Keeping our canals alive thanks to players of People’s Postcode Lottery

Working in partnership, we've revitalised 2,000 miles of canals and rivers, connecting people with nature and our heritage, to ensure a sustainable future for our historic waterway network.

Since 2012, the amazing support of players of People’s Postcode Lottery has allowed us to implement a range of impactful projects across England and Wales, from infrastructure works and environmental schemes to participation campaigns and community engagement programmes.

With over £21 million in funding received to date, we’re closer than ever to realising our vision of living waterways that transform places and enrich lives. Here are just some of the ways in which our partnership has helped us restore, rejuvenate and reimagine our canals and rivers.

The amazing support from players of People’s Postcode Lottery has enabled work on some of our highest-priority projects, from restoring beloved heritage structures to protecting nature-rich reservoirs. Recently, they’ve supported essential winter maintenance work at Brent Reservoir in North West London.

Known affectionately as the Welsh Harp due to its unique shape, the reservoir is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and one of our capital’s most significant urban wild spaces. In 2021, several issues were discovered following a routine inspection. We were able make repairs over the winter. So far, we’ve completed a raft of critical works at the reservoir, replacing pulley wheels, brackets, and chains at both sluice gates, carrying out minor concrete repairs to the dam structure, and painting the Valve Tower to protect it from corrosion.

Our partnership doesn’t just help us protect our wildlife and heritage, it also supports numerous learning and skills programmes for children and young people. Last year, we launched an innovative national campaign aimed at keeping toddlers and pre-schoolers safer by water. With funds raised by players of People’s Postcode Lottery, we were able to produce a short film starring CBeebies presenter, Maddie Moate and distribute an accompanying children’s book free to over 2,000 nurseries along our waterways. Together, we were able to reach a huge audience with a powerful message of water safety.

The funding helps us to support community-based programmes across our network. Engaging a range of local communities through a variety of social and wellbeing activities, including our award-winning 'Let's Fish!' events, the programme has been hugely successful. Projects like these are changing hundreds of people’s lives for the better, promoting mental and physical health and tackling loneliness and isolation.

Together, we’ve also been able to spearhead multiple arts and culture initiatives, supporting local artists and helping us reimagine neglected spaces across our network such as our Street Art project we began work on a ground-breaking 3D rendering project, to breathe new life into our collection at the National Waterways Museum in Cheshire. With a cutting-edge technique, photogrammetry, we’ve been able to map rare artefacts and create true-to-life digital models that can be viewed from anywhere in the world.

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