In advance of our free symposium "Museums, Cities, Cultural Power" we take a quick look at the subject matter being discussed around relationships between urban museums, their neighbourhoods and the people who inhabit them.

Over the coming days we will be releasing case studies from urban museums around the world, looking at the history, purpose and challenges to museums in particular settings from the perspective of the practitioners themselves. 

Join us on June 24th and 25th for the full discussion, tickets are free on Eventbrite:https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/museums-cities-cultural-power-symposium-tickets-151447929835

Museums, Cities, Cultural power

In advance of our symposium "Museums, Cities, Cultural Power", we bring to you a set of first hand accounts from museum practitioners from National Museum Wales, V&A East, District 6 Museum, CCCB and the Museum of London. 

Their stories touch on the key themes of 'people, power and place' that will centre our symposium discussions, and refer to the future challenges presented by the pandemic to the museum sector on many levels.

Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) with Judit Carrera

V&A East with Gus Casely-Hayford

National Museum Wales with Nia Williams

Museum of London with Sharon Ament

District Six Museum with Chrischené Julius

The 1970s provided fertile times for popular music, building on the 1960s zeitgeist of hope, optimism, political change, and personal freedom. Here is a selection from the SE1 Stories Exhibition group of what we were listening to at the time.

The collection is a companion to the archives presented by “SE1 Stories” and the UCL Urban Room. 
 
SE1 Stories is an umbrella group of people who were active in the campaigns in the 1970s and 80s. The group came together in 2019 when thousands of photographs were discovered in the archives of Southwark and Lambeth councils. Many were taken by members of the group for SE1 Newspaper. Many more come from the innovative Blackfriars Photography Project that gave people the equipment and skills to be photographers.
 
Located in Stratford at the UCL East Campus, the Urban Room is an experimental exhibition space for students, researchers, artists, and community members. Based on the idea of an ‘urban room’ as a forum for community-driven debate and dialogue, the UCL Urban room brings together academic research and lived experiences of city residents to inspire meaningful education for our students and visitors. Users of the urban room are invited to join a dynamic network of practice focused on issues of global urbanism, heritage, arts, and social history.  The space is equipped with oral history recording and archiving capabilities through its initiative of a Memory Workshop. Together, the Urban Room and Memory Workshop are supported by The Bartlett Faculty of Built Environment and the School for Creative and Cultural Industries at the University College London.

Whatever S For Us - Joan Armatradig

Pretty Peg And Craig S Pipes - The Bothy Band

The Collection

Palaces Of Gold - Leon Rosselson

Gonna Be An Engineer - Peggy Seager   Ewan MacColl

(read by Will Milner)

When we spoke to Robert, he was on a journey out of the capital. A few years prior he had been living on the street by the canal in West London. 

With a background in engineering, he decided to take it upon himself to keep the boater facilities clean and do odd jobs for boaters. Eventually he was offered a good deal on an abandoned boat and moved aboard. In some strange ways, he told us, this left him worse off. He was no longer on any council’s ‘patch’. 

Robert went from being out of the system to suddenly being part of a system that required insurance and safety certificates, yet struggled to grant him a bank account. When we brought up the subject of GPs he exclaimed. “I’m wondering how many people on boats just aren’t bothering…there’s some scary shit going on.”

"Robert"

(read by Sam Francis)

Sharon picked up one of our research leaflets having just returned from being turned away from a dentist because of her guide dog. This was not an uncommon occurrence for her. Living on a narrowboat, she travels around the country with her partner who is registered deaf, and lobbies for better accessibility on the UK’s waterways. 

Sharon and her partner’s story shows that there is no typical boater, and that, under the right circumstances, having a disability is no barrier to enjoying boat life. 

Healthcare practices however often have little experience managing transient patients. Anxiety around being turned away, combined with the guilt associated with being a ‘bother’ for the NHS, often leaves boaters feeling disenfranchised.

"Sharon"

(read by Will Milner)

Across London, digital healthcare systems are not interlinked, and transferring a patient’s medical history to a new GP requires extra work. Whenever a person needs layered medical care (two or more specialists), there might be incompatibility of different medications, causing side effects. 

Farhad, boat dweller working in the NHS explained that there has been positive change, like synchronising the digital spine of the NHS app. This is not always the case because most health practices are full of bureaucracy that designs closed-loop systems. It’s these inflexible structures that make accessing the NHS difficult when you are not bound to one place. In a global society that is highly flexible, accommodating transient lifestyles in healthcare access would better accommodate all people living in London.

"Farhad"

(read by Nosazemen Agbontaen)

A shift to online services had an unintended positive impact on access to healthcare for boaters during the COVID-19 pandemic.  

However, this era in London also exposed how blurred the lines between public and private space are for boaters. Urban health policies tended to overlook transience as a kind of vulnerability. The instructions to stay moored in one place meant a very confined 24/7 quarantine for boaters with certain medical conditions. 

