Manor Maker – Trade Routes

Learn how to build a traditional 16ft canoe using both traditional & contemporary making techniques. Skills to be learnt include: Designing on CAD software CNC Routing Traditional Carpentry techniques Graphic Design, Artworking and Signwriting Free and open to people aged between 14 – 19 years old, living in the Manor and surrounding areas of Sheffield. Come and join us every Saturday (lunch included!) from 15th October 2016 in the Manor Maker Workshop, Sheffield where over the next 3 months we will be building a traditional clinker style canoe that once complete, we will ‘portage’ from the Manor onto the Sheffield Canal and into the City Centre on the 10th December 2016. Contact us to book your place.

Contact
Chris Jarratt
Tel: 07974711361
Email: contact@christopherjarratt.com

Project Background
Headed by artist Christopher Jarratt & running from the Manor Maker workshop based in the heart of the Manor area of Sheffield will be running a 3 month long project (Oct-Dec 2016), running every Saturday, where we invite local young people to learn the skills needed to design, build and artwork their very own community, land and water going vessel that will be used to deliver and sell Green Estate honey & pictorial meadows wildflower seeds (both produced next door to the workshop) in the centre of Sheffield, promoting and publicising the modern day micro-manufacturing, making and history that the Manor community is so rich in.

Building on the success of the JOYRIDE project that saw seven 14-19 year olds in the Manor designing, building, art-working and racing their own Soap Box Derby cars through Manor Fields, we will once again be bringing in professionals in their field to assist in collaboratively researching, designing and teaching the young people, equipping them with the skills needed for them to make a high quality, beautiful and fully functional land and water going vessel that is not only able to transport all the goods to be sold but also display them and the story of the project to market goers and passersby.

The young people, honey and seed producers along with other members of the community will portage the vessel by hand from the Manor, to the canal entering the water at Bacon Lane where we will tow the boat using ropes to the city centre basin (Victoria Quays) and then portage it to the market. The vessel (house at Green Estate) will then be handed over to the Manor community so that they can continue to use it for many years to come. “Portage or portaging is the practice of carrying water craft or cargo over land, either around an obstacle in a river, or between two bodies of water. A place where this carrying occurs is also called a portage.”

The History
In 1815 the Duke of Norfolk (the then landowner of the Manor area) persuaded the Sheffield Canal Company not to build their initial proposed route for the canal as it would preclude his two collieries at Tinsley Park and Manor from being able to use the canal to deliver and transport the coal they produced.

The Dukes alternate successfully proposed route did take the canal past both of his collieries and this is the canal route we still have today terminating at the basin on the site of the former orchards of Sheffield Castle, now known as Victoria Quays. The Manor colliery fell into disrepair and closed in 1896, and the canal as a trade route for goods into the heart of the city is no longer used.

We propose to re-imagine a new route from the Manor to the City centre as an artwork but also as functioning route for trade, through community making, learning, up-skilling and place making, forging new partnerships with local organizations in the Manor.