Hinckley Road Street Carpet

Just a few days to go now until the Stoke Golding Street Party. Hinckley Road will be closed from 11:00 - 16:00 and we are hoping for a fine day and lots of people.

We are planning to construct a sawdust street carpet across the road just by Thornfield Road. This is a natural crossing place for children visiting the "rec". We wanted to mock up a crossing to create a talking point for our Streets4All initiative, but we also wanted a fun activity for children to help construct on the day. The idea for a sawdust street carpet came from sawdust street carpets that are constructed for holy week in some South American countries have a look here. Our proposed design is somewhat less elaborate, but there again we will only have a few hours to work on it.

Its proved difficult to work out how to construct a sawdust street carpet, but I have found a source of cheap sawdust and been experimenting. The flag will have to be done freehand, then we have tile templates which we can move around to construct the main area filling in "grout lines" as we go. We have cardboard templates for diamonds, crowns, queens head and footprints that children should be able to help with. I have used simple poster paints to dye the sawdust with mixed results - the lighter colours do not work too well and the the blue is rather green. Here is a bit of a test with the union flag - pretty pleased really.

I am hoping for a dry windless day although I have sprayers and watering can to damp it all down. Could all be a disaster, we can but try though. Watch this space to see how it all worked out.