this claim.

Despite attempting to collaborate by sending their vision document, Surge found their case escalated to the PLA’s legal department, and a court summons was issued against The Madorcha, leaving no room for negotiation.

Surge engaged a barrister, countered the claim, and embarked on a lengthy two-year period

of intensive research to build a robust case.

The day in court was a tense and pivotal moment. Barristers shuttled between negotiation rooms as both sides tested their arguments. It became apparent that neither party wished to risk a courtroom battle.

This prompted the Surge members to ask themselves a fundamental question: how should this river be ‘owned’? They dared to voice an answer they had tentatively considered: the creation of a new model of stewardship for land and water, rooted in grassroots cooperation and collaboration, aimed at benefiting future generations and building climate resilience. A Tomlin Order was drafted – a legally binding agreement requiring both parties to negotiate a structure for shared ownership of the Bow Creek riverbed (Bow Creek being another name for the lower tidal section of the River Lea). For Surge, the significance of this moment resonated with historical parallels, such as the 1857 formation of the Conservators of the River Thames, established to settle an ownership dispute over the tidal Thames’s bed and shores. The Thames Conservancy Act 1857 had affirmed

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the preservation and improvement of the River Thames as a matter of great national importance; Surge felt a similar responsibility for their stretch of urban waterway.

This landmark agreement marked the beginning of a new chapter in Surge’s journey: to enact this Tomlin Order on behalf of the river and all who wish to care for and live with it. They desire a collaborative and positive working relationship with the PLA to transform this vital London waterway into a genuine community asset. This pursuit of shared ownership and responsible stewardship represents a profound redefinition of prosperity – one based on common good rather than private control.

Their tentative steps so far have not been easy.

The current political and economic climate presents formidable challenges to their vision.

Despite initial positive feedback, Surge has found that local councils (local government authorities responsible for urban planning and community services) sometimes appear to pit a stark economic ‘reality’ against the urgent need for systemic change. Navigating these turbulent waters is difficult when a different, more sustainable future is known to be both possible and essential, yet prevailing currents often seem to flow against such approaches.

Yet, Surge Cooperative continues to grow stronger through creative, collaborative efforts that keep the ideals of the Tomlin Order – and their profound connection to the river – alive. Co-op members and artist duo Blanc Sceol (Stephen Shiell & Hannah White) have been instrumental in this, reimagining the dense legal text of the Tomlin Order through workshops and participatory art. They transform its language into poetry, spells, and evolving installations – such as inscribing its words in river mud or inviting collective reshaping of the text – fostering a deeper, more intuitive understanding and connection to the agreement and the waterway itself.

Beyond these artistic interpretations, the 28

co-op remains deeply active in environmental restoration, education, community engagement, and river advocacy. They are also working with Shared Assets (a UK organisation promoting common good land use) and Loughborough University to fund and establish the trust independently and have joined the River Rights Network, supporting the movement for legal personhood for rivers as a pathway to enhanced conservation.

Through their persistent efforts – from the muddy work of river clearing and ecological restoration to the complex navigation of legal frameworks and the creative reimagining of their relationship with the urban landscape – Surge Cooperative redefines what prosperity can mean along London’s waterways. Their journey is more than a quest for affordable moorings; it is a testament to the power of community action to cultivate resilience, foster ecological healing, and forge new models of shared stewardship. In doing so, Surge offers a compelling vision of prosperity rooted not in extraction or private gain, but in deep connection, collective well-being, and the enduring vitality of both the human and natural worlds intertwined.

Surge Cooperative is a non-profit organisation set up with the primary focus to reanimate tidal water spaces with affordable, co-operatively run moorings. They are nurturing the heritage and biodiversity of the Channelsea River and wider River Lea area, and building lasting community links on land and water. For more information, please visit www.surge.coop

Riverworks: Prosperity through Community on the River Lea

Eco-poetry created at ‘Sounding the River’ workshop, photo by Maurizio Marinelli, April 2025

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Artwork from the Rewilding Healthcare project at the exhibition ‘A Place of Our Making’ at UCL East, March 2025.

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Rewilding Healthcare: Finding Prosperity Through Flow and Connection the river lea, with its shifting tides and ever-evolving relationship with the East London landscape, offers a potent metaphor for the dynamic nature of human health and healthcare. It is on these banks, at Cody Dock, that “Rewilding Healthcare,” a collaborative project supported by UCL’s Trellis programme, fostered new conversations.

Led by artist Laura Copsey and clinical academic Sarah Yardley, in partnership with Cody Dock co-founder and former palliative care nurse Julia Briscoe, the initiative explored how creative engagement can help reimagine healthcare systems. Their work seeks a different kind of prosperity – one found not in rigid structures, but in the possibilities of fluid, relational, and supportive open archipelagolike ecosystems of care to enhance well-being for individuals and communities facing serious illness.

Through its artistic explorations the project explores balance in situations where success cannot be defined as cure. “Rewilding Healthcare is not about creating wilderness, it’s about living in balance with uncertainties that we cannot control, creating space for relationships.” This core philosophy challenges conventional notions of safety and care. For people living with serious mental or physical illness, the project suggests, what is ‘good’ isn’t always synonymous with what is defined as ‘safe’ by prescriptive rules, which can erode trust. Instead, “focusing on relationships rather than control allows people to engage in positive risk-taking. If we are safe with each other regardless of our situation then we can ride the tides.”

Healthcare, much like the River Lea, is a system in constant motion, rooted in legacies of experience where, ideally, tributaries of knowledge and expertise flow between people, creating fluid Riverworks: Prosperity through Community on the River Lea

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responses to diverse needs. Rewilding Healthcare emerged from a desire to explore this dynamism. The central question posed by the project, as articulated by its collaborators, is: “how can art making start conversations to help us reimagine healthcare as something fluid, relational, and alive? What if we embrace a different way of thinking?”

To delve into these questions, a series of public workshops were commissioned by UCL Trellis, hosted in the Growing Space on the banks of the River Lea at Cody Dock – a place itself reclaimed from industrial neglect and brought back to community life. Here, participants, including those with lived experience of serious illness, 32

Riverworks: Prosperity through Community on the River Lea

carers, and healthcare professionals, embarked on a journey of creative exploration. The group imagined healthcare as an “open archipelago,” a network of islands in a sea of relationships representing different facets of care, where people, knowledge, and trust could flow freely, enabling navigation through the often-turbulent waters of illness.

Maritime metaphors became powerful tools for understanding.

Participants envisioned themselves as a “lifeboat crew at sea, facing the uncertainty of illness, the rough waters of bureaucracy and the uncharted territories of experience” while still active participants in their own stories. Doing together not being done to. Through creative exercises, they mapped how streams of knowledge rise and fall, observing how some forms of expertise, once deeply embedded in communities, can become “clogged up over time.” These nautical and island-based metaphors helped to examine the gaps often present in healthcare – the spaces between rhetoric and reality, policy and practice, and expectation and lived experience.

