21/09/2026
You may have seen glimpses of our Barton Street banners at the Belonging Picnic, or on our Facebook and wondered how they came about...
While our Greening Barton Street group were working on the flowerbeds in Sinope Street car park, they were curious about whether there was a history of green spaces in the area before all of the housing. We used the Barton and Tredworth Community History site to do some research and discovered that the land behind the Vauxhall Inn had been, variously, a tea garden, a bowling green, and a zoo.
Polly, a participant, found an advert on a website about pubs in Gloucestershire which featured a garden party at Whitsun in 1870. Mike, another participant, researched the uniforms of the military band that played.
We applied to Voices Gloucester for funding to depict the garden party as a mural on the wall of Sinope Street car park and were successful. We approached Widden School to ask if their Year 6 pupils would like to be involved in designing the mural and spent two afternoons with them, discussing the imagery and history and asking them to imagine what it would have been like and then draw some ideas 🎨
We approached Eduardo Guerra, a Gloucester-based artist who is also a Fair Shares participant, to design the mural. Ed came to Fair Shares when he was an asylum seeker staying locally, and now he has made Gloucester his home and continues to contribute to the community.
Unfortunately we then found out that we could not get permission to use the wall we had hoped to, and that the Council had decided to remove the existing flower beds in the car park.
At this point we had a rethink and decided to turn the designs into banners so they could be a portable artwork for the whole community. Ed made a digital design based on the children's artwork and Jon in our workshop made some custom stands to display them.
We also realised that the Belonging Picnic to mark Refugee Week was coming up and that this would be a good opportunity to display them for the first time! The banners were displayed at the Picnic, then went to Widden School where Year 6 were able to use them at their leavers assembly and show their parents and other pupils their contribution.
Finally they went to our allotment for a garden party celebrating the volunteers at the Refugee Picnic and the participants who worked on the banners! We used vintage tea cups, played music from 1870, and ate Honduran food (not from 1870, but from one of our participants who performed at the Belonging Picnic). 30 of us gathered for a chat, good food and to celebrate our community. The rain even cleared up for us!
If you're holding an event in Gloucester and would like to have a chat about having the banners there, get in touch 🙂