Hannah, a health professional and boat dweller, remarked that when daily walks and exercise were allowed, Londoners flooded the towpaths, and boaters became hyper-exposed to aerosols. Hannah says this caused heightened anxiety for many, and some haven’t fully recovered today.

"Hannah"

(read by Nosazemen Agbontaen)

Sometimes relying on other people’s addresses works fine. In times of health-related crisis this solution begins to unravel. 

We heard from Ruby, a boater in her early 20s, who unexpectedly required access to abortion advice. In a part of the canal network new to her, she was asked by a clinic to register with a GP, her previous practice having removed her from their system when she had left their locality. She was turned away from multiple GPs before one receptionist agreed to allow her to use the practice address. 

Ruby told us that she knew she could have found a loophole, and considered asking a local friend to say they were pregnant in order to get her a pill, but that she wanted to do things the correct way, which seemed not to exist.

"Ruby"

(read by Sam Francis)

Our research has shown that there is little to no awareness of transient lifestyles within the healthcare system, leading to unequal healthcare access. 

NHS England and the British Medical Association clearly state that a GP practice cannot refuse registration on the grounds of a patient not providing proof od address, though staff on the ground are often unaware of this, and decline or delay registration. Boaters who are aware of their rights, and know how to navigate the system, often end up using other people’s addresses as workarounds, such as those of friends and family.

Clinics that are used to working with patients with no fixed address, including those who work a lot with homeless and vulnerable people, come up with quick and easy solutions to the ‘computer says no’ issue of registration, often suggesting using their practice address itself on the system.

A majority of the boaters we engaged with were registered with a GP practice using a previous homes address of that of someone else, like that of their parents. This has its challenges though: there is a risk of breach of confidentiality as letters from the NHS can be opened by others.

One interviewee mentioned that their STD results were sent to their mother’s address, who opened them and was worried about their child as a result. 

Not having a system in place that ensures confidential and safe delivery of medical information outsources ethical responsibility to the patient, who then has to rely on social relations. The UK’s General Medical Council outlines that confidentiality is not only an ethical, but also a legal obligation for medical practitioners.

We’re often told we’re living in an increasingly ‘agile’ world, but for many services access still revolves around postcodes, catchment areas, and constituency boundaries. As one interviewee put it, “the whole of the system revolves around you having an address, and not everyone has one.”

Research Text

(read by Will Milner)

People living with no fixed address face unique challenges. London’s canals and rivers host an estimated 4,000 boats. In the past, most boat owners had a permanent mooring, but an increase in boat numbers, combined with housing pressures, means that the majority of London’s boaters now hold licences requiring them to move every 14 days. They are known as ‘continuous cruisers’.
 
This nomadic community, floating through the arteries of the capital, form part of a network of over 15,000 boat-dwellers across the UK, and a lifestyle stretching back to the 1700s. Today, boaters living in London struggle to access a range of services whilst keeping on the move. From voting in elections, to getting your kid into a school, from being captured on the census to qualifying for benefits, a lack of address makes things tougher.

This exhibition tells a story of how boaters navigate their way through both London’s canals, and the UK's bureaucratic healthcare systems. The stories of boat-dwellers in this display reveal an intimate perspective from a variety of individuals. Their experiences shed light on the systematic failure to reconcile transient ways of living with the universal right to health.

Introduction to the Exhibition

Acknowledgements

Research

Joseph Cook – Anthropologist and Boater

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic Joseph had many conversations with his boat neighbours who were not registered with GPs, and spoke of feeling disenfranchised from the healthcare system. Later he was refused registration by a GP himself. He was interested in the human side of what can seem a very systems-based issue.

Nura Ali – Nura was drawn to the project because of her interest in how urban health inequalities come to exist, and which role the environments we live in play in that regard. In her PhD, she is doing research on socio-spatial health inequalities originating in water infrastructures in a neighbourhood built on stilted housing in Lagos, Nigeria. So when Joseph reached out to herm she was curious to see how water-related environments play out in the operationalisation of Londoner’s right to health.


Photography

Caitlin Vinicombe – Photojournalist and Boater

Focused on ethically based issues and experimental visual techniques, Caitlin creates work which challenges how the viewer interacts with images as physical artefacts. Whilst training as a photojournalist she lived on a narrowboat across London.


We are particularly grateful to the 111 boaters that completed our online survey, along with the 18 that took the time to give us in-depth interviews, and the amazing boaters that were happy to be photographed for this exhibition.


Creative Collaborators

Kara Blackmore, Lucie G., Charlotte Klein, Dhrub Kumar, Danny Steadman, Rosie Strickland and Arlene Wandera.


UCL Collaborators

Grand Challenges Doctoral Students’ Small Grant, One Pool Street Fabrication Workshop, The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL East Community Engagement Seed Fund, UCL Urban Lab and UCL Urban Room.

Acknowledgements

"Theo"

"Jess"

UCL Urban Laboratory is a crossdisciplinary centre for critical and creative urban thinking, teaching, research and practice.

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