Arts and Nature Open Day

!Pancakes, Landscapes and Bug Hotel Creation Pancakes, Landscapes and Bug Hotel Creation[/caption] After a great team effort to get everything set up, we were ready to go and visitors began arriving. We were lucky to be joined by Steve and Tracy Nestor from Homes for Bugs, who provided visitors with the opportunity to create their very own bug hotel for the Boundary Way Community Garden from reclaimed, recycled and foraged materials. This workshop was a huge success with some brilliant foraging by the children resulting in Boundary Way's very first Bug Hotel being born. Each visitor labelled their hotel so they can return to the garden in the future to see what is living inside their little wooden home. Doesn't it look amazing?

Bug Hotels being made The finished Bug Hotel Throughout the afternoon Brazilian Storyteller Ana Lines captured everyone's imaginations with interactive storytelling walks that were connected to the community garden. A magical line of people could be seen snaking around the garden following the stories that Ana was telling and it really was a sight to behold. This wasn't the only interactive walk we had going on that afternoon, Ann Walker also led many multi-sensory silent walks through the orchard. These short guided walks allowed everyone, visitors and the Boundary Way Team, to really use their senses to connect with the Community Garden in a way they hadn't before, making it a really special experience.

Ana telling her enchanting stories Ana telling her enchanting stories Elsewhere in the garden herbalist Maria Billington helped visitors to create their very own seed bombs, rolling mud and seeds together to create a fun way to add new plants to an environment, and opened people's eyes to the amazing process of 'Happa Zome'. 'Happa Zome' is when you bash plants into cloth to release the dyes and create patterns. Needless to say everyone had great fun doing this and created some beautiful art. Maria also set up a plant hunting activity, which people participated in throughout the day, to help us map the plants that live on the site by looking for ones that we hadn't yet discovered.

Maria showing visitors 'Happa Zome' and visitors exploring the Camera Obscura The poly tunnel was home to one of our visiting artists, Hannah Boyd, who ran a very popular nature drawing workshop, with fantastic outcomes from all who took part. Suspended above Hannah's workshop was an fantastic exhibition of art by the students of Penn Fields School, who have been working towards their Arts Award with us at the Community Garden. To join the Penn Fields exhibition we also had a display of photography, from the Boundary Way Project team, and sketchbooks, by some of our visiting artists, on display in the shed. All of the photographs were taken in a team workshop with photographer and film-maker, Geoff Broadway and the sketchbooks were kindly lent to us by artists Rachel Parker, Clare Wassermann and Shelley McGregor. It all looked beautiful.

Photographs by Team and Sketchbooks by Visiting Artists People Enjoying Hannah's Nature Drawing Workshop below the Penn Fields Exhibition People Enjoying Hannah's Nature Drawing Workshop below the Penn Fields Exhibition As well as Homes for Bugs, we were kindly joined by the Wolverhampton Healthy Lifestyles team, who were set up in the chalet and were on hand to give advice on a range of topics including; diet, weight management, physical activity, smoking, alcohol and pregnancy. Visitors also had the opportunity to visit our shed Camera Obscura and were wowed by the amazing views that it produced for them. For many it was their first time in a Camera Obscura and the experience was enhanced by a 15 minute landscape drawing challenge for visitors to take on once they had been inside, run by Shelley McGregor.

Visitors enjoying the 15 minute Landscape Challenge in front of the Shed Camera Obscura It was great to see everyone coming together to support the garden and we all had a brilliant day full of fun. Our next event is a History, Heritage and Art Weekend that will be taking place over 14th-15th October 2017, so look out for details about that on our Facebook - @BoundaryWayArts. We would love to see you there.