I said I wondered how we would feel at the end of the day, and tired and pleased pretty well sums it. The Big Green Festival attracted 4,000 people last year and I think this year was even better.
Certainly enough of them came through the exhibition to make Peter, Linda, Rachael* and I feel that the exhibition had been a success. It opened with a series of six tall panels taken from a post card of Beech Road in 1910, interspersed with story boards and photographs describing the road and shops in 1850, 1900 and 1980. These were key moments in the history of the road, covering the last time we were truly a rural community, moving on to the point when the shops and buildings pretty much took the form we can see today and ending at the point when the traditional character of the place was undergoing the change which eventually led to what we have now.
All of which led neatly into Peter’s paintings which capture the road today in six street scenes. Now I am a historian who Peter calls a story teller and I provided the text and original photographs. But it was Peter who put this mix of words and images together and turned them into a real visual experience.
So thank you to all our friends, including those who regularly read the blog, those who came to see Peter’s wonderful pictures and all the others who wandered in for a coffee and stayed to be part of the exhibition.
We will be staging the exhibition at a number of events over the rest of the year and so if you missed it rest assured that it will be coming to a venue near you.
* Peter and Linda Topping, https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures
Rachael McGowan, https://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/?set=oa.388939324459139&type=1
and me http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com
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