A boat called 'WAWHFL’: interpreting canal heritage through community boatbuilding

Urban waterways have long served as catalysts for regeneration, where heritage interpretation plays a pivotal role in shaping post-industrial landscapes and identities. This paper explores how heritage practices along Glasgow’s Forth and Clyde Canal (FCC) engage with the transient experiences of young LGBTI+ communities to foster belonging, access, and ownership. These groups often face precarity, marginalisation, and limited spatial agency, complicating their participation in heritage narratives. Through the case study of boating and water-based activities, the research investigates how heritage interpretation - through skills transmission, storytelling, and embodied practice - can create inclusive social spaces. Boats become vessels not only of movement but of memory and meaning-making, revealing tensions around agency, participation, and the right to place. By foregrounding heritage interpretation as both process and practice, the paper highlights the transformative potential of urban waterways to support plural identities, while critically addressing who gets to engage, narrate, and belong within evolving urban heritage landscapes.