Central to these discussions was Dr. Sarah Yardley’s research into healthcare systems for people with serious illness, which has led to a co-produced theory of “collective social safety.” The workshops drew on this concept, prompting participants to consider what it truly means to be safe with each other, regardless of circumstance.

This aligns with ideas such as David Jay’s definition of a relationship as “a shared understanding between people on the meaningful use of resources” - a willingness to change one another in a genuine exchange involving chains of people knowing one another, so that trust can flow between them.

The River Lea itself provided constant inspiration. Its nature, as a waterway that doesn’t flow in isolation but takes in tributaries and fresh contributions, growing more complex as it moves towards the sea, was seen as a model. “Freshwater becomes brackish, as contributions merge and new routes form when water is met with resistance. This is how a good healthcare system should function – not rigidly imposed, but as an ever-expanding confluence of lived and learned experience where people are not just defined by role, Rewilding Healthcare: Finding Prosperity Through Flow and Connection

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as patients, carers or professionals, but part of a network of care, interwoven with trust and knowledge.” The workshops encouraged such deep reflection by asking participants: “What would be your hopes, doubts, and fears if setting sail with a serious illness? What makes a system good, beyond its ability to keep people ‘safe’? How can we redeem the role of relationships in care?”

The setting at Cody Dock, with its reed banks, “one of the last remaining patches along the entire stretch of the river,” offered a poignant connection. These reeds, a “portal to another time” and a link to those who came before, were likened to healthcare at its best: “a passing on of knowledge and wisdom.” Yet, the project acknowledges that in modern systems, these traditional tributaries of knowledge have often been weakened, highlighting the need for multiple forms of knowledge, particularly lived experience, to be valued again.

The ultimate result of Rewilding Healthcare, which culminated in exhibitions at UCL East and Cody Dock, Spring 2025, was to reimagine healthcare as an open ecosystem that prioritises creativity and relationship-centred solutions. It champions the idea that just as waters merge, change, and carry stories, healthcare too should be an ever-evolving, cyclical process, responsive to seasons of illness and human need.

The Rewilding Healthcare project, drawing deep inspiration from the River Lea, offers a profound contribution to our understanding of prosperity in the context of health and community. It suggests that true well-being, especially when navigating the complexities of serious illness, is nurtured not just by clinical interventions, but by the richness of human connection, the empowering nature of creative expression, and the establishment of trust-filled “ecosystems of care.”

By creating a space for these vital elements to flow, much like the river itself, the project champions a form of prosperity that is relational, resilient, and deeply human. The insights emerging from this work have the potential to ripple outwards, encouraging a healthcare landscape that is more adaptable, compassionate, and ultimately, more life-affirming for all.

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Riverworks: Prosperity through Community on the River Lea

Rewilding Healthcare is a collaborative project between London-based artist and art-educator Laura Copsey and palliative medicine consultant and mixed methods researcher Sarah Yardley, supported by UCL’s Trellis programme, in partnership with Julia Briscoe, founder of Cody Dock and former palliative care nurse. The project’s aim was to reimagine healthcare as an open ecosystem that prioritises creativity and relationship-centred solutions, culminating in an exhibition at UCL East in April 2025. For more information you can follow Laura and Sarah on Instagram at @laurachops and @lavendercrew Rewilding Healthcare: Finding Prosperity Through Flow and Connection

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Riverworks: Prosperity through Community on the River Lea

Canal Dream: A Catalyst for Regeneration, Prosperity, and Social Innovation Canal Dream (CD) is a London-based nonprofit arts and cultural organisation. CD reimagines the city’s historic canals as spaces for creative practices, community engagement, and waterway regeneration, aligning with the mission of promoting prosperity along the riverways.

“Our vision,” explained Chuntian, CD’s founder, “is encapsulated in ‘Reviving the Past, Inspiring the Future.’ We aim to animate historical canals with emerging arts and transform industrial heritage into prosperous creative cultural spaces for the future. By utilizing art as a catalyst, we encourage collaboration across sectors and co-create a more vibrant, diverse, and sustainable waterway.”

This contribution tells the story of CD unfolding the journey of a community-based social enterprise, lock by lock. Each lock marks a turning point: a moment of passage, challenge, transformation, and renewal. Along London’s locks, we reimagine the waterways as living bridges, linking Chinese-British waterborne traditions, communities, and visions for the future.

Lock 1:

From The Grand Canal To Regent’s Canal

Driven by her passion for social innovation, Chuntian came to London in the autumn of 2021, during the pandemic, to pursue her MA

Above: The Peach-Blossom Spring, painted by Ding Yunpeng, 1582 Left: Canal Dream Art Festival’s Opening Performance, Summer 2023.

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Chuntian, Infront of her floating home, IWA canalway cavalcade, Spring 2024.

Service Design at the Royal College of Art (RCA). After completing quarantine, she took her first walk along the Regent’s Canal near Angel. Boats painted in vivid colours, adorned with rose-and-castle motifs, were moored bow to stern. Their decks overflowed with flowers, while waterbirds moved freely among them.

The scene stood in stark contrast to her memories of the 通惠河 (Tonghui River), the northernmost stretch of the 京杭大运河 (Beijing–Hangzhou Grand Canal) in Beijing, where she once lived. There, the canal was wide and grey, flanked by high-rises and ongoing construction.

In that moment, the brightness of the scene mingled with the loneliness of a new land.

The sunlight and colour felt dreamlike—gentle, 38

uncanny, yet tender. She felt like the Wuling man ( 武陵人) who stumbled upon the Peach Blossom Spring (桃花源) In Tao Yuanming’s (365 CE–427 CE) representation symbolic of the longing for a timeless, peaceful utopia.

Since then, each walk along the waters has taken her back to the waterways of Beijing: distant, but nearby.

Lock 2:

A Design-Led Social Innovation Project

CD started as Chuntian’s graduation project at the RCA. It was a response to pressing social needs. In the pandemic’s aftermath pandemic, London was struggling to recover its civic and creative energy. The pandemic had hit the

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city’s cultural scene hard, leaving young artists with few creative opportunities. Communities, in turn, lost access to cultural life. Isolation worsened mental health and eroded social ties, intensifying the need for healing and reconnection.

CD also started from a firm belief in hidden gifts and untapped potential. We saw the waterways as underused cultural corridors rich with ecological and social value. The UK has over 2,000 miles of canals and rivers, with nearly nine million people living within a ten-minute walk. These blue-green spaces are vital habitats for urban wildlife, offering powerful but overlooked possibilities for creative practice and community wellbeing.

Our approach drew on a multidisciplinary framework that combined green prescribing, arts prescribing, and site-specific art. Green prescribing involves connecting people with nature to support mental and physical health.

Arts’ prescribing introduces creative activity as a means of fostering emotional and social wellbeing. Site-specific art engages directly with the surrounding environment, creating works that are shaped by and responsive to the unique character of a place.

