Roses and Castles: A Line Made by Walking

 

‘Roses and Castles: A Line Made by Walking’, was a project led by artist Emily Forbes in collaboration with Cath Ford, celebrating place, local nature and public spaces. As we are 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. 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. 

 

The group spent the first five sessions exploring different types of folk art using watercolours, collaging, print-making, enamel painting, patterning, and sign-writing lettering. We then used the final five sessions to create collaborative mural paintings that are taking pride of place along the canal. 

 

This project is in collaboration with BWA Burnley.

 

This project has been generously funded by NHS England, and the Canal and River Trust.

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