Lost & Found

About Lost & Found

This project, produced by Thames Festival Trust and made possible by a grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, combined object research with a tailored programme of training. Paid traineeships were offered to a group of young Londoners to provide them with new skills, experiences and confidence to support them to enter the heritage sector. From over 200 applicants, 10 trainees, aged between 21 and 26, were selected: Isidora Bethell, Anna Freed, Gwena Harman, Samiha Hassan, Nadia Hirsi, George Jones, Claire Lacaden, Abondance Matanda, Jude Pretoria and Ted Tinkler.

Over a seven-week period in summer 2025, the trainees visited heritage sites across the city including the Cutty Sark, London Museum Docklands and the London Archives, and met a range of experts and heritage professionals – from curators and archivists to archaeologists and mudlarks. They went on walking tours of Greenwich and Deptford, waded through Deptford Creek at low tide, and explored the foreshore of the River Thames. On the first day of the project, the trainees were invited to select from Nicola White’s extraordinary collection an object (or group of objects) found on the foreshore in Greenwich and Deptford. These intriguing, complex and meaningful finds provided the trainees with opportunities to research people, places and activities which are overlooked or not usually recorded in written history.

Using money raised by National Lottery players, The National Lottery Heritage Fund supports projects that connect people and communities with the UK’s heritage. Lost & Found is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players, we have been able to reveal untold maritime histories of Greenwich and Deptford.

Photography Exhibitions

Audiences across London encountered ten Thames treasures as they'd never seen them before in a pop-up exhibition of photography by Hannah Smiles of objects found by mudlark Nicola White.

• Saturday 6 - Sunday 7 September: Hands on History at Guildhall Art Gallery
• Saturday 13 - Sunday 14 September: Hands on History at Cutlers' Hall
• Saturday 20 - Sunday 21 September: Thames Weekend at Cutty Sark
• Saturday 27 - Sunday 28 September: Hands on History at London Museum Docklands
• Saturday 11 - Sunday 12 October: Hands on History @ St Paul's Cathedral

Nicola White YouTube films

Mudlark Nicola White has produced a series of ten short films on her YouTube channel featuring our heritage trainees and the ten objects they researched.