CD’s service proposition emerged from this context: How might we create a series of artsin-nature services along the waterways—with site-specific green-art prescribing—to foster creative opportunities, improve community wellbeing, and contribute to canal regeneration?

Lock 3:

Dreams’ Evolving, Drama Ensuing

Building on the initial design strategy, we began testing our ideas directly along the water. From a paper-boat storytelling workshop at Angel, to an audiovisual performance aboard Opportunity at Laburnum Boat Club in Hackney, to winning the Pageant of Boats at the IWA Canalway Cavalcade in Little Venice, CD moved forward with bold imagination and the fearless energy of beginners—much like the Chinese idiom 初生牛犊不怕虎 (the fearless spirit of a newborn calf unafraid of tigers)—constantly learning, shifting, and growing along the way.

We reimagined the spatial possibilities of water. Boat cabins became moving galleries for painting and installation. Roofs and decks turned into floating stages for live music,

Canal Dream at the RCA Final Show, London, Summer 2022.

Canal Dream: A Catalyst for Regeneration, Prosperity, and Social Innovation

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Paper Boat Storytelling Workshop, Canal Dream’s first event at Angel, London, Spring 2022.

Film screening under the bridge.

London Design Festival, Autumn 2023.

Floating Garden rooftop performance, second Canal Dream Art Festival, King’s Cross, London, Summer 2024.

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Riverworks: Prosperity through Community on the River Lea

Chinese artist on the Regent’s Canal.

UK–China water-based exchange programme, Summer 2023.

British artists in Qinhuangdao.

UK–China water-based exchange programme, Summer 2023.

Word on the Water rooftop poetry reading. CD Art Festival, King’s Cross, London, Summer 2024.

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dance, poetry, and performance. Beyond the boats, our imagination spilled onto the towpaths and under the bridges. Emerging fashion designers turned the towpaths into runways. Young filmmakers transformed underpasses into open-air cinemas. New media artists used laser projections to illuminate trees and buildings along the water in the evening.

We brought some of the most vibrant emerging art scenes in London to its historic canals, attracting new audiences to the waterways.

As the creative landscape expanded, more young artists and boats joined our floating community. Like the quiet spiders that share our boats, we too began to weave—a patient and deliberate web, connecting long-standing canal communities with a new generation of creatives. In the summer of 2023, our first web was woven: we launched the inaugural Canal Dream Art Festival in the heart of London’s canal system—King’s Cross—together with several partner organisations. Five boats carried five artistic themes: the Boat of Visual Art, the Boat of Performance Art, the Boat of Poetry, the Boat of Sound and Motion, and the Boat of Creative Activity. The three-day programme engaged over one hundred artists.

We gradually built strong partnerships and found our footing within this fast-paced environment. Word on the Water—London’s beloved book-barge and one of The Guardian’s “10 of Britain’s Best Indie Bookshops”—joined the festival as our “Boat of Poetry.” Global Generation, an environmental organisation deeply involved in King’s Cross’s regeneration, contributed their Floating Garden as the “Boat of Performance Art.” Yet there were some challenges. Hosting a floating festival proved far more complex than organising events on land. Boat sizes, layouts, utilities, moving and mooring logistics—as well as safety concerns and insurance—varied 42

wildly. Engine failures, power cuts, water shortages, toilet breakdowns, and unpredictable weather became part of the daily routine.

On scorching summer days, rushing down the towpath, sunburnt and overwhelmed, Chuntian would sometimes remember Chinese poet Haizi’s words: “太阳强烈，水波温柔” (The sunlight is strong; the water gentle), feeling both exhaustion and beauty.

Lock 4:

Living-Creating Between Places

Chuntian also faced the distinctive challenge of identity and belonging. As CD’s founding director, Chuntian inevitably wove her cultural and geographic migration’s journey into the organisation. Cross-cultural identity brings challenges—but also the potential to become a bridge. Language barriers, cultural differences, mismatched communication rhythms, and unfamiliar systems all demanded greater sensitivity—as well as emotional resilience: staying open even when misunderstanding inevitably arose. Like a rootless duckweed (身如浮萍) —both professionally, and literally —she chose to become a continuous cruising boater. Over nineteen months of navigation, she explored, listened, and participated in community living as one of their own.

This cross-cultural lens offered new ways of seeing, imagining, and meaning-making. China’s ancient water cultures opened alternative perspectives through which to reimagine London’s waterways. In the Tang dynasty, poetic gatherings on boats exemplified the intimate connection between artistic expression and aquatic environment. The Song dynasty’s renowned scroll, 清明上河图 (Along the River during the Qingming Festival) vividly portrays the prosperous livelihood along the Bian River, capturing the dynamic interplay between urban vitality and riverine settings. Later, during the Ming dynasty, Kunqu opera’s emergence in the Jiangnan region saw performances staged on boats and at riverfront pavilions. These

Riverworks: Prosperity through Community on the River Lea

historical fragments of waterborne culture profoundly inspired CD’s contemporary artistic practices along London’s waterways, opening a space where past-present, East-West, memory and imagination converged. Thus, London’s CD’s waterway-based practice resonated with waterfront communities in China, opening collaborative opportunities. In 2023, partnering with Aranya Theatre Festival’s 300 Migratory Birds programme, we co-organised a UK–China waterways artists’ exchange. Eight Chinese artists travelled to London, living and creating aboard boats in response to local waterside communities; meanwhile, four UK-based artists undertook a residency along Qinhuangdao’s coast, engaging with the region’s water-culture.

This two-way artistic drift sparked new crosscultural imaginations, reconnecting the imagery of “dream” and “water town” in poetic ways.

In 2024, CD was featured in Jiangnan Times, a local newspaper from China’s historic watertown region—an echo flowing back from the East.

Lock 5:

Waterways As Cultural Infrastructure For Prosperity Creation

Today, the UK’s waterways face urgent and intersecting challenges, including low youth participation, a lack of diversity, ageing infrastructure, and severe funding shortages.

According to the Canal & River Trust, there is an annual funding gap of £12–£15 million, exacerbated by reductions in government grants—with further cuts anticipated in 2027 (Fund Britain’s Waterways, July 2023).

These financial pressures threaten not only the environmental sustainability of the canal network, but also its social and cultural vitality.

Therefore, cross-sectors’ collaboration is more urgent than ever.

Looking ahead, we envision growing the Canal Dream Art Festival into a linear, floating celebration—extending westward from Kings Cross to Paddington, and eastward to Hackney

Wick. A flotilla of boats will carry artistic projects and civic imagination along the water, gathering boaters, young creators, and waterside communities to share experiences and rebuild relationships through art and nature.

RCA Service Design Collaboration, London, Autumn 2024.

CD will continue to act as a bridge—linking sectors, disciplines, and communities through creative practice. Co-creating a waterwaybased social innovation network, we brought the canal into the field of design by partnering with the London Design Festival; we engaged in dialogue with diverse stakeholders through Accessible Waterways Day; and we collaborated with RCA guiding students in reimagining the urban waterways’ future. These collaborations extend the reach of artistic practice into new domains of public engagement, design-led inquiry, and civic imagination for prosperity creation.

