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Behind the Project: In Search of the New River

Outside the entrance to the Library at the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, there’s a video with watery and rhythmic visuals entitled In Search of the New River.

The film grew out of a project that ran between November 2025 and March 2026 when artist and musician Laura Copsey and animator Simon Hamlyn were commissioned to run a series of workshops for students and staff at New River College Medical, an SEN school near to New River Head. During the project, the group became New River Detectives, working with visual storytelling methods to uncover the hidden history running beneath the streets of Islington and make a collaborative film.

Two hands poke holes into a colourfully painted piece of paper besides a collage involving a statue and a beast with an open mouth and screaming figures inside.
Workshop in progress © Max

The first workshop involved collaging, rubber stamping and pochoir printing with materials from the Islington Local History Centre, the London Metropolitan Archives and the Thames Water archive. Students were encouraged to be curious and learn about the changing history of water in London, from its collection at rivers, wells and conduits, carried by hand to people’s houses, to the development of a piped water supply managed on an industrial scale today.

A group of people pull a strip of foil down a rainy road in London.
Recreating the river

In December the group undertook a field trip through the streets of Islington, accompanied by cameraman Tom Rochester, as they searched for the physical traces of the New River. During the fieldtrip, students were introduced to three guiding characters who set creative quests: the statue of Sir Hugh Myddelton, a willow tree, and a mole catcher, each with a link to the New River’s past. Their field work produced a range of visual material, including putty rubber printed loops, underwater footage and interviews with members of the public, as well as a performance of the river represented with silver foil and a water bottle orchestra.

A stamp of a person swimming in a river made of blue swirls.
A mixed media animation created as part of the project

During the third and fourth sessions, students transformed collected material from the previous workshops to make animated sequences through a range of physical processes. Film footage was printed onto till-receipt paper, allowing stamps and pochoir prints to introduce texture and symbolic elements that could be rescanned and re-animated digitally. The New River Detectives wanted the film to have a mysterious, dreamy quality and created sound responses that combined instruments with everyday objects to produce sound effects and melodic motifs.

A table laid out with an array of everyday objects including glass bottles, maracas, scrabble tiles, crisp packets and lentils in tupperware.
The foley station used to create some of the soundscape behind the project.

The collected material was edited into the final sequence reflecting the students’ curiosity and visual responses about New River. The final film connects to the Centre’s industrial heritage while retaining a mysterious quality that echoes the New River's folklore and natural history.

A mixed media video in which two people pull a floaty collage of patterns down a rainy London street.
One of the assets used in the final project.

You can watch In Search of the New River on your next visit to Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration.

Artist Biographies

Laura Copsey is an experimental illustrator, arts educator and musician from East Anglia. With a background as a therapist, she creates interdisciplinary and collaborative works, live experiences, expeditions and socially engaged projects. Laura's is inspired by heritage, geo-poetics and hydro-fiction often in relation to places, islands or bodies of water. In 2021-22 she was illustrator in residence alongside Philip Crewe for the Quentin Blake Centre’s 1st Engine House residency. Her instagram is @laurachops.(opens in new window)

Simon Hamlyn is an award-winning artist-animator whose work is underpinned by experimental approaches and process-led exploration. He has taken particular interest in configuring various printmaking techniques for animation - developing hybrid processes which make viable new ways of working. Interested in themes rooted in history and society, he is particularly fascinated by the complex mythologies behind our built environment. His Instagram is @simon.hamlyn(opens in new window).