The activated post-industrial waterways as the contested heritage livescape: a model of engagement with the Forth and Clyde canal and the river Clyde

In contributing to the place-making and wider cultural planning of contemporary urban waterways in former 
industrial areas, governments and local authorities have welcomed the preservation of historic waterways by 
re-inventing use for rivers and canals and their heritage assets such as historic ships and boats. (Carter 2016). 
The post-industrial waterscape, is the landscape where the amalgamation of human and non-human actants 
(Bennett 2010) and tangible and intangible heritages (Lenzerini 2011) are in a state of constant negotiation 
(Ingold 2012) and contestation (Smith 2016). The locality of the post-industrial waterways is the transient 
landscape where agents appear to be embedded within hierarchical approaches to knowledge and ownership 
of the heritage environment (Berg 2004; Smith 2006). Local communities experience transiency, juxtaposed 
with the liminality of the historic waterways (as places in-between) in the way they engage with heritage, 
struggling to establish familiarity with the historic place, agency and a sense of ownership (Keating et al 2012). 
This study aimed to plan, design and lead primary research in the post-industrial waterways in and around 
Glasgow; to analyse a case study and interviews with cultural organisations on the river Clyde and the Forth 
and Clyde canal; and to create a model of public engagement with heritage. The study examined to what 
extent local communities who experience transiency (due to disadvantage and perceived marginalisation) 
engage with the historic waterways in their everyday life, activating them by being on the water, and how this 
activation informs heritage practices. 
The case study engaged local community groups in the Forth and Clyde canal’s areas of Maryhill and 
Kirkintilloch, in and around Glasgow, and the interviews engaged two cultural organisations that use the crafts 
of boat-building and boating, on the river Clyde, as heritage activation to achieve community cohesion. During 
the case study, the groups of participants took part in boat-building workshops, which produced three small 
boats and their oars, boat handling activities, two celebratory events, the production of films, one exhibition, 
and the participants used the boats they built in three community festivals on the canal and the river. 
Ethnographic and auto-ethnographic observations, participatory action investigation and visual methods of 
data analysis were used, creating a body of evidence and a visual portfolio that support the concept of the 
activated and contested heritage livescape. 
The livescape revealed that complex and problematic engagement with post-industrial waterways’ heritage 
would demand a thorough understanding of the complexity of the locality’s perception of the past as much as 
the familiarity with the particular landscape.