Essential Information

Type Talks and tours
Location
Cutty Sark
Date and Times Wednesday 18 September 2024 | 7pm - 8.30pm
Prices £6 Adults

£4 Members. Not a member? Join now

The Thames is a storyteller. It shapes the fabric of the city, dividing north from south, joining the piers of Putney with the estuary past East Tilbury; the historic shipbuilders of Deptford with modern fishing communities at Leigh on Sea. 

It continued to flow steadily as Britain’s landmass splintered from ancient Doggerland, and swept on uninterrupted for thousands of years, before being artificially rerouted by merchants building a city of trade upon its banks. As the connective nerve of London, the Thames continues to act as home, workplace and pathway, and its transitory inhabitants leave their mark. 

Thousands of years of history is washed up in disjointed fragments upon its foreshore, gifting finds, fictions and mysteries at will.

A row of four old silver coins laid out on a paving stone
Silver hammered coins, 14th-17th century (© Marie-Louise Plum)

In this panel discussion, researchers and creatives whose work is inspired by the River Thames share stories of the different communities that have shaped – and been shaped by – the river. 

Presenting different ways of ‘doing’ history, from archaeology to archiving to speculative fiction, Aleema Gray, Malcolm Russell, Tom Chivers and Remiiya Badru explore how the material culture found along the river, as well as the physical landscape surrounding it, allow us to piece together narratives.

This event is hosted in Cutty Sark's Dry Dock, beneath the hull of the historic ship. Book tickets now to secure your place. If cost represents a barrier to access, please email learning@rmg.co.uk

Meet the panel

Malcolm Russell is a history writer and mudlark who searches the River Thames at low tide for scraps of London’s past. The thousands of objects he has recovered include Roman gaming counters, Tudor rings, eighteenth-century wig curlers, Victorian ammunition, and contemporary spells. In his first book, Mudlark’d: Hidden Histories from the River Thames (Thames & Hudson/Princeton University Press), he uses these artefacts to reveal the stories of a diverse array of London’s unremembered people. Mudlark'd received praise from The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Hyperallergic, and Current Archaeology.

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Meet the panel

Remiiya Badru is an Artist, Walker, Creative Learning Practitioner, Researcher and Consultant.

Throughout her lived experiences, Remiiya has held a long deep fascination with the spiritual essence of the river, in all of its forms, processes and tributaries. She is hugely passionate and inspired by walking the River Thames, particularly in and around the ‘U-bend’ between London Docklands, Greenwich and beyond.

She communes with and responds to this timeless resource from a multi-sensory perspective and witness to infrastructural change. This holistic embodiment includes the river’s forever changing palette of scent, sound, colour and surface to colonial and post-colonial human narrative themes, industrial change, heritage and development. Through the art of walking, she channels, explores and creates her responses to these multi-faceted inter relationships and juxtapositions within her practice, through her creative tributaries of drawing, photography, writing, design and making. Timehri, Remiiya's model ship, is currently guiding her navigation and shaping her current work. Their journey led them to being contributors in Paul Wyatt‘s documentary film Time and Tide: The Thames, Greenwich and its forgotten past, about people’s engagement with and connection to the River Thames from a diverse range of perspectives and experiences.

Photo © Paul Wyatt

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Meet the panel

Tom Chivers is a writer, researcher, publisher, arts producer and licensed Thames mudlark. His non-fiction debut London Clay: Journeys in the Deep City (Penguin, 2021) was Audiobook of the Week in The Times. He is currently completing a postgraduate research project entitled In the Flow of Things: Encounters with the Mudlarks of the Thames Foreshore with Queen Mary, University of London and Museum of London Archaeology/Thames Discovery Programme. He lives in Rotherhithe with his two daughters.

Photo © Akiko DuPont

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Meet the panel

Dr Aleema Gray is a Jamaican-born curator, researcher and public historian based in London. She was awarded the Yesu Persaud Scholarship for her PhD entitled Bun Babylon; A Community-engaged History of Rastafari in Britain. Aleema’s work focuses on documenting Black history in Britain through the perspective of lived experiences. Her practice is driven by a concern for more historically contingent ways of understanding the present, especially in relation to notions of belonging, memory, and contested heritage. 

She is the Lead Curator for Beyond the Bassline: 500 years of Black British Music at the British Library and the founder of House of Dread, an anti-disciplinary heritage studio.

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Meet the panel

Ben Weddell is a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership student with Royal Museums Greenwich and the University of Reading. His PhD research focuses on shared identity and nationality in communities connected with seafaring, including those along the Thames, in the late 1700s. 

He previously worked as part of the National Maritime Museum's engagement team, running events with mudlarks as part of the Thames Festival and Hands on History, and organised a school mudlarking session to Deptford foreshore with the Thames Discovery Program as part of a larger project into local history.

Event host

Marie-Louise Plum is a multidisciplinary artist and mudlark. She has written about art and mudlarking for several print and digital publications, and you may have seen her talking about mudlarking on BBC Radio 4, NBC, London Live, or at events in historic venues such as St. Paul's Cathedral, London's Roman Amphitheatre and London Museum. Marie's popular videos and writing on the subject of river-found artefacts have reached an audience of over two million people. Marie is a co-curator of Hands on History, the largest mudlarking event in the world, which takes place annually during the Totally Thames Festival. 

Image © Marie-Louise Plum/@oldfatherthames 

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Accessibility at Cutty Sark events

For safety reasons, wheelchair access spaces for Cutty Sark are limited to three visitors per event. Cutty Sark is wheelchair accessible with lifts providing access to all levels of the ship. Some areas of the Main Deck are not wheelchair accessible, but virtual access is provided to these spaces. 

The original ship structure restricts the size of the lift on board, but mobility scooters can be accommodated on board providing they fit in our lifts. Measurements for the lifts are included in the Cutty Sark access statement. No e-scooters or e-bikes are permitted on board as per our visitor regulations.

Companion tickets are available for any guest who would be unable to visit independently, please select this alongside a paid ticket. 

If you are a wheelchair user or have any other queries regarding accessibility at this event, please contact bookings@rmg.co.uk prior to purchasing your ticket.

Our partners

Image

Totally Thames is a month-long season of river and river-related arts and culture. It takes place throughout September.

Totally Thames is curated and managed by Thames Festival Trust. Their aim is to work collaboratively with artists, communities, river interest organisations and businesses to celebrate the river’s past, present and future.
 

What’s On

See more talks and tours at Royal Museums Greenwich.

Shipkeeping in action
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Talks and tours

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Main image © Marie-Louise Plum