7 minute read
The Super Slow Way
Super Slow Way illustration. © Publica
Nyima Murry investigates how strategic landscape development is bringing investment, culture, and green infrastructure to underprivileged communities along a canal created during the Industrial Revolution.
Described as a programme, aprocess and a place, the Super Slow Way uses the historic Leeds to Liverpool Canal to weave a cultural landscape across East Lancashire, creating opportunities for people to live, play and create. Working with a consortium of local authorities, organisations, artists and residents, the expansive project demonstrates the cultural potential of strategic landscape development in post-industrial communities.
Completed in 1816, the Leeds to Liverpool canal was described as the ‘super highway’ of the Industrial Revolution, servicing the mills and mines of the region. Following the area’s industrial decline, the canal has been largely regarded as a problem rather than an asset. Today, the Super Slow Way project looks to harness this historic transport network to transform Pennine Lancashire once again, adopting a ‘string of pearls’ approach along the twenty-mile route, to invest in social, cultural and environmental projects along the waterway. The project’s two-fold approach of physical landscape intervention with cultural programming uniquely places this expansive project as one connecting landscape, heritage and the arts in a region that is in acute need of investment support in all three. Now eight years on, the programme has realised dozens of projects, including the British Textile Biennial, a floating laboratory, pocket parks and artist performances, and shows no sign of slowing down.
The rejuvenation of the canal was sparked from initial Arts Council funding in the region. Looking to increase national engagement in culture, and recognising the correlation between underfunding in the arts and areas of multiple deprivation, the Arts Council identified East Lancashire as a ‘cold spot’ for arts investment. Following encouragement for the four local authorities of Blackburn, Burnley, Pendle and Hyndburn to bid together for the Arts Council Creative Place and Process programme, the Super Slow Way was set up in 2016 to access funding and represent a wider consortium of stakeholders, including local councils, Lancashire County Council and the Canal & River Trust. After a design review with Places Matter, a northwest design panel offering free arts design reviews to community and arts projects in the region, the Super Slow Way went ahead.
The housing in this area is terraced housing and they have little or no outdoor space to speak of. But they’re all within half a mile of the of the canal, which could be a real green and blue asset for that area in an otherwise very grey landscape.
The Leeds to Liverpool canal meanders from Barrowford in Pendle, through Burnley, Accrington, and Rishton into the suburban sprawl of Blackburn, physically and culturally connecting these four areas. Running through some of the poorest wards that continue to be defined by the low-income housing originally built for mill workers, the canal became the focal point of the new collaboration, recognising the waterway as a heritage asset that could allow the area to access a strategic level of investment that would respond to both cultural and environmental challenges.
“These places are very poorly resourced in terms of cultural infrastructure, but they’re also very degraded environments,” Laurie Peake, Director of Super Slow Way explains.
“It’s a post-industrial environment and the whole stretch of the canal corridor is littered with derelict mills and disused land,” she continues.
“The housing in this area is terraced housing and they have little or no outdoor space to speak of. But they’re all within half a mile of the canal, which could be a real green and blue asset for that area in an otherwise very grey landscape.”
In the feasibility study conducted by London-based research and urban design practice, Publica, Emsher Park in the Ruhr Region of Germany was a key source of inspiration for the project. Although Emsher Park works on a much larger scale (occupying a 450 sq km site for a length of more than 86km) the project resonated with the ambitions in East Lancashire with a similar post-industrial landscape that required major strategic investment and collaboration to reinvent industrial infrastructure.
“Our stretch is tiny compared to Emsher – it’s just 20 miles,” Laurie continued. “But we thought, surely we can adopt a similar strategy where all the local authorities see that the sum is greater than the parts if you work together. It’s everybody understanding that they can gain from being part of that grander vision, rather than simply ignoring the canal.”
The Lancashire Linear Park, a key project for the organisation, looks to do just that – marrying physical improvements to landscape, infrastructure and buildings with new cultural and educational programmes made possible through access to multiple sources of funding.
Building upon Publica’s feasibility study, BDP’s strategic landscape masterplan outlines a natural linear park that will create a new green movement corridor to provide improved infrastructure for pedestrians, cyclists and boating communities. With many of the existing developments physically turning their backs to the canal with enclosing walls and fences, the strategy looks to reconnect the canal with the surrounding towns, with new access points and crossings, alongside reconnecting sections to existing transport links. A series of green connections intersect the linear pathway, connecting green spaces, parks and nature reserves on both sides of the water, supported by proposed new planting of swathes of indigo, cotton and flax that reference the local textile and industrial heritage.
Looking to encourage boats back on the waterway, new marinas, mooring basins and boating workshops have been identified along the route, including Finsley Gate Wharf in Burnley, now home to artist Stephen Turner’s ‘Exbury Egg’ project. Owned by the Canal & River Trust, the site was previously an abandoned boat building warehouse and wharf. The egg-shaped structure was installed as a temporary, energy efficient workspace for the local communities, opening up the previously inaccessible site. Through this relatively simple intervention, the project catalysed a series of local community projects including camera, photography and nature clubs that meet up in the new community-led space.
There are reasons why we call it the Super Slow Way, you know: it’s the long game and you’ve got to keep that vision in mind, even if it’s not going to happen overnight.
“The site went from having been a blight in that community to becoming almost like an urban village green where people could meet and actually identify themselves as neighbours and come together,” Laurie says.
The success of the project enabled the Canal & River Trust to secure National Lottery Heritage Funding to redevelop the site, and renovate the Grade II listed heritage building into a new café, restaurant and guesthouse.
“One of the programme’s main tasks is to provide evidence to funders and authorities that it can make a difference – and it can make a huge difference for the communities that live along the canal banks,” Laurie continues. “There are reasons why we call it the Super Slow Way, you know: it’s the long game and you’ve got to keep that vision in mind, even if it’s not going to happen overnight.”
The Super Slow Way’s continued success is down to local authorities, organisations, artists and residents coming together under a combined aim – making accessible both significant funding and the necessary strategic infrastructure to deliver a project of this scale. However, it is the recognition of ecological and cultural investment as an interconnected project that makes the Super Slow Way a process, programme and place to take note of. With the shared heritage landscape of the canal forming its cornerstone, there is clear potential for its approach to be replicated in other post-industrial communities across the UK, delivering greener, bluer and culturally thriving landscapes and communities.
Nyima Murry is a British-Tibetan landscape architect, design critic and filmmaker. Her project ‘The Herring Girls’ won the Student Dissertation category at the 2023 Landscape Institute Awards.
