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 m...

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 jour...

On the 12th March, we met up with our friends from Creative Conversations group at Prism Arts for our second talk by David Ramshaw who told us how the railway system had developed and its part in the industrial development of Carlisle and Cumbria. We had a break half way through and learned a few verses and chorus from a song the weavers would have sang called Poverty, Poverty, Knock.  This brilliant idea had been suggested by Ken from Creative Conversations and we all enjoyed joining in and singing along. After the talk, we looked at different types of railway engines throughout history, then after carefully  colouring these in,we cut them out and combined these into our own collaborative 'railway station' which we called 'The Very Best Railway Station'. We all enjoyed lunch together before we left to return to school after a very enjoyable morning. We are all looking forward to our next visit when we shall be chatting through ideas for...

This week, 5th March we concentrated on finishing our shield designs.   We discussed what we would like to include on our shield and used a spider map to help us decide.... and made some sketches in our sketchbook....... After deciding we all set about putting our ideas onto our shields and worked really well to draw and colour these in. We all completed a shield and produced some amazing fantastic shields of which we are very proud. We all helped tidy up then put our amazing artwork onto our wall for everyone to see. Well done everyone!

Today  26th February,  David Ramshaw, writer, publisher and local historian joined us at Prism Arts, Carlisle where we met up again with participants from the Creative Conversations group. David told us about transport in the early part of the 19th Century as part of our research in uncovering the history of Carlisle's Textile Industry. We learned that factories in Carlisle were powered by water initially - there was a large furnace for example under Dixon's Chimney turning water into steam and energy to power the factory.  This  was the biggest in Europe at the time.  Although as we know from our research into Whitehaven and the Lowther family there was plenty coal in West Cumbria, there was no way then of bringing this to Carlisle's factories - roads were poor and pack horses were used to carry goods relevant to local trade. This problem had been resolved in other parts of Britain by the use of canals.  A plan in 1795 looked at building a...