Chuntian Hu and Laura Price

A WEEK-LONG floating arts festival opened on Regent’s Canal in King’s Cross last weekend, celebrating Islington’s waterways and encouraging visitors to reflect on the climate emergency.

The Canal Dream Art Festival (CDAF) featured exhibitions, film screenings and dance and music performances across five boats – the “dream fleet” – and one canal-side building in Caledonian Road.
CDAF is the brainchild of Chuntian Hu, who moved from China to the UK to study at the Royal College of Art during the pandemic in 2021.

Ms Hu became captivated by London’s canal network and now lives on a narrowboat herself.

“When I went outside for the first time after 10 days of quarantine, I thought: ‘Oh, there’s a canal nearby, I’ll go and have a look,’” she said.

“Canals in China are very wide, there is not much greenery, no one lives on them.

“This is completely different. It’s like a fairy world for me.”

Ms Hu has been creating and curating art on and about the water ever since, and has gradually become part of the canal community.

CDAF, her biggest project so far, brings that community of boaters – many of them artists themselves – together with emerging artists.

Ms Hu’s role in overseeing the festival brings plenty of “canal dramas” as well as canal dreams, but the support and enthusiasm from fellow boaters is what helps her carry on.

Each boat houses different exhibitions or performances.

One is the Floating Garden, which showcases a project called Voices of the Water by King’s Cross environmental education charity, Global Generation, and includes a textile installation, photography and ceramics.

Global Generation’s Laura Price explained that the project invites people of all ages to reflect on how water features in their cultures, influences their wellbeing and is affected by climate change, taking inspiration from both Regent’s Canal and the underground River Fleet. “Water encourages us to slow down,” said Ms Price. “I think of slowing down as a form of activism, focusing on the things that really matter.

“If you can’t focus on those things, how can you protect them?”

Simon Hodgkinson and Sarah LaBrasca’s houseboat and gallery Slash Arts is another CDAF “dream station”, featuring an exhibition and several performances on the boat’s roof. Ms LaBrasca said: “A lot of the people who come to our exhibitions wouldn’t go to a white wall gallery, but they are interested in coming into the boat so they end up seeing art that they never normally would.”