London Rivers Week: Tidal Tales - Walking Through Flux & Flow

Overview

Kicking off London Rivers Week, Thames21 will be going on a river walking adventure with artist/historian Remiiya Badru from King Edward Memorial Park, in Wapping, and concluding at Blackfriars, prior to the unveiling of a new artwork in a new exciting space developed for the public realm.

On our journey we will be exploring key landmarks along this stretch of river from London’s oldest pub and Captain Kidd, key bridges and crossings plus some of the lesser known stories of our social geographies, communities and industrial history. This multisensorial walk will also embody an opportunity to connect to the river as nature for our wellbeing as a sanctuary of sustenance. We will be weaving our way through a number of timelines through witnessing infrastructural and environmental changes. How do we see the river for the future?

📏 Distance: ~4.8 km (3 miles)

📍 Route: We will meet at the new Tideway site at King Edward Memorial Park finishing at the new Tideway riverside public realm at Blackfriars. Click here to view the route we will follow.

🕒 Duration: ~2 plus hours (give or take depending on pace & breaks) 

👟 Terrain: Flat riverside paths — nice for walking and talking 

Artist Bio:

Remiiya Badru is a multi-interdisciplinary artist, whose practice centres on sharing her river-walking adventures through research-informed multimedia artwork and social engagement. She seeks to undertake a multi-layered exploration of the River Thames’ forever changing palette of colour, sight, scent, sound and story, but also its silences, omissions and hidden histories of people and place. 

In her walking practice, Badru seeks to commune with and responding to the river as a timeless resource from a multi-sensorial perspective, entering an immersive and embodied meditation in motion. She externalises these experiences through mapping, wayfinding and placemaking. The stories that Badru seeks to uncover relate to the river as a witness to infrastructural change and flux, particularly in relation to memory, colonial and post-colonial histories, pre- and post-industrial change, heritage, natural and man-made environments. 

Her work continues to be navigated by Timehri, her model ship who is in fact simultaneously her ‘navigator’ and ‘anchoress’ who continues to guide Badru in her travels along the river and associated bodies of water. Together they navigate these embodiments of water as ‘liquid history flowing as a continuum which synchronises the past, present and future that connects all of us as a global conduit that carries our stories.’

All U18s must be accompanied by an adult.