RCTA Milton Keynes August BH Floating Market
Winter Floating Fayre
IWA Canalway Cavalcade 2025 - Dates/Times TBC
The Batchworth Rally
2025 Waterways Festival Foxton & Market Harborough
Middlewich Folk & Boat 2025
Linslade Canal Festival 2025
Brownhills Canal Festival 2025
Black Country Boating Festival 2025
Fund Britain’s Waterways Update for Members, January 2024
Happy New Year to all our members! Here’s hoping 2024 will bring better times for our waterways.
In this update we look back at 2023 and forward to our plans for 2024, and set out ways in which we need your support. Please do also look at the attachment to this email which introduces the members of the FBW steering group.
FBW’s first six months
After launching at the end of June 2023, in six months FBW created an impressive coalition of member organisations totalling well over one hundred, representing hundreds of thousands of users and supporters of inland waterways. A public petition attracted close to 50,000 signatures. Three well-reported Campaign Cruises in Birmingham, Gloucester and past the Palace of Westminster on the Thames have substantially raised awareness of the challenges facing our canals and rivers and the need for action.
FBW’s plans for 2024
Our plans for 2024 include an important weekend of action over the May Day Bank Holiday weekend (4-6 May 2024) to highlight the impact of insufficient funding for Britain’s 5,000 miles of inland waterways.
The weekend of action is planned to take place across the country on waterways managed by different inland navigation authorities. It will coincide with IWA’s annual Canalway Cavalcade at Little Venice in London, which this year will be themed on Fund Britain’s Waterways.
Boaters attending Cavalcade are invited to join a Campaign Cruise past the Houses of Parliament on Wednesday 8 May, as the culmination of the weekend of action. Parliamentarians will be encouraged to view the event and express their support for the continued maintenance of the waterways to enable them to keep on delivering economic, health, environmental and well-being benefits.
We hope that activities taking place across the country over the weekend will attract local and national media attention, building up to the Westminster Cruise on 8 May for which we will be aiming for national coverage.
FBW’s ask to members
In order to make politicians sit up and take notice we need to demonstrate how many people (voters!) care about the inland waterways. The steering group needs support from all our member organisations, particularly in the following ways:
- Please encourage all organisations that you know with an interest in the inland waterways to join FBW by contacting membership@fundbritainswaterways.org.uk
- Please encourage everybody you know to sign the petition available at fundbritainswaterways.org.uk.
- We are looking for local groups to organise events during the weekend of action to spread the word that waterways need to be properly funded to stop them from falling into decline. Events can be as simple as a few boats gathered together at a “public” location where flyers can be handed out and people be encouraged to sign our petition or get more involved. If you or your organisation could organise an event over the weekend, please contact Hazel Owen awcc@outlook.com and 07929 204811.
- Please also contact Hazel if you can help promote the FBW cause at any events you are involved in at any time throughout the year.
Thank you in advance for your support.
Les Etheridge
Chair of Fund Britain’s Waterways
Tel: 07768 132703
Website: fundbritainswaterways.org.uk
⚠️ We need your help to #FundBritainsWaterways
Join the campaign to protect our canals and rivers from funding cuts.
With your help, the waterways stand a better chance of securing the investment they need.
With your help, the waterways stand a better chance of securing the investment they need.
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