Local artist, inspirational YouTuber and licensed Thames mudlark Nicola White takes you on a journey of discovery along the river, revealing the extraordinary stories of forgotten people and places through objects found in the mud.

Nicola moved to London from Cornwall in 1998. It wasn’t long before she discovered a replacement beach: the Thames foreshore. She remembers the excitement when she found her first coin poking out from behind a rock. From that day on she became fascinated with the fragments of history littered on the foreshore at low tide.

This summer, a diverse group of young people from Thames Festival Trust’s heritage project Lost & Found has been working with Nicola to animate some of these fragments, telling Greenwich and Deptford’s untold maritime histories through gaming tokens from prison hulks, shipbuilding waste and even a West African Nkisi Kozo power figure.

In this special illustrated talk, Nicola shares some of the most intriguing artefacts from her collection, objects which shed light on the lives of soldiers, sailors, lightermen and others living and working in the local area over the centuries. The stories from the River Thames she has uncovered are a source of inspiration to her – and millions of viewers around the world on her popular YouTube channel. As she says, “you never know how your own story might inspire someone in 200 years”.

Lost & Found is a Thames Festival Trust project made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund.