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To see photos of the current restoration work in the Stourport Basins, visit the Stourport Basins Photo Gallery.
To find out more about the exciting artist commissions in the Stourport Canal Basins click here
Download the latest community newsletter on the Stourport Basins project as a pdf file by clicking here.
If you do not have Adobe Reader you can download it for free by visiting their website.
e-mail us with your news, views and contributions for the website
The Stourport Basins Master Plan
Stourport has a unique and distinctive history. It evolved for no other reason than the construction of the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal in the latter part of the 18th century (Canal Navigation Act 1766) – indeed, it is the only town in Britain to have developed solely as a consequence of the canal boom.
The first basins were set out in the late 1760s. Within the first ten years of their operation, they had attracted a wide range of neighbouring employment opportunities (brass and iron foundries, vinegar works, tanneries, spinning mills and carpet manufacturers, barge and boat building yards, wharves, warehouses, shops and inns) and the resident population had grown to 1300. By the early 19th century, Stourport was one of the biggest and busiest interchange ports in the country connecting the River Severn, and its passage to the sea, to the Trent, Thames and Mersey as part of Brindley’s continuous inland navigation system (the ‘Great Cross’).
Commercial interests drove the construction of the canal basins. That the next build of any significance was the Tontine Hotel and ballroom evinces commercial and cultural (albeit populist) interests coming together to create the social foundations upon which the town was subsequently built. As the basins expanded and the town grew, cultural provision increased in the form of floating bandstands, fun fairs, amusements and municipal parks, all situated on or near water.
The social and cultural life of the town depended on the economic and commercial success of the river and canal basins. The economic decline of the canal system ruptured the image and identity of the place, with the result that the town became dislocated from its originating basins (The ‘historic core’ of the town is the basins but this is both physically and visually cut-off from the town centre). In consequence the commercial, cultural and social drivers for growth either stalled or took different directions, creating a fractured and almost surreal juxtaposition of people to place.
Image and identity are issues of relatedness – not least the relationship of our inner life to our external environment. Individually we may feel increasingly fragmented by the glut of lifestyle information that comes our way via the media and new technologies, but, as communities in real time and space, we are still very much interested in the places where we live out our lives – and very much in the business of wanting these to be better places.
How we picture these places and how we can make them better is a process of ongoing debate to which the arts can make a considerable contribution.
Whilst very much part of the heritage-driven regeneration of the canal basins, the arts programme must both locate a meaningful history while revealing a significant future narrative.
Also, as part of a broader regeneration, the arts programme cannot be separated from the requirement to create public benefit – and this public benefit must be understood in terms of social and cultural value for both resident and visiting communities. The range of different communities in Stourport cannot be told that they will benefit from regeneration, rather, the benefits of regeneration must be experienced broadly across the mix of communities in terms of real social and cultural value.
The arts programme has to locate itself with the full spectrum of communities – from the ‘time rich/money poor’ to the ‘money rich/time poor’ – it has to create the ‘perfect moment’* for the day tripper or ‘passer-through’ whilst, at the same time, not sell short the longer term ambitions of those that have an ongoing relationship with the place.
* perfect moment – when the everyday is heightened above the mundane, or a moment in our lives when the reality lives up to the fantasy (Henley Centre: Arts Landscape in 2010).
Community Participation
It is said that culture should not begin after the serious business of economic, physical and social regeneration has been taken care of, but that culture and regeneration must proceed together, causing each other. If the culture of Stourport has been about “the ‘doing’, the ‘way of doing’, the ‘how’, the ‘why’…” (Augusto Boal: Legislative Theatre), it must also now be about the process of developing the existing potential. And this should include the potential for securing higher-level participation by different communities in the processes of regeneration.
The canal basins arts programme will aim to:
• enhance the overall quality of the built and natural environments and the quality of life of its residents and visitors;
• promote better design innovation, creativity and excellence;
• and ensure meaningful participation for local communities, artists and other design and planning professionals in regeneration processes and opportunities.
At the core of these three aims is the ambition to develop meaningful involvement of communities in the regeneration programme. It is now widely accepted that the social and educational benefits of community participation in the arts are:
• the development of a shared sense of ownership of local environment;
• an enhanced sense of local identity and community pride;
• a stronger sense of community and better social cohesion;
• raised levels of community creativity, including social skills and self confidence.
British Waterways and pro/POSIT have set out seven ‘Master Plan Design Guidelines’ that begin to introduce the arts programme:
1. develop the palimpsest through sensitive interpretation and commissioning (i.e., ‘built to be built on’);
2. provide a wider range of visitor attractions and extend the period of visitor dwell time via events programming and a mix of new facilities;
3. encourage, via publications, events and lighting/projection programmes, repeat visits to reveal site over time;
4. to recapture the original scale, massing and site organisation;
5. establish and programme a range of public event spaces within a hierarchy of opportunity (from big, loud public event, to the small, quiet specialist event to the private moment in public space);
6. increase access to the whole site by adopting a reasonable approach to physical access and the strategic provision of signage and information;
7. interrogate all design work and use a simplified and site-specific materials palettes to ensure continuity across the site (‘this is all one place!’), and that the site is expressed honestly and directly in the context of its historical function.
Fundamental to the arts programme at Stourport Canal Basins is the belief in the importance of creating space in which new content can be developed while emphasising the importance of revealing and locating site narratives, whether these be historical, operational or anecdotal. In essence, this is a revitalising approach that complements regeneration.
If developing new content and the exposing of existing site narratives are at the core of the arts programme, the success of these as a revitalising strategy that complements regeneration intent depends on two things – the creation of a hierarchy of public and programmable spaces and an events programme that can trigger, or act as a vehicle for, community participation.