Chuntian Hu is a social entrepreneur, cultural producer, event director, service and product designer, artist, and former boat-dweller, who founded Canal Dream, a non-profit arts and cultural organisation based on London’s canals and rivers, in 2023. For more information about Chuntian, please visit www.chuntianhu.com.

For more information about Canal Dream, please visit www.canaldream.org

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The Reality of Seeking Prosperity on a Floating Home: An Anthropologist’s First Year on the River Lea The waterways of London are home to a growing and diverse community, with the number of residents living on boats increasing significantly in the last decade. In a city defined by a housing crisis, many are drawn to the water seeking a more affordable and alternative lifestyle. This population includes a significant number of women seeking to live outside conventional structures. However, this vision of a prosperous, free-roaming life often clashes with the demanding realities of living off-grid.

Paula Bronson, a medical anthropologist who had just completed her PhD, chose to embark on this life with her partner. Her personal account of their first year offers a vital, ground-level perspective on this unique form of prosperity – one defined not by comfort and convenience, but by a close connection to nature, daily struggles for basic resources, and personal resilience. Her story is a powerful reminder that for many, the “good life” on the water is a complex and precarious journey of both hardship and adventure.

we had been on our newly purchased Dutch barge for five days, and it was the second week of January. Craned in on the Grand Union near Watford, temperatures were below -6 Celsius the night before.

Mid-morning, with the sun still low in the sky, the frost was thawing as I carried the bags of groceries down the muddy towpath, slipping as I transferred one bag to the other hand. A friendly fellow boater walking past saw the pinched expression on my face, “Boat life, hey?”.

He had a wheelbarrow loaded with his groceries. I thought, “How handy, but … where in the world could we fit something that size on our 1923 41-foot Dutch barge?”.

“Where are you headed?” he asked a typical but practical icebreaker question to find out the latest news.

“We plan to head down through London, to the east and up the River Lea. My partner works in East London, and I am based centrally, but we want to avoid the crowds,” I said somewhat confidently. I was

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learning the navigation systems and studying the online apps but had missed the current vital news. “Oh! Well, you know that there is planned work underway on the Grand Union, near Lock 88 and further down a bit. You won’t be able to pass through until the end of March”.

I stood staring at him, both arms limp, like he had taken away my birthday. This casual meet-up was our introduction to the everchanging nature of life on the water.

At the end of March, we eventually managed the twenty-three locks from Watford, and after overnighting at a paid mooring at Kings Cross, we finally found a spot near Hackney Marshes. Waking up to the jogger’s slow shuffling on the dirt towpath and the general footfall of noisy passersby whose voices bounced off the boats inside walls as if they were standing at our kitchen sink, I was anxious to move on.

As required by our continuous cruising license, we drove on after two weeks, moving through Tottenham Hale lock as the last somewhat busy spot, up through Stonebridge and finally mooring, but just for another two weeks, north of there. The cycle was a moderate fifty minutes or so for me, first along the towpath, then twisting through back neighborhoods to join the other cyclists who, mostly, no doubt, lived in places with heating and flush toilets. When there was heavy rain, Northumberland Park station was a refreshing twenty-minute walk through a meadow with tall grass and spring flowers. There were boats on either side of us, but I still felt we were far away, which I craved. We were settling into boat life, and talked about getting a cat.

Coots nest in the open water near the shore, and we watched as they fussed and followed their preparations for their imminent arrivals.

I was excited to see the clutches of hatchlings and worried when their numbers dropped as the weeks passed. A few pairs of new parents showed their inexperience as sometimes the nests disintegrated with haphazard sticks and branches floating slowly down the canal. The local swan couple were old hands, and although their nest was not inview, we monitored them as well, watching as one foraged in the evening low sun to bring back the bottom plants to the one warming the eggs.

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As Spring came with longer days and brighter sun, we were thankful for the daily solar panel charge to the leisure batteries required for any electricity. Throughout the winter, we needed to run the engine for at least an hour daily to use the electrically powered water pump to wash dishes for cooking and drinking water. Showering was thirty seconds of an ice-cold jolt, which I looked forward to for an early morning hit of adrenaline followed by a good few hours of a dopamine rush to keep me going. The water heater did not work, but that was not so much of a problem, as we later found out the setup was against the rules to pass our Boat Safety Scheme, which is required every four years. My partner joined a gym and showered after his morning cycle to work. Evenings were what my grandfather grew up with and called a “bird bath”, meaning the Victorian method of washing with a good ole flannel and bowl.

Oh, I did not mention how we got our water. During the first few months, when stuck up near Watford for months due to the closures, we used a trolley loaded up with two reasonably sized plastic jerry cans and filled up at the few and far between water taps along the canal, especially installed for boaters. This chore took a fair chunk of the morning to fill the boat’s water tank, and we made at least six return trips. Later, when moving every two weeks, the trips were strategically planned to tie the boat up near the closest water point and fill the tank before heading out to our next mooring.

The warmer temperatures also ended my morning ritual of cleaning out the ashes in the wood stove from the night in preparation for building another to heat the living area and to keep the dampness down. I tried to keep a coal fire going during the day when I was at work so as not to come back in the evening to a chill as teeth-chattering as the temperatures outside if not done. But the warmth from the fire never reached back to the bedroom. Usually wearing the same number of layers outside and a wool cap and gloves to bed with two hot water bottles, I would wake up to see my breath and hope the condensation accumulated on the ceiling overnight did not drip down on me.

Summer was finally here, and we cooked and ate outside as often as possible, often sitting on the deck watching the warm pink and orange 46

Riverworks: Prosperity through Community on the River Lea

glow at sunset behind the tall trees near Pickett’s Lock. A couple of Chinese geese and their local white feathered goose friend stopped by for their nightly visit, pecking on the sides to get our attention.

A curious young fox came by always at the same time, drawn by the smell of barbequed sausage. Once family visited and commented, “This is like being on holiday all the time”.

It is now the end of March, almost a year to the day we set out to the Lea navigation from Watford. My partner and I did not last the year, and I left him to live on the boat on his own two weeks ago. We plan to sell the boat in a year. Although living on the canals can be a less expensive option, for some, it can strain the heartiest of people. I am fortunate that I can receive full retirement, and the timing is still not great, but I feel I am one of the lucky ones. Having just completed my PhD in medical anthropology, less than a month ago I will have to leave London and the UK now until I find employment. I will not return to shared rentals, and I can’t buy another boat from the sale, which is fine as I do not want the chores and responsibility alone.

Paula’s experience provides a crucial, sobering counterpoint to romanticised visions of life on the water. It underscores that while this lifestyle offers unparalleled closeness to nature and a powerful sense of independence, it demands a level of physical and emotional fortitude that can test the strongest of individuals and relationships. Her story does not represent a failure to achieve prosperity, but rather reveals its deeply personal and often challenging nature. The ability to make a choice – to embrace the hardship, but also to recognise its limits and choose a different path – is itself a form of agency. Her honest reflection enriches our understanding of the River Lea, reminding us that it is not just a site for community projects and ecological renewal, but also a space of intense, individual human experience in all its complexity.

