Find out all about our Picnic & Plays with the Bridgeton, Castlemilk and Cranhill Hubs!
These blog posts show what we got up to and all the Storyplay-ing we did!

Porridge & Play Hubs is running throughout 2022 with this block being the 2nd of our exciting New Scots Integration Project!
Thank you to everyone who has partnered with us to provide such amazing experiences for our children & families, and to all our Storyplay Champions!

We went on a Canal Boat adventure with the Forth & Clyde Canal Boat Society! The Forth and Clyde Canal Society was formed by a group of canal enthusiasts who felt that the decline in the canals of Scotland in the 1960s had to be reversed. They believe the canals are monuments to our industrial past and that they could be put to use in the future for the benefit of local communities and they could see that the decline in the canals needed to be highlighted to local and national authorities. After the completion of their main goal to have the canals fully reinstated for public use, they continue to support, promote and use the Canal in various ways!

We helped support this by chartering a boat and taking a grand adventure which you can read all about in this blog!!

 Picnic & Play on a Canal Boat!!

Thursday 30th June

What an incredible last session of Picnic and Play Cranhill!!! A huge thank you to the The Forth & Clyde Canal Boat Society volunteers for taking the Cranhill group on a brilliant adventure on a canal boat on the Forth & Clyde Canal in Kirkintilloch. We climbed aboard the boat and sang some of our favourite songs to get all warmed up and then we dressed up like the adventurers and said

“Magic Boat, Magic Boat, take us where we want to go! Magic Boat, Magic Boat, take us where we want to go! Magic Boat, Magic Boat, take us where we want to go!“

And off we went sailing down the canal! Rhianne grew up in Kirkintilloch and has many childhood memories of being on a canal boat! She was able to share lots of memories and stories from when she was a child, just like we will be doing in Block 3 of this project when we are making our AllScot Playcards!

The building of a canal across Scotland was first discussed when Charles II was King! However, it wasn’t until the mid-1700s that the Forth & Clyde Canal or ‘The Great Canal’ became possible when people came together to raise funds. The canal was to be built across the Central Belt of Scotland from east to west, connecting lots of towns together!

In June 1768 the work to build the canal began! That means the canal has been around for 254 years exactly when we went on our grand sailing with Licketyspit!  It is great to think about how many people have also sailed down the canal. People like us and people different to us, people from all walks of life! But we got to be right there with them, experiencing lots of firsts! Like Genesis who saw ducks for the first time! For lots of us it was also the first time we had been on a boat and what fun it was!

Of course, this wasn’t just any Canal Boat trip, this was a Licketyspit Canal Boat Trip! Which means we had to start our adventure by making ourselves as BIG as a BEAR! There were so many strong oxes on this boat! After we were all warmed up we got to sing some of our favourite songs, like Ickerickeroo!! We of course had to get the Dressing Up out and become canal adventurers! We got all Dressed Up and went to the front of the boat from which we got to see lots of cool sights.

Robert who is from the Forth & Clyde Canal Boat Society came and showed us a boat on the canal that had a herring stained glass window, he asked us what it was made out of saying ‘no one gets it right first time!’

But then Fatima said ‘it’s made out of the house next to it!’

And Presley said ‘Yeah, it’s made out of concrete!’

Robert told us that was right and was very impressed with our Canal Adventurers’ knowledge! We also saw a Castle on our adventure (also knows as St Mary’s Parish Church) and a family of Swans!

Funky Chicken Fact: A male swan is called a Cob. The female is called a Pen and baby swans who are less than a year old are called Cygnets

Princewell saw a Shark and Donald saw a Pirate! Priscilla saw some local adventures on a bridge we were sailing under and we all waved up and said HELLO!!! And the adventures on the bridge said hello back!

We were having so much fun but as you do on most adventures, we got hungry. So decided to all settle down and have our delicious picnic! We also got to do our Reflective Drawing on the boat as well as our Licketyspit Art Gallery!!

Here are some of the things we saw on our canal adventure:

Ibrahim: That’s me and André at the back of the boat we saw a shark, they were just swimming about.

Esme: That’s mummy and me and the guineapigs, they were pink and her name was Sparkle.

Heather: There were dragonflies that were coloured blue.

Amber: So this is a rainbow fish, this is the clouds and water, and the fish was jumping over the water. I saw it all with my imagination

Ariana: There is a mermaid with us.

Princewill: I saw fish. They were little and blue.

Mahek: I saw ducks and sharks.

Thank you to each and everyone of you for coming along on our adventures! And a big thank you to Robert and the Forth & Clyde Canal Boat Society for taking us on a grand trip for our celebration of Block 2!

What has been your favourite adventure?

Blog by Effie, Andre, Rhianne and the Porridge & Play Cranhill Canal adventurers!!

Thanks to our Hub partners, funders and Picnic & Play partners!

Porridge & Play Hubs Castlemilk, Cranhill & Bridgeton is a New Scots Integration Project by Licketyspit, in collaboration with the Indigo Group, Cranhill Development Trust & Church House.

For Picnic & Play we have partnered with Castlemilk Park, Tollcross Park, The Hunterian Museum, The Science Centre, Glasgow Green, Glasgow Women’s Library, Forth & Clyde Canal Boat Society, the Riverside Museum, the Tallship, Balloch Castle Country Park and Dream Machine! We’d like to say a big THANK YOU to all our partners for helping us provide such an amazing programme for all our families.

There is still plenty more to come for Porridge & Play Cranhill!

After such exciting Picnic & Play trips out we are venturing back to our hub and will be coming together to create our new AllScot Playcards!

These Playcards will be like the existing Licketyspit ones but now we will be exploring the other games you play and played and creating new ones!

These will be on display at our Storyplay Festival in September!