Take a wander to Garden Square and you’ll see a giant Dr Martens boot near to Beaverbrooks! The colourful boot is part of Northampton Borough Council’s giant boot and shoe trail. The boot is sponsored by Destination Nene Valley and has very kindly been donated to Rushden Lakes by Nene Rivers Trust.
Find the six special pictures on the boot and tap the blue camera icon in the Artcodes app to scan them! Discover more about the wonderful Nene Valley and local wildlife.
Background
In 2019 the Nenescape Landscape Partnership and Destination Nene Valley collaboratively sponsored and inherited one of the limited Northamptonshire Boots. Local artist Leanne Conroy designed and decorated the large Dr Martens boot as part of Northampton Borough Council’s giant footwear sculpture trail.
The project represented the landmark boot and shoe industry synonymous with Northamptonshire and the design commissioned for the Nene Valley boot depicts the wonderful natural landscape of the River Valley featuring many local species and also includes a number of discrete ‘Artcode’ images for those wanting to discover more.
Artcodes is a technology that allows users to interact with all manner of decorative imagery and patterns. Users simply point the app at an image and the app triggers whatever interaction has been allocated to the code embedded in the image, in the same way a phone reads a QR code. As hosts of one of the All Aboard to Rushden trial stops, Rushden Lakes is already familiar with the technology and we hope visitors will enjoy this additional feature on the Boot.
Boot Features
The Artcodes of the Nene Valley project began in 2018 as part of the Nenescape project, led in partnership with the University of Nottingham who created the ‘Artcodes’ technology. The project led to the creation of the All Aboard to Rushden Heritage Trail which uses Artcodes as a visual and digital connection to guide visitors through the popular Greenway route between Rushden Town Centre and Rushden Lakes. The Route follows the old branch line of the Northampton to Peterborough Railway leading visitors ‘into history’ towards the town and ‘out to water’ in the other direction to the Nene wetlands and main river. The All aboard app can be downloaded from IOS and Android app stores.
The Artcodes painted on the Nene Valley boot include wildlife characters which can be scanned using the Artcodes app. This can also be downloaded from IOS and Android app stores. Inside the app, users should select the ‘Boot-iful Nene Valley’ (top left) to scan the boot features!
We hope you agree the boot is a lovely addition to Garden Square and we hope you enjoy using the Artcodes!