Paula Bronson is a medical anthropologist and practicing pain specialist physiotherapist trained in the US. Her doctoral research involved a clinical ethnography looking at villagers’ chronic pain coping and resilience in the aftermath of the 2015 Nepal earthquakes.

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The Accessible Waterways Association: Campaigning for Prosperity for All In October 2024, at its new campus in east London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, nestled amongst the Bow Back Rivers (part of the lower River Lea) University College London hosted the UK’s second Accessible Waterways Day. Organised by the Accessible Waterways Association (AWA), this gathering brought together those concerned with a crucial, often overlooked, aspect of urban blue spaces – their accessibility. For waterways like the River Lea to genuinely foster prosperity within the communities they flow through, their benefits must be available to everyone.

The AWA stands at the forefront of this mission, championing “prosperity for all” by campaigning to dismantle barriers that prevent many from experiencing the joy, tranquillity, and vibrant life of the UK’s canals and rivers.

“If the river is to be a catalyst for prosperity, it needs to be fully accessible and inclusive,” says AWA co-founder Tim Clarke “… waterways can play a powerful role in improving the lives of those with disability if they are developed appropriately.” This conviction fuels their direct aim “to make the waterways accessible for all.” For Tim’s wife and AWA co-founder Tracey, this mission is profoundly shaped by personal experience; reflecting on navigating the waterways with a disability, she knows from personal experience the contradiction of boat-life as both a source of great joy and constant challenge.

The United Kingdom’s extensive network of canals and rivers, including east London’s River Lea, offers a unique blend of natural beauty, industrial heritage, and recreational

opportunity. These “blue corridors” are increasingly recognised for their significant contributions to public well-being. Yet, for a substantial part of the population, enjoying these benefits is fraught with difficulties.

Physical impediments such as uneven towpaths, hard-to-reach mooring points, challenging lock mechanisms, and unsuitable boat designs can render these environments exclusionary for people with disabilities, older individuals, families with young children, or those with temporary mobility issues.

For individuals who not only visit but also live on the waterways with a disability, these challenges are often magnified, intersecting with the daily demands of maintaining a floating home. Residing aboard a narrowboat or other vessel frequently means navigating confined spaces where modifications for mobility aids can be complex if practical at all. Securing essential services like water, waste disposal, and electricity can become significant hurdles if facilities are not designed with varied needs in mind. Mooring, too, presents distinct problems; finding secure, stable, and stepfree access from boat to shore is a constant concern. Moreover, the inherent physicality of boating life – managing ropes, steering, routine maintenance – can become increasingly demanding. Despite these obstacles, many disabled people choose to live afloat, drawn by the independence, connection to nature, and robust sense of community that waterways life can offer. However, their ability to flourish, rather than merely cope, often hinges on the availability of accessible infrastructure and supportive human networks.

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Guests at the Accessible Waterways Day, October 2024.

It was from such direct, lived experiences that the Accessible Waterways Association (AWA) was born. Co-founded by Tracey Clarke and her husband Tim – both narrowboaters who navigate the UK’s waterways with Tracey’s guide dog Loki and Tim’s hearing assistance dog Ozzie – the AWA emerged from a clear need for a dedicated organisation to “inform, represent, and assist people who live with disabilities, impairments or accessibility issues.” Their mission extends beyond boaters to include anglers, cyclists, walkers, and anyone wishing to enjoy the waterside.

The AWA firmly believes that accessibility is a universal concern, as anyone can face challenges affecting their interaction with these spaces.

The AWA’s approach is multifaceted, striving to raise awareness among the public and official bodies. A key initiative is the “Boaters’ Blue Card,” an optional badge for a disabled member’s boat, discreetly signalling potential accessibility needs to foster greater consideration from others. Crucially, the AWA is committed to partnering with waterways authorities like the Canal & River Trust (CRT), aiming to influence policy, contribute to 50

infrastructure design, and lobby for systemic improvements.

The Accessible Waterways Day at UCL East in 2024 powerfully illustrated this collaborative ethos. The event convened diverse stakeholders: Canal and River Trust (CRT) representatives, boating organisations and charities like Accessible Boating and Bruce Boats, engineering firms, support groups, and interested boaters.

A notable presentation was the CRT’s prototype “accessible mooring bollard,” designed to enable those with mobility issues to moor their boats safely and independently – soon to be trialled outside of London.

For the AWA, achieving “prosperity for all” through accessible waterways means unlocking several interconnected benefits, profoundly impacting health and well-being. Research increasingly quantifies the positive effects of blue spaces. For instance, studies cited by the Canal and River Trust indicate that spending time by canals and rivers can improve mental well-being for up to 24 hours, an effect often stronger than in green spaces lacking water.

The Inland Waterways Association highlights findings from Scotland’s regenerated Forth

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& Clyde Canal, where local residents in deprived areas saw a 15% lower risk of cardiovascular issues and notable reductions in diabetes and obesity risks. These spaces offer invaluable opportunities for physical activity, mental relaxation, and connection with nature. However, Natural England surveys reveal that adults with long-term health conditions or disabilities are less likely to visit natural spaces, despite often wishing to do so, underscoring the importance of AWA’s work.

Secondly, improved access cultivates social prosperity by breaking down isolation and enabling fuller participation in community life, allowing individuals and families of all abilities to share experiences. For disabled liveaboard boaters, this can mean the difference between an isolated existence and integration into a supportive waterside neighbourhood.

Thirdly, true accessibility fosters equitable prosperity, ensuring these public assets genuinely serve everyone. The River Lea, for example, has immense potential as a unifying feature of east London, but only if its paths, facilities, and opportunities – including a secure and accessible life afloat – are open to all. The AWA’s vision supports the idea that the significant economic and social value of the UK’s waterways should be available to the widest possible range of people.

The journey towards fully accessible waterways is not without its hurdles. The historic nature of much of the canal network presents inherent difficulties, requiring a thoughtful balance between heritage preservation and modern adaptations. As the AWA aptly notes, “heritage has to give way to progress,” advocating for sympathetic changes. Securing funding for improvements, ensuring consistent policy implementation, and overcoming ingrained societal assumptions about disability remain ongoing areas of focus, especially for those relying on waterways for their homes and daily lives.

Looking ahead, the AWA plans to expand its reach. Following the 2024 event, the AWA have launched a new podcast series, capitalising on the recent success of many canal-focused TV shows (they themselves appear in Channel 4’s ‘Narrow Escapes’).

The continued visibility of Tracey and Tim Clarke’s own journey helps bring these vital issues to a broader public, fostering greater understanding and support.

