Hull Maritime Project: Riverspeaking Workshops

Hull Maritime Project has one main objective, and that is to preserve and promote the remarkable maritime history, architecture, and collections of Hull, which is the only maritime city in Yorkshire.

Through this initiative, the project will narrate the incredible journey of Hull as a global trade and cultural center, emphasizing its significant role as a major port in linking the city to the rest of the world.

The project will be showcased across four significant sites and two historic vessels, each featuring valuable collections that represent Hull's most precious heritage. Together, these collections tell stories of perseverance and endurance, triumph and disaster, invention and ingenuity.

Furthermore, the project will revitalise and reconnect Hull's historic waterfront with the heart of the city where its maritime history began.

Connecting people with our maritime past

Community groups delivering maritime-themed projects across the city have received grants totalling more than £20,000 from Hull Maritime.

Grants were available in three categories: Heritage, Environment, and Wellbeing, reflecting important and timely themes and drawing links between Hull’s maritime past, present and future.

Grants were awarded this year to 13 recipients. One of these 13 recipients is Lauren Saunders for a creative wellbeing course focused on our relationships to water and the maritime environment, to be delivered in partnership with NHS Humber Recovery and Wellbeing College

Lauren said “I'm absolutely thrilled to have been awarded this community grant, to be part of the Hull Maritime story and to be working with Recovery College students." Lauren went on to add "This is such a wonderful new opportunity to explore Hull's relationship with the water from a place of care and empathy, and I'm curious to see what emerges from the process. I'm excited to get going."

Hull Maritime is funded by Hull City Council and The National Lottery Heritage Fund and encompasses the redevelopment of five historic sites in Hull city centre: the transformation of the Grade II Hull Maritime Museum and Dock Office Chambers, the creation of a new visitor attraction at the North End Shipyard, and the restoration of two historic vessels, Arctic Corsair and Spurn Lightship.

'Riverspeaking' with Lauren Saunders 

Riverspeaking is a co-creative set of workshops and body of participatory work with Humber Recovery and Wellbeing College students that looks to renegotiate Hull’s relationship to the water that surrounds it through embodied and reflective creative practice, to imagine better, kinder ways of living alongside it as a green, industrial city of the future. 

In these workshops you will be asked as students to consider:

• What should Hull’s relationship with the water be?
• Is the Water part of our community? Why, or why not?
• What does a sustainable, empathetic relationship with the Water look like?
• What do we need to remember as communities living alongside the Water?
• What restorative learning practices help connect people to their heritage, culture and environment?

What is the Purpose of this Project?

The purpose of this project is for learners to develop a sense of deepened care, kinship and empathy towards the water, and understand what that means in the context of Hulls past, present and future and the climate crisis.

• Participants from the Humber Recovery and Wellbeing College will engage in a series of sessions where they will learn nature-based mindfulness techniques and learn to listen and reflect, with view to creatively and empathetically respond to the water in and surrounding Hull. 
• Responses could include making collaborative pieces (with each other, or the water), writing, making temporary sculptures, devising ritual, writing letters to the water.

'Riverspeaking' Information drop in session 

Location: Ferens Art Gallery Cafe

Date / Time: Thursday 27th April (12pm - 1pm)

Want to find out more about the ‘Riverspeaking’? Want to see if this unique arts, wellbeing and environment project is for you?

Lead Artist Lauren Saunders will be available in the Ferens Art Gallery Cafe to clarify what the course is all about and what you can expect, and answer any questions you might have.

This session is on a drop-in basis - come by anytime within the hour and look for Lauren in the cafe - she will make herself visible! Please be aware that she may already be in discussion with someone else prior to your arrival so please make yourself known and be patient.

'Riverspeaking' Information drop in session (online)

Location: Microsoft Team 

Date/Time: Tuesday 2nd May (1pm - 2pm)

Lead Artist Lauren Saunders will be available in an online Teams session to clarify what the course is all about and what you can expect, and answer any questions you might have.

This session is on a drop-in basis - join the meeting anytime within the hour. 

You can register your interest by registering or signing into our learning platform and confirming your place to receive more information or have any of your questions answered about the 'Riverspeaking' workshops