This week sees the painting of the art mural at the Railway Embankment site in Goldthorpe, part of the Dearne Community Arts’ Festival community art project. The vision behind this project is to leave a legacy of colour and beauty in our area, inspired by Isaiah 61:3 which talks of God bestowing a crown of beauty instead of ashes. Two to three years ago during a ‘Churches Together’ prayer meeting, God reminded us of this verse and spoke about how creativity would replace the literal and spiritual blackness associated with the town’s mining heritage with colour and vibrancy and beauty. It seems appropriate that this art project aims to do this at the site of the former pit railway.
The project has been a long time in fulfilment, postponed from last year because of the pandemic. Today, artist Lydia Caprani joined local volunteers to begin the work of sketching out the mural, which will feature a train in countryside. As with all projects, we started with a blank canvas (itself the result of a lot of behind-the-scenes work from the Dearne Area Team to get the wall rendered by Network Rail).
A lot of work has gone on today to create the backdrop for the train. Please continue to pray for fine weather and the completion of this project this week.