The true prosperity offered by vital urban arteries like the River Lea is not merely economic or environmental; it is profoundly human. It encompasses the joy of discovery, the peace of nature, the strength of community, and the right to participate fully in the life of one’s surroundings – including for those who make their homes on the water. The Accessible Waterways Association, through its dedicated advocacy and collaborative spirit champions this inclusive vision. Their work is a critical reminder that for prosperity to be genuine and sustainable, it must indeed be “prosperity for all.” By striving to open up these blue heritage corridors, both for leisure and for living, the AWA is not just improving access; they are enriching lives and ensuring that the waterways can truly be a source of well-being, opportunity, and shared heritage for every member of society, today and for generations to come.

Tracey and Tim Clarke are directors of the Accessible Waterways Association, who, along with guide dog Loki and hearing assistance dog Ozzie, live aboard narrowboat Sola Gratia as continuous cruisers, moving throughout the UK. Tracey founded the AWA to inform, represent, and assist people who live with disabilities, impairments, or accessibility issues, and who want to enjoy the Inland Waterways and their surrounding environments. For more information, please visit www.awa-uk.org.uk

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Navigating the System: Investigating Postcodes and Prosperity on London’s Canals “When you need to see a doctor, your first point of reference is the GP, or primary care.

That GP will decide whether they see you or not just simply based on your postal address.

Now if you don’t have a postal address that’s already a barrier.”

This observation from a London doctor, who also happens to live on a boat, cuts to the heart of a hidden problem on the city’s canals and rivers. For the thousands of people who call these waterways home, the pursuit of prosperity – a life rich in freedom, nature, and community – runs up against the hard reality of a healthcare system built on postcodes.

While the number of people living on boats in London has nearly doubled in the last decade, this floating community remains largely invisible to policymakers. A collaborative research and public engagement project led by researchers at UCL – Navigating the System – set out to change this. Through surveys, interviews, and photography, the project sought to provide a voice to London’s boaters, shining a light on the barriers they face and the immense personal cost of being a patient without a fixed address.

The project’s findings challenge what it means to be a healthy and prosperous city-dweller today.

For many, moving onto the water is a choice that genuinely improves their lives. Navigating the System found that boaters overwhelmingly feel their transient lifestyle has a positive effect on their mental health. The freedom and closeness to nature can be a powerful 52

antidote to the stress of city life. Living on a boat is also an inherently active lifestyle, full of physical tasks that can keep you fit.

But here’s the paradox: while boaters often report better mental health, many find their physical health gets worse. Life on a boat carries unique risks, like exposure to fumes from coal and diesel stoves, or the pervasive damp that can aggravate respiratory conditions. You can’t simply shut the door on urban pollution when your front door is a public towpath. This makes getting reliable healthcare an absolute necessity, not a luxury. Yet, for so many, it’s precisely this access that the system denies.

So what happens when you need a doctor?

The biggest hurdle is the first one: registering with a GP. The project found that simply stating “no fixed address” is often enough to be turned away at the reception desk.

This single administrative rule acts as a wall, cutting people off from the entire healthcare system.

The human cost of this blockade is staggering.

One woman told researchers that her health rapidly declined during the two years she spent trying to register with a GP. By the time she was finally seen, she was diagnosed with two chronic conditions that had been made severely worse by the delay. “I have to live with the effects of their incompetence and inaccessibility for the rest of my life,” she said.

Her story is tragically common. Because they can’t get a GP, boaters miss out on everything from specialist referrals to routine cancer

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Images from ‘Navigating the System’, an exhibition held at UCL Urban Room, March 2023.

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Images from ‘Navigating the System’, an exhibition held at UCL Urban Room, March 2023.

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screenings. Women reported being unable to access cervical screenings – one of our most effective cancer prevention tools – because they couldn’t get registered or travel to a distant practice. The system’s rigidity turns preventable issues into chronic conditions and manageable risks into emergencies.

Faced with this wall, boaters are forced to find workarounds. The most common tactic is to use a “care of” address belonging to a friend, family member, or workplace. But while this might get them through the door, it comes with its own set of problems.

One issue is the complete loss of privacy.

Confidentiality is a cornerstone of medical practice, but it’s immediately broken when your medical letters are sent to someone else’s home. The project heard distressing stories of personal results, such as for STDs, being sent to a parent’s address and opened. For many, the anxiety of this situation, or the sheer exhaustion of having to constantly explain their life, leads them to just give up on seeking care. Others are forced to pay for private online services to get essential medication like asthma inhalers – a solution that makes good health a privilege of wealth, not a right.

But it’s not just about diagnosing a problem; it’s also about highlighting solutions, many of which are already being informally practised.

The most effective, low-threshold solution identified by boaters is for GP practices to simply use their own surgery address to register a transient patient. This ensures all correspondence remains secure and confidential within the practice, with the patient notified electronically to come and collect it.

Other suggestions include allowing boaters to use their boat license number or National Insurance number as a unique identifier for healthcare registration, decoupling access from a physical postcode. The COVID-19 pandemic also, surprisingly, offered a glimpse of a better way. The rise of remote consultations made

getting repeat prescriptions easier, and innovative services like floating medical centres for vaccinations proved that healthcare can be brought to the community. Ultimately, the changes that would benefit boaters would improve the system for everyone in an increasingly mobile society. As one GP and boat-dweller concluded, “The kind of changes which are going to make boaters’ lives easier are also just going to make the lives of everyone in the country easier regardless of where they live”.

What these stories from the water make clear is that true urban prosperity can’t be measured in housing or economics alone. It hinges on equity, access, and the fundamental right to health. Listening to these experiences teaches us that our public services need to become as fluid and adaptable as the communities they are meant to serve. When we create a system that works for a resident without a fixed address, we build a better, more humane system for everyone. In the end, ensuring prosperity is not a privilege tied to a postcode is a goal that benefits all who call the city home.

Navigating the System was a UCL-funded research project led by Nura Ali and Joseph Cook. Nura is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Liverpool researching urban health and infrastructural access in Lagos and Liverpool. Her focus is on investigating the impact of socio-spatial dynamics on health inequalities in urban contexts. Joseph is an anthropologist and boat-dweller on the River Lea, and leads the UCL Citizen Science Academy.

For more information about the project, please visit www.navigatingthesystem.co.uk

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Circular Revolution: Turning Human Waste into Community Prosperity London’s intricate network of canals and rivers, home to thousands living an often off-grid boating lifestyle, is a fertile ground for sustainable innovation. Here, Circular Revolution, a dynamic Community Interest Company (CIC), tackles a fundamental challenge for boat dwellers: the ecological management of human waste from composting toilets. Their work, however, transcends mere sanitation; it’s a radical act of transforming perceived waste into valuable resources, fostering community resilience, and challenging systemic inefficiencies. In doing so, Circular Revolution cultivates prosperity rooted in ecological integrity, social equity, and grassroots action.

“The Revolution will be successful if it gets replicated,” states Isobel, a director and Operations Manager at Circular Revolution. “…if we’re able to share our success and [contribute] to a wider conversation about waste and share how we can build infrastructure that contributes to people’s needs in an ethical way.”

Circular Revolution’s origins blend academic inquiry with lived experience. Conceived around 2019 within a PhD project by founder Eve Mackinnon researching off-grid sanitation, it sought practical, ecological waste solutions for boats – a stark need on London’s waterways.

For Isobel, a customer turned director of the organisation, her off-grid life on water highlighted this gap. “When you’re on water, you’re able to imagine things differently,” she reflects, contrasting it with land-based assumptions about waste and water management.

This reimagining proved vital. An early, non-community-run version of the business faced collapse when anticipated pilot funding from the Canal & River Trust (CRT) – the charity managing many UK’s inland waterways – failed to materialise. A subsequent community meeting revealed strong boater interest in not just using but actively running the service.

This catalysed its transformation, initially into a community-supported “kit co-op.”

In early 2023, Circular Revolution formally incorporated as a Community Interest Company (CIC), a structure underscoring its commitment to community benefit over private profit.

Isobel, who transitioned to a paid role after Eve stepped back, has been central to this.

As a voluntary director on the six-member governance board, she dedicates significant time to building a robust structure that ensures democratic member control and adherence to its community interest statement.

The operational model, serving boaters primarily along East London’s River Lea, merges pragmatic logistics with hyperlocal engagement. Members use the “what3words” (w3w) geocoding app to pinpoint their boat’s location for collection. A cyclist on a cargo bike swaps the member’s full compost caddy for a clean one. The waste is consolidated and then transported to an anaerobic digestion facility in Essex. There it is processed into soil conditioner used to regenerate brownfield sites (former industrial land), thereby aiding biodiversity.

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Accessibility is central to Circular Revolution’s mission. “A key vision is to make it as accessible as possible,” Isobel emphasizes, meaning low costs for boaters who often have belowaverage incomes. This stems from a belief that “boaters should have access to basic services,” a provision not legally mandated for the Canal and River Trust. This leaves organisations like Circular Revolution to innovate, with Isobel saying how small organisation debate whether to “pressure the powers that be to do more, or crack on with doing things themselves?” Circular Revolution, like many small organisations founded to solve a problem that the owners themselves face, chose to “crack on,” driven by environmental justice. “We don’t want it to be the case that if you’re rich enough you can be a green citizen, but if you’re not, 58

then you do what you need to do,” Isobel states, critiquing the harmful “bag and bin” alternative that many boaters do when disposing of their human waste.

Their inclusive ethos means flexibility: “If people can’t pay, they can volunteer or come and have a chat with us.” Around eight regular boater volunteers contribute a few hours every couple of months. Their motivations are diverse: some support the project’s replicable model from afar, others are uneasy with conventional waste disposal or lack composting space, and some exchange time for services during unemployment.

The path to financial sustainability is ongoing.

Forecasts suggest 500 customers are needed

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to break even; while membership grows, the CIC currently relies on grants and volunteers.

Systemic hurdles persist. The North London Waste Authority, overseeing public waste, hasn’t always deemed their humanure the “right type” for its funding streams. Navigating varied council (local government) jurisdictions is complex for a service to a mobile population.

Funders often prefer new “high-tech” solutions, yet, as Isobel notes, the innovative processes CR are using are “sort of the oldest thing ever.”

Even administrative tasks like Companies House registration (UK company registrar) are challenging when all the owners are boat-dwellers of no fixed address.

Working with larger entities also presents issues. While the anaerobic digestion service is vital, Isobel voices a desire for greater autonomy: “If processed ourselves, we could be making biogas, growing flowers.” A core part of their work is also gentle re-education, demystifying decomposition and reframing human waste not as “disgusting,” but as part of an ecological cycle, challenging the “flush and forget” mentality that billions across the globe possess.

Circular Revolution’s philosophy resonates deeply with the waterway lifestyle. “The history ... of bargee and traveller people ... fostering a life somewhat outside of neoliberalism and capitalism ... lets you live life on the fringe,” Isobel muses. “There is power in the river, and nature ... It’s a commons space ... something that we’re existing in and sharing, but not owning, and this is a vision for how we want the world to be.” This caretaker ethos is paramount: “You’re a caretaker of a spot of water for two weeks, and then you should be leaving it ready for the next person. There’s something quite symbolic about it.”

Circular Revolution’s journey, born from necessity and nurtured by community spirit, compellingly redefines prosperity on London’s waterways. This is not a prosperity measured

by conventional economic output, but one rooted in tangible well-being and ecological health. It is visible in the transformation of ‘waste’ into life-giving soil, fostering healthier river ecosystems along the Lea. It flourishes in the stronger social fabric they weave, where accessible essential services uphold dignity, and a network of volunteers builds resilient, supportive connections. Furthermore, the prosperity Circular Revolution champions is one of empowerment, enabling a community to co-create essential solutions and assert their right to basic services. By pioneering an ethical, co-operative infrastructure that honours the river as a shared commons, they demonstrate that true prosperity is regenerative at its core—found in the vitality of the natural world, the strength of communal bonds, and a more just, resourceful way of living in deep connection with our shared planet.

Circular Revolution is a Co-operative Community Interest Company based on the banks of the River Lea, with a mission to provide a sustainable, equitable and accessible waste management service shaped by and for Boaters.

For more information, please visit www.circularrevolution.org

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Conclusion: Confluence, Community, and Co-Creation Joseph Cook Maurizio Marinelli

as the waters of the river lea continue their timeless journey from the chalk hills of Bedfordshire to the heart of East London, they carry with them not only the sediment of centuries but also the aspirations, struggles, and creative endeavours of the communities along their banks. This publication, Riverworks: Prosperity through Community on the River Lea, edited by Joseph Cook and Maurizio Marinelli, has sought to illuminate the ways in which prosperity— reclaimed and redefined as the quality of life, or the good life—can emerge from the dynamic interplay of people, place, and water.

The story of the River Lea is, at its core, a laboratory of human and more-than-human transformation. Once a vital artery of industrial Britain, the river’s fortunes have ebbed and flowed with the tides of economic and social change. Its banks have witnessed the rise and fall of industry, the scars of neglect, and more recently, a remarkable renaissance driven by the collective will of local organisations and residents. These are the actors who take central stage in this ‘history from below’ (to borrow E. P. Thompson’s famous expression), along the main character: the Lower Lea, which stands as a living testament to the potential for regeneration—not as a return to a romanticized past, but as a bold reimagining of what it means to thrive in a diverse, urban, and ecologically fragile landscape.

Through the voices and initiatives gathered in these pages, we can see how prosperity can be redefined beyond the narrow confines of economic growth. Giving relevance to ‘ordinary’ stories written 60

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in conjunction with the organisations operating on the River Lea, their experiences assume the value of the ‘extraordinary’, demonstrating how quality of life, ecological vitality, cultural richness, and democratic agency are essential components of a flourishing society. The River Lea, in this light, becomes both a symbol and a laboratory for this more expansive vision—a place where prosperity is not imposed from above, but co-created from the ground up by a polyphony of actors.

