Making connections

a project based on the canals of Telford, developed with art and drama.

Children from Lilleshall Primary and St Peter's Edgmond Primary schools looked at original documents and learned some of the history about the canals, built near their villages about 200 years ago, and about Thomas Telford. A performance was devised with a professional actress through The Birmingham Rep, one of our culture zone partners, which has been performed at the Shropshire Archives, St Chad's in Shrewsbury and at other schools.

During the performances, children went into the past on a time machine to visit scenes with characters from the past, and found that Earl Gower built only the second navigable canal in the country on his land at Lilleshall, and Thomas Telford was the engineer who built the Shrewsbury canal from Shrewsbury through Newport and on to link with Birmingham and Liverpool. The children performed really well, and brought history to life for their audiences. Children from Newport Infants visited the canal basin in Newport, and learned stories about children born on narrow boats on the canal there about 100 years ago, including someone known as Chocolate Charlie whose boat is now in the museum at Ellesmere Port. The three Year 2 classes then spent a lovely day on a canal narrow boat trip between Market Drayton and Tyrley, going up and down through the locks, helping to open and close the lock gates.

Children from St Peter's Primary, Bratton visited a derelict site, but with scheduled monuments and listed buildings. Their task was to devise plans for the future of this fascinating place, which they did with passion. They met 'characters' portrayed by our actress with expertise in the areas of Architecture, Archaeology, Canals and Environment, and produced great artwork and arguments to support their cause. The winning argument was that the canal should be reinstated, but compromises with the well argued case for wildlife and heritage became part of each class discussion.

The pages about this project will be found on this website soon, with images of artwork and archive documents, plus other resources to help you discover more about canals in the past, present and future through the children's work.

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