Uncovering Carlisle’s Textile Revolution: Distington School

Carlisle Coat of Arms, Tullie House Today we went to Prism Arts Carlisle for our last visit, where we met up with our friends again from the Creative Conversations group. Jac, our artist, told us that we were now in the last phase of our project moving towards each group designing and making individual banners to be displayed in Carlisle Library in September. Jac told us a little about the history of the development of banners.  We learned that banners are a form of communication.  Whether it is today or 150 years ago, groups or organisations with a marching tradition have made banners to identify themselves and what they stand for. Stephen White, historian from Carlisle Library had told us that before 1832 being a member of a trade society and meeting together was illegal.  Those that did - the Chartists - all had banners to identify who they were and what they stood for.  These may have started as a small wall hanging then sewn onto a bigger piece of material, then paint

This afternoon was our last session this term - so we decided to get messy, creative and have some fun!   Our starting point was chatting about what we had learned from our visit to Carlisle the week before when David Ramshaw told us about the development of railways and the important role they had in the development of our local industries including the mills and print works. Taking our pictures of trains as our inspiration, we looked at the shapes that formed the different parts of the train.  The funnel, the train lines, the wheels.......  Hubert used a diesel train as inspiration - and made this fabulous print.  Well done.  We had great fun pushing the ink around on the plate to give us different shapes, lines and textures. Once our first prints had dried, we were able to apply another colour and produced these great pieces of art! It amazing to see how our inspiration took us on our own 'train journey' and produce