Lorne Jackson gets a taste of the floating sensory environment helping to inspire the city’s young artists.

There is one very important thing you need to know about Kate Self.

She has a really big key fob. Seriously – it’s a monster. It’s not quite as big as a Bouncy Castle, though if you happened to be a tiddly chap, like Tom Cruise, you could probably use it as a Space Hopper.

Okay, I exaggerate. Slightly. Though it is a cumbersome piece of kit, close to the size and shape of a tennis ball.

It must be a pain, squeezing such a hulking object into a purse or pocket.

But Kate needs her fob, because it’s exceedingly handy when you spend a lot of time on a canal boat, as she does. If she ever accidentally drops her keys over the side, the fob will act as a buoy, bobbing on the water’s surface, until she can hook it out.

A while ago key fobs didn’t play such an important part in the life of Kate, who is the learning co-ordinator at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham.

All that changed when the Ikon Youth Programme (IYP), which she runs, decided it was a good idea to shift its passion for making art to the waterways of the Midlands, in an innovative three-year project called Slow Boat.

The IYP was set up by the Ikon in 2009. A gang of youngsters, aged 15-19, who share an interest in visual art, are being encouraged to devise creative projects and establish networks with other youth groups.

Until recently their base was the Ikon Gallery. “When we started, it was all about opening the gallery up to young people,” says Kate. “So they would meet all the staff, from the top all the way down.

“They worked with the marketing department, and with designers, too, and became really embedded within the organisation.

“But when we asked the group what else they wanted out of the programme, they kept coming back to this idea of wanting a space that was there’s, and there’s alone. So we eventually came up with the idea of a special work space. The Ikon Youth Programme’s very own boat.”

Named the Aaron Manby, it has been leased from Sandwell Council. The youngsters will be using it as a space to make art, and show their work to audiences, until November.

From outside, the boat looks like your standard barge, though the inside has been transformed by Birmingham-based designer Queen & Crawford, working in close collaboration with Dutch artist Marjolijn Dijkman, and members of the IYP.

Instead of your standard barge bric-a-brac and clutter, the interior looks like a floating gallery.

The walls and deck are painted white, with multicoloured dots running along surfaces.

At first I assumed the dots were a sneaky reference to Georges Seurat – pointillism in a Brummie barge. But it turns out that the splashes of colour are plugs, used to lock down the vehicle’s movable furniture.