With the help of a friend who was stationed at RAF Innsworth Boyce Drake came to Gloucester on a British Council scholarship to realise a boyhood ambition and attend Gloucester College of Art for a five-year course. Early days
In the early days he remembers many of the local community being either "hostile towards you or frightened of you", although he met a few people who were altruistic. "They genuinely couldnt care less whether you were black, white or pink". 
With help from several people he went on to get a scholarship at the Stuggart Institute to study restoration. In a teaching career that spanned 12 years at Elmbridge Road, Hatherley and Oxstalls schools he also worked as a freelance restorer for Gloucester Museum and private collectors. | | Our Untold Stories |
However he says that this created a form of social insecurity in black people. He remembers, that whenever a black person saw another across the street they would go across and speak to each other. It was later, while at Cheltenham College, that he discovered a partly burnt painting in an incinerator at the back of the art department and his career took a completely different route. With help from several people he went on to get a scholarship at the Stuggart Institute to study restoration. In a teaching career that spanned 12 years at Elmbridge Road, Hatherley and Oxstalls schools he also worked as a freelance restorer for Gloucester Museum and private collectors. Boyce now runs an arts materials and stationery shop in Eastgate Street but also fills his time doing art restoration, running classes in restoration and calligraphy, keeping fit and singing spiritual and folk songs at recitals. "Jesus said no human being is beyond redemption and I feel the same way about paintings. No painting is beyond repair." | 
