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Foxton Locks offers an excellent learning environment that extends beyond the classroom and helps schools deliver learning opportunities to inspire in a creative and authentic way.

Learning
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The Art curriculum requires students to access a wide range of starting stimuli and investigate different art styles. The museum can offer a variety of projects and objects to help with creative studies.

Canal art is the name we sometimes give to the hand-painted roses, daisies and castles on narrowboats and objects used on the boats. Many people call this art ‘roses and castles’, the name canal art only started to be used later in the 20th Century and its only in the social media age that canal art has become canalart.

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A wider public interest in canal art seems to have started in the 1940s when British Waterways planned to paint all load carrying boats blue and yellow, and get rid of most roses and castles decoration on boats. This plan proved to be unpopular with those working the boats and was reported in the newspapers. As a result, more people became interested in roses and castles decoration on boats and it began to appear in gallery exhibitions and mainstream shops as well as in the 1945 film ‘Painted Boats’.

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Today our view of canal art today is different to the past. Now we consider canal art an important part of English canal history, this was not necessarily true in the past. For the boat men and women living and working the waterways roses and castles decoration appeared on objects used in their daily lives – like the watercans, or water dippers. The art made their homes and workplace brighter, but as the objects were used the paint work became damaged or the paint peeled off. Boats were repainted, so any earlier art was lost. It was only when British Waterways suggested covering canal art, and it was under threat of disappearing for ever, that people became more interested in preserving the art work.

Artists have always found inspiration from the canals and waterways of Britain. Some have explored a variety of medium to interpret and express the feel of the landscapes and navigation on these waters.

John O Connor was a graphic illustrator from Leicestershire who wrote an illustrated books about the canals. His work was very stylised and was mainly produced using the woodcut technique. His book Canals, Barges and People was influential in its time.

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Denys Watkins-Pitchford was another illustrator who used woodcuts and illustrated TLC Rolt's waterway adventures on his narrowboat Cressy. He was famous in his own right for penning for his own books under the name BB. His series of books about the Little Grey Men who live on the waterways of Britain and his endearing illustratations made him a children's favourite for generation.

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To find out more about Arts on the waterways and explore what workshops we can provide please contact Foxton Canal Museum: learning@foxtoncanalmuseum.org

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