‘Roses and Castles: A Line Made by Walking’, was a project I designed and led in Pendle and Burnley during the summer of 2023. This was a wonderful project celebrating place, local nature and public spaces. As we were based on the wonderful Leeds and Liverpool Canal (that runs in part through Nelson, Brierfield and Burnley) we wanted to use it as a source of creative inspiration to respond to. We had many lovely art workshops spent outside and a trip down the canal in a barge. 

 

The title of the project relates to ‘Roses and Castles’, a colourful canal folk art that was used to decorate working narrowboats in the 19th century and is still popular today. Given how multicultural Pendle is, we explored not only this canal folk art but many other forms of folk art inspired by our community: folk art is the artistic expression of the various traditions, cultures and regional identities, and thus often celebrates or empowers the community it comes from.

 

In the first five sessions, we exploring different types of folk art using watercolours, collaging, print-making, enamel painting, patterning, and sign-writing lettering. We then used the final three sessions to create collaborative mural paintings that are taking pride of place along the canal. The marvellous artist Cath Ford joined us for these final sessions when we were designing the murals. 

 

This project was run on behalf of Community Arts by ZK in collaboration with BWA Burnley. This project has been generously funded by NHS England, and the Canal and River Trust.