The organisations featured here exemplify this ethos in practice.

The East London Waterworks Park’s participatory approach to placemaking, Canal Dream’s cross-cultural artistic interventions, and Cody Dock’s transformation of industrial heritage into community and ecological value all demonstrate the power of collective agency to reimagine and reshape the urban environment. The Accessible Waterways Association’s advocacy for inclusion, Thames21’s mobilization of citizen science, Surge Co-op’s model of cooperative living, Circular Revolution’s embrace of circular economies, and Rewilding Healthcare’s creative engagement with well-being—all these initiatives remind us that prosperity is multifaceted, deeply relational and contextual.

What unites these diverse efforts is a commitment to the commons: the idea that shared resources, managed collectively and inclusively, can generate enduring value for all. This is in line with the American political economist Elinor Ostrom’s pioneering work, which fundamentally challenged the prevailing assumption that only centralized authorities or privatization can effectively manage shared natural resources.

Instead, she demonstrates—through extensive empirical research— that local communities, when given the authority and autonomy, often develop more ecologically sustainable, economically equitable, and socio-culturally adaptive systems for managing their commons. The principle, so eloquently articulated by Ostrom, finds concrete expression along the Lea in the form of grassroots governance, mutual aid, and innovative stewardship. The river is not merely a backdrop for human activity, but an active participant in the co-creation of community wellbeing. Its health and vitality are inseparable from that of the people who live, work, and play along its banks.

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Yet, as this collection makes clear, the pursuit of prosperity on the River Lea is not without its challenges. Legacies of neglect, social inequality, and environmental degradation persist, demanding ongoing vigilance and critical engagement. The process of regeneration is inherently contested, requiring negotiation, adaptation, and at times, confrontation with entrenched interests and systemic barriers. There are no easy solutions or universal templates; each initiative must respond to the unique histories, needs, and aspirations of its community.

Nevertheless, the stories told here are profoundly hopeful. They reveal a groundswell of creativity, resilience, and solidarity—a belief that, through collaboration and imagination, new forms of value and meaning can be forged. The River Lea’s ongoing transformation offers a powerful counter-narrative to the dominant logic of extractive development and exclusion. It demonstrates that prosperity, when rooted in social justice, inclusivity, and ecological stewardship, could be both sustainable and widely shared.

Looking forward, the lessons of the River Lea resonate far beyond its banks. As cities around the world grapple with the intertwined polycrisis of inequality, environmental breakdown, and social fragmentation, the experiments unfolding here offer valuable insights. They show that waterways, so often overlooked or undervalued, can become crucibles for innovation—spaces where new forms of community, culture, and care are nurtured. They remind us that prosperity is not a static endpoint, but an ongoing process of learning, adapting, co-designing and cocreating solutions.

In closing, Riverworks: Prosperity through Community on the River Lea invites us to see the river not just as a resource to be managed, but as a living partner in the creation of better futures. ‘Riverworks’ can be also interpreted as a call to action for river rights, acknowledging that the rights of nature are fundamental human (and more-thanhuman) rights.

The initiatives documented here are not isolated projects, but part of a broader movement towards more just, vibrant, and resilient urban life: together, these initiatives weave a tapestry of interconnected 62

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prosperities: ecological, cultural, social, and economic. Their collective achievements affirm that, by listening to diverse voices, valuing deep interconnections, and embracing the complexities of place, we can unlock the immense potential of our urban waterways. In doing so, we take meaningful steps towards a prosperity that is truly shared— one that honours both the river’s ancient legacy and its promise for generations to come. Therefore, the River Lea exemplifies a holistic approach to prosperity: it presents a living laboratory where quality of life, ecosystem vitality, and collective well-being can be actively pursued and continually reimagined, moving far beyond traditional economic metrics to embrace ecological health, cultural vitality, social inclusion, and community agency.

Maurizio Marinelli is Professor of Chinese Development Planning at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London (UCL). His interdisciplinary research sits at the intersection of Chinese history, culture, and human geography, engaging with globally significant questions around urbanisation, heritage, and sustainable development. His work has been published in leading journals, including Theory and Society, China Information, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, Urban History, China Heritage Quarterly, and Built Heritage.

Joseph Cook is an anthropologist and Lead of the UCL Citizen Science Academy, based within the Institute for Global Prosperity.

His research covers urbanism, user-centred design, and understanding prosperity through co-creation methodologies. His passion for the River Lea comes from his own lived experience as a long-term boat-dweller, and an active member of London’s diverse boater community.

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Cover The editors art bygratefully participants acknowledge of the Rewilding the Healthcare group at Cody Dock, facilitated support of the UCL-PKU Global Engagement by artistRiverworks Laura Copsey and researcher Award. is grounded in a unique Sarah Yardleybetween academic researchers collaboration and community organisations, bringing together diverse forms of knowledge to explore the transformation of the lower River Lea in East London. Once a vital industrial artery, the river is now being reimagined as a dynamic ecological, cultural, and social resource.

Through close collaboration with more than ten local organisations, the project allows us to understand how a once-industrial waterway is now being reframed as a key ecological, cultural, and community asset.

As part of this initiative, the editors presented their research in China in July 2025. On 16 July, they delivered a joint lecture and seminar at Peking University entitled “Prosperity on the River Edges,” as part of the Graduate Summer School course The Theory and Methodology of Built Environmental Heritage in Urban and Rural Areas: Watershed Civilisation and Water Engineering, led by Professor Wang Fang (River Basin Habitats Research Centre, College of Architecture and Landscape Design, Peking University). Marinelli and Cook were the first international scholars invited to contribute to this programme. Their work resonates closely with Professor Wang’s research on river basin human settlement systems and the integration of cultural heritage with sustainable urban– rural development.

On 18 July, Marinelli and Cook delivered two further lectures at the School of Architecture, Tianjin University: “Rivers as Engines of Prosperity and Living Heritage: Lessons from London” (Cook) and “Rivers as Engines of Prosperity and Living Heritage: Lessons from Tianjin” (Marinelli). Together, these talks highlighted the value of comparative, place-based perspectives on waterways as living systems.

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Field visits to the Haihe (海河) that flows through Tianjin into the Bohai, and the Beihai–Houhai–Shichahai lake system (北海后海-什刹海) and the South Changhe Imperial Waterway (南长河皇家水道) in Beijing, offered additional comparative insights into how water infrastructures continue to shape urban life across time and space. These cross-cultural exchanges underscore a shared global challenge: how to reimagine rivers and canals—once engines of industrialisation—as foundations for more just, sustainable, and communitycentred urban futures.

Editors Joseph Cook Maurizio Marinelli Graphic Design Work-Form Printing Gomer Press Contact contact@josephcook.me m.marinelli@ucl.ac.uk University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT

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Riverworks: Prosperity through Community on the River Lea