Eden from Rewilding Youth reflects on their community grant project and how they have been engaging young people with our maritime heritage over the summer.
At Rewilding Youth we aim to connect local young people from disadvantaged areas with nature, using their local wild spaces to encourage nature immersion and connection. Most of our sessions are held in woodland, however the Hull Maritime Community Grant seemed like the perfect opportunity to engage young people with wild spaces along the Humber, delving into Hull’s maritime history and how it has shaped the city we see today. The Humber provided the perfect backdrop to all of our sessions, which we held at three different points along the river.
Each session delved into a different element of the city’s maritime history, starting out with knots and ropes. We began with a discussion about their importance aboard a ship and then moved on to practising some of these knots ourselves. Once the young people had an understanding of how to tie the knots, it was time to build a prototype of the structure we wanted to construct. The group constructed a number of beautiful mini flagpoles using breadsticks and strawberry shoelaces – both entirely functional and incredibly tasty!
After the prototypes it was time to move onto the real thing, which was completed with very little help from the Rewilding Youth team, the young people already experts on the knots and lashings required. Sat beneath our newly erected flagpole, we ate patties cooked on a fire on the river bank and looked out over the Humber Bridge. Eating this traditional food and looking out over the river, it was easy to imagine Hull’s industrial past, the history felt close and very real.
For the second session we worked with local historian Mike Covell, who shared stories of ship wrecks and sea monsters, presenting a fascinating perspective on Hull’s maritime history. With the wind blowing off the river blustering around us, it was easy to imagine that we were all sat aboard a whaling ship headed out to sea, and the fierce waves across the river conjured images of the Humber Monster hiding just below the surface.
Venturing into the nearby woodland, we created land art of the Humber Monster, using leaves and sticks to construct terrifying creatures that snaked their way along the woodland trails.
The young people told us stories of their creations, how their monster would drag down boats to the depths or terrify sailors (with some exceptions – some of the creatures only looked scary and were actually friendly – despite all the teeth!). We left the creatures to terrify dogwalkers and headed back to camp, where we gathered around a fire and created our own medieval maps, complete with burnt edges and tea stained paper.
In the final session we took a step away from these remote locations and instead hosted the workshop in the midst of Hull’s Maritime Folk Festival. The festival allowed us to showcase the culmination of the project, demonstrating how the heritage knowledge and skills that the young people had learnt was being kept alive within the city. This session focused on sea shanties, and we worked with local musicians to teach a number of shanties to the young people, along with families attending the festival. As the session went on, we moved the new shanty band outside and gathered quite a crowd! It was incredible to see the confidence of the young people soar as we sang together, they loved the traditional songs and quickly chose favourites which they asked to sing again and again. The session concluded with an unplanned performance on the mainstage of the festival, where the young people performed shanties for an audience of hundreds! The crowd loved it, many of them singing along to the shanties themselves. Seeing the young people so incredibly at home on stage was inspiring to see and really was the perfect end to a brilliant day.
Rewilding Youth is inextricably linked with Hull, and the Hull Maritime Community Grant has allowed us to explore our city from a different perspective. Over the course of the three sessions, we’ve used wild spaces to connect nature with the history of the city, striving to connect young people with the heritage of the place they call home. Both the young people involved and the staff at Rewilding Youth have learnt so much about the history of the area, connecting us with the real history that shaped Hull as we know it today.
