We’re going to need a bigger boat.

March 2020

Covid-19 outbreak. I don’t think we need to say any more about that. 

For a while, like so many things, the KIlsby project was put on hold. 

Then, after the dust had settled, emerged the question - How can we keep this restoration moving along? We have not forgotten you Kilsby , like the water swirling about under your hull, let’s change our course and keep on moving. The boat is stripped, it needs to be rebuilt, and we need that rebuild designed. Before anyone can guess what the boat should look like we need to decide what we want the boat to do, so a design can be drawn up that results in a boat fit for purpose.

Enter Richard Stevens, requirements engineer. We need to hold a requirements workshop he says. We need to ask people what they want Kilsby to do, and we need to collect these ideas until the requirements ‘stabilize’, and we’ll know what we need the designers to design! OK! We’ll rent a hall, bake flapjacks, fill up the tea urn!

Oh.

 We’ll have to do it on zoom. 

July 2020

Well we did it. We held an online requirements workshop on July 16th. And it was smashing.  We got the band back together, inviting everyone who had been involved so far to get together in cyberspace and share ideas for what Kilsby should be able to offer her community.. Our workshop began with an awards ceremony, for the Kilsby Above and Beyond Volunteer Award of phase 1, social distancing style, with a video of Steph Pirrie dropping tokens of appreciation to Steve Watts and Shaun Wood. They received glasses engraved with their names, and the word Kilsby, to remind them of the arctic winds, bilge slime and tarpaulin gymnastics they faced in the name of the Kilsby Restoration project. 

Moving on to the matter in hand, deciding what the requirements for our boat were to be. We watched a presentation absolutely jam-packed with ideas for the services Kilsby could offer.

It’ll be a passenger boat!

It’ll host dinner parties!

School children will come, learn to paint castles and roses, sing sea shanties and write limericks about life on the cut!

We’ll rent the boat out for mini-breaks! Rock concerts will blare out from the deck as we chug through Wolvercote!

As the presentation ended, there was more than a slight murmuring among the group that, this was all…

perhaps…

…just a bit too much?

As Lloyd Grossman used to say in masterchef, we deliberated, cogitated and digested, and could agree that the use pattern of the boat needed to be a touch more focussed. Prioritising a myriad of ideas into something a little more streamlined requires saying goodbye to certain hopes and dreams. In this case, we leant towards axing the idea of using Kilsby as a passenger vessel, prioritising instead its use as a theatre. Licensing costs, amid other restrictions seem to favour the use of the boat when static. Not to say that the boat won’t be moved about, but that we might not be moving people about.

 If Kilsby is to be a theatre that hosts performances along the waterways, what would the requirements of such an endeavour be? Where will Romeo and Juliet do their costume changes? What will Barack Obama’s power requirements be when he uses Kilsby for his Talks on the Thames series?  Where will Simon and Garfunkel store their guitars when they go to the pub after their impromptu canalside comeback tour? In a surprise move, up popped the notion that we might need ANOTHER BOAT. A boat for storage? A boat for toilets! A boat for an enormous battery bank? A boat…. for passengers?

After an hour and a half, we were, as Steph put it, “zoomed out”. A productive and fun discussion, that had raised as many questions as it answered, ended with waving hands, smiling faces and the feeling that we’ll probably need to host a few more of these requirements workshops. Would you like to attend the next requirements workshop? Get in touch! 

Written by Sophie Stanley

If you would like to read the current list of requirements for Kilsby click on the link below. Have a read and then have your say by submitting a change request form. All ideas/hopes/dreams gratefully received!