The Futures and Connection
of the Falkirk Wheel and Lock 16
A public engagement and consultation to help inform the future of the Falkirk Wheel, Lock 16 and their surrounding areas.
The Falkirk Wheel sits within the semi-rural hillscape to the South-West of Falkirk. It was the centrepiece of the Millenium Link project, which saw the joining of two historically important canals, the Forth & Clyde Canal and the Union Canal, forging a significantly faster route between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Before the construction of the Wheel, this trip required climbing through eleven locks to traverse the elevation difference between the canals, in an almost day-long journey. The lowest of these eleven locks (since removed), on the Union Canal, is now the site of Lock 16, and sits at the meeting of the neighbourhoods of Camelon and Tamfourhill with Falkirk.
In March 2022, New Practice were appointed, alongside a design team led by Hawkins\Brown for Scottish Canals, to undertake a public consultation programme to understand the current use, experiences and expectations of those who use and live around the areas of the Falkirk Wheel and Lock 16.
Stretching from the Falkirk Wheel to Lock 16, the project area was large; with sites such as the Antonine Wall, it encompassed a vibrant and historic landscape steeped in cultural and natural history, with significant potential for canal-side active travel and amenity.
The consultation intended to help guide the emerging net-zero masterplan for this wider area, the surrounding sections of the Forth and Clyde and Union Canals, and their connection to neighbouring communities and tourism. Our work with Scottish Canals led to an appointment by Green Action Trust to undertake further and more focussed consultation work with the neighbouring communities local to Lock 16, which acted as an adjunct study within the wider engagement project.
After in-depth stakeholder workshops with Scottish Canals and Hawkins\Brown, our public engagement saw a series of creative and site-specific consultation activities: a moving canal-side consultation on bikes for a 200th Anniversary Flotilla for the Union Canal, a consultation hub at 20th birthday celebrations for the Falkirk Wheel, and town centre pop-ups in both Falkirk and Camelon. Our tailored branding and targeted online communications provided these in-person events with the detailed findings of an online survey.
Our work for Scottish Canals helped to understand the potential sites for education, activity, tourism and community custodianship across the wider Falkirk Wheel site. Understanding where people already traverse the area, by which means, and how that could be improved was important in ensuring that the future of the area was beneficial to both locals and tourists alike.
Through conversation and collaborative mapping tools, we came to learn the favourite locations for finding tadpoles, the most quiet and picturesque woodland sites for walking, and the potential for sharing and teaching all visitors about the antiquity of the Antonine Wall.
Following our work for the Falkirk Wheel, New Practice were appointed by Green Action Trust to continue our work in a subsequent and more community-targeted consultation at Lock 16. This saw a series of focussed workshops developed, based upon a developed rich knowledge of the areas and its communities. These workshops engaged both the local community and key community stakeholders to understand how the development of the site could benefit its immediate neighbours.
We had great fun in developing creative tools for this purpose, which drew from the industrial and transport-related history of the area, with past and present canal and rail travel traversing the site. We also drew upon the local myth and legend in the area, with the neighbourhood of Camelon considered by some to be the site of King Arthur’s court of Camelot.
These stories were used to build vibrant engagement tools relevant to all ages, through exercises to create personal future visions of Lock 16 via iconic early 20th century British Railway travel posters, and iconographic heraldry crests.
Client: Hawkins\Brown (Falkirk Wheel) and Green Action Trust (Lock 16)
Location: Falkirk, Camelon, Tamfourhill and surrounds
Completion: 2022
Photography: New Practice