It is fair to say that the recent Parliamentary election in the UK was not edified with a high quality of debate. As an island nation dependent on international trade and reliant on seaborne security it would have been reasonable to expect at least some reference to maritime affairs in the campaigns, but this was sadly lacking. I checked the main parties’ manifestoes for any evidence of engagement but the only type of ships in the Labour Party manifesto were partnerships, for the Liberal Democrats it was relationships, while for the Conservative Party it was ownership. To be fair the Conservatives did promise to ‘back our maritime sector’ but without any detail or firm commitment. This is all further evidence of the enduring seablindness in British politics and society.
It was therefore refreshing to see how young people are engaging with issues surrounding our marine environment at the recent graduate show at Glasgow School of Art. The School of Innovation and Technology had a focus on river cities and the way we deal with water in a changing climate. Conventional hard engineering infrastructures are expensive, contaminating and unresponsive to community needs. Students instead looked to heritage and tradition to find solutions. Govan, known for its shipbuilding, was also home to a significant weaving industry. Marcus Allan used this heritage to develop a project to harvest the growing algal bloom that is damaging the area’s habitat to create a new textile that solves an environmental problem and revives a traditional industry. This was echoed in Hannah Leonard’s Kelpcore initiative to revitalize small-scale industries and local heritage among coastal communities using kelp as a sustainable resource to create innovative textiles using traditional skills.
Humankind’s changing relationship with the marine habitat was another notable focus. Valentina Uribe rethought the way people live with on the river though using recycling techniques to develop floating dwellings, and Junyi Wang looked to floating gardens as a way of regenerating polluted floodwaters. Patrick McCrum offered what he acknowledged was an obviously absurd, but worryingly believable idea for the Network for Organisms’ Adaptive Habituation (NOAH). This would create a twenty-first-century Noah’s ark of marine animals preserved through adapted and augmented technologies such as a polar bear life support system. It would be the ultimate embodiment of a bandage for a broken late-capitalist planet. This is exactly the kind of radical and creative idea you would expect from students struggling to make sense of their future.
I know The Mariner’s Mirror is a history journal, but what use is history if it does not inform the future? It was interesting therefore to see so many of these students taking inspiration from the past to develop new solutions for the future. The critical intelligence and creative spirit of these young designers offers far greater hope than any number of vapid politicians.