Bostin News - The Bliss of Solitude – Ode to Sneyd

In September 2019 16 members of Mossley Big Local community group walked to local Sneyd Reservoir to take photographs of the landscape which they later used as reference to make into drawings and paintings.

Some of the paintings and drawings were framed and donated to a local elderly care home at the start of Covid-19 to help lift the spirits of residents. In addition to the 16 regular art group members, 3 of the residents of the care home, aged 87, 90 and 92, also made their own landscape paintings.

For the Bostin News project in May and June 2020, we asked the art group to revisit their photographs and artwork along with their memories and experiences of Sneyd Reservoir and the nearby Essington and Wyrley (‘Curly Wyrley’) canal. We discussed the project in a private Facebook group and via video conferencing meetings and direct messages in Messenger – asking the group to submit written work: poems, thoughts, ideas and words, about what these spaces mean to them – and in particular during the lockdown and stay alert periods of 2020.

From these written submissions Alex Vann was able to write some song lyrics, and he set these to music that he composed in the style of traditional canal songs. He made a recording of the song, entitled ‘The Bliss of Solitude – Ode to Sneyd,’ at his home studio in Wolverhampton and also created a music video using the new song as the soundtrack married to the images of the reservoir created by the art group. The lyrics are shown in the video as the lyrics are sung so that they are accessible to Deaf / hard of hearing people.

Alex Vann is a founder of Real Arts Workshops (RAW) who deliver a wide range of visual arts and music workshops to community groups in and around the Black Country. RAW was commissioned by Mossley Big Local in 2019 to provide a weekly community arts group for residents of Mossley estate near Bloxwich, Walsall.

COMMISSIONED BY co-editor Heather Wastie

This video is part of Bostin News - a project by Creative Black Country that tasked 4 editors from across the region to commission works by fellow creatives as well as produce their own pieces. The project started during lockdown in May 2020 and includes music, poetry, storytelling, podcasts, interviews & articles, photography and more.