Black Country Voyages at the Black Country Boating Festival

Saturday 12 September

This weekend we returned to one of our regular locations, Bumblehole Nature Reserve. We arrived early and was already met by lots of canal boats setting up for the event. The boat was moored up, surrounded by bridges and historical boats, it was a fantastic location. The beginning of the morning was wet and miserable and we were worried about it being a quiet day, this quickly changed though when the sun came out. The sun brought out so many people, both local and those from further a field. In total we had over 250 people on the boat on Saturday, so this was our busiest event for 2015.

We had two activities going on during the day. On the towpath we had clay work. Using flowers and leaves collected from around the area, we produced clay flower presses. The perfect activity to do in the sunshine. Whilst these were drying, the public were invited onto the boat to try carbon paper drawing. We gave them the brief of either drawing a flower, taking inspiration from the work of Jacques Nimki or a boat as we were surrounded by them on this day. The great thing about doing the drawings with carbon paper meant that each person was producing two drawings, one to take home and one to add to our small gallery on the boat.

We will definitely be returning to this event next year and will hopefully be able to stay for the Sunday too.

Thank you to everyone who made it onto the boat on Saturday and we hope to see you again at another event.