Two thriving communities of Newbury came together on Sunday 2nd June as Isabel from City Arts designed and directed the mural painting of their very tired old boathouse.
Newbury Canoe Club have finally got planning permission to build a new boat house to cater for the increasing membership and boat numbers. With this not likely to happen until 2025 ,the current boat house needed a tidy up from the grafitti to be in-keeping with the new clubhouse built in 2019.
A design was drafted by Isabel at City Arts, stencils cut out in advance by our secratary Richard and his wife Jenny, a lot of cake was baked in preparation, and Claire prepared herself to tattoo anybody who dared to sit next to her!
As a community fundraiser for both City Arts and NCC, participants paid £2 to add their Banksy mark to the wall.
Chairman Ed stated proceedings off by mapping the first water line.
Lots of little visitors helped create the paddlers and boats using the stencils. and were also gifted with tattoos by Claire to entertain them, although it seemed these were more popular with the adults!
As the kayaks started to emerge on the water, more ideas were shouted from the sidelines of those members happily just basking in the sunshine and eating cake! So they were commissioned to create their own SUP, Canoe and K2 images!
As confidence grew in using the spray cans, and progress was much quicker than hoped, a second section was ad-libbed by Isabel, Julie and Ed as a different perspective was created to see an NCC paddler heading under the bridge.
As for the swan....it is suspected Banksy may turn up one night to add it!
Fundraising for the new clubhouse will start later in the year so we will get to enjoy the end result for a while yet.
Thanks to Richard and Jenny for organising this great fun community event with Isabel at City Arts.
