Look Up! To See Beautiful Barnsley

Why Look Up?

Because we tend only to notice what is around our eye-level. There is also a great deal of decorative art to be found on the upper floors on the outside of buildings. In many cases, when the lower half of a building has been modernised, its upper half has been left in its original condition.

We have produced a booklet that can be used as a walking guide to some of the beautiful decorative art in Barnsley town centre. What do we mean by decorative art? We mean objects or features that are designed to look attractive or interesting.

They can be functional items that have been made to look attractive, for example decorative window frames and doorways, but they may also be purely for decoration. We can also find decoration in tiling, glass, signs, plaques, paving, water features and also in memorials and sculptures.

Our booklet, "Look Up! To See Beautiful Barnsley" is designed to last for a number of years so we have chosen decorative art that is likely to last for some time. This means that some types of decorative art, such as flower arrangements and graffiti art, could not be included.

We’ve worked with children and young people at the Y.M.C.A whose imagination ran wild. They created some really decorative houses and gardens. Some of our volunteers took photographs of features in the town centre and we held an event at the Central Library when we asked people to look at our wall of photographs and vote for the ones they likes most. One hundred people voted and this helped us to decide what to put in our booklet.

Here it is: Download Your Copy (Pdf)