Building networks: Burrenbeo conference 2013

The official details of this year's Burrenbeo conference are pasted in below. I was at last year's event and it was rich and delightful. Good company, a wonderful setting and lots of thought-provoking sessions. so if you fancy a trip out to the west of ireland and the spectacular limestone landscapes of the Burren in July...sign up!

Place-based Learning – building a network?

Kinvara July 18^th-20^th 2013.

Building on the success of the inaugural Learning Landscape Symposium Apathy to Empathy – reconnecting people with place in 2012, the Burrenbeo Trust are hosting an intimate networking event this year for place-based educators, teachers, parents and anyone with an interest in place-based learning and/or learning in the Burren. 

This event aims to:

•                provide a unique opportunity to network with other place-based educators from Ireland and beyond, exchange ideas and experiences

•                hear from some leading practitioners both nationally and internationally

•                continue the momentum from our biannual symposium in 2012 and build towards our planned 2014 event

•                explore Ireland ’s ultimate learning landscape, the Burren.   

This event will feature interactive workshops in community venues in Kinvara village as well as field trips to the Burren, cultural events and much more.   It will start on the evening on the 18^th, the workshops will be throughout the 19^th, and there is an optional fieldtrip on the 20^th.  

Workshop leaders include:

Anita Goodwin tbc (http://www.outdoornation.org.uk/)

Gordon MacLellan (http://creepingtoad.blogspot.ie/)

Sam Moore (http://www.totemdevelopment.co.uk/)

Chris Chapman (http://www.changeexploratory.com/)

Michael Ryan (http://www.lit.ie/)

Gordon D’Arcy

Katy Egan

Sophie Nicol

Zena Hoctor

Shane Casey

….more workshop leaders to be confirmed shortly.

Cost: €70 (€60 for OAP/Students, €55 for Burrenbeo Trust members). 

Bookings are now open by contacting trust@burrenbeo.com and 091 638096 or downloading the attach form and sending it back.  Places are strictly limited and bookings will be on a first come first served basis. 

The full programme will be released shortly; keep an eye on www.burrenbeo.com for more information.

The Burren, Ireland ’s Learning Landscape - An Bhoireann, Tírdhreach Saíochta na hÉireann

Supported by the Heritage Council

Stories on tour: Wild tales and animals

Wild tales and animals

Stories in school with Creeping Toad September 2013

celebrating the Year of Natural Scotland here are old stories, new adventures and impossible fictions about the wildlife of Scotland

From heroic mice to wrens, eagles and mysterious trees we’ll meet stories that encourage us to look with new eyes on the world around us and remember that there are stories inside the humblest of creatures and the most ordinary of plants, and that we can all have adventures too

I am Gordon MacLellan – Creeping Toad – is one of Britain’s foremost environmental art and education workers…and I tell stories as well! 

Between 2nd and 13th September, 2013 (and probably again in November), I will be working in the Highland area (at least) and is available for bookings….

A day’s visit to your school - or your nature reserve or education centre - might include 

storytelling performances: lasting up to 60 minutes for up to 90 children at a time

stories outside! using the school ground, we’ll take storymaking out of the classroom and use the immediate environment, the day’s weather and whatever we can find to inspire words, create poems and shape a set of stories never told before (allow 60 minutes for a class session)

story and book workshops: taking a bit longer (allow 90 minutes for a class) as well as discovering those stories no-one has ever heard before, now we will build those into the books that no-one has ever read before and leave the classroom with a library no-one has ever visited before!

pop-up storyscapes: allow an hour for a class: gathering ideas, images and words we’ll make quick 3-d landscapes holding the essence of a story in a setting, key characters and the words that set the adventure running

tales of old Scotland: a collection of stories of Highland folklore and Scottish histories, of heroes and sorrows, bravery and the magics of sea, mountain and moor

I rather hope this isn't one of the
heroes of old Scotland!

your own themes and ideas: or are you exploring a particular theme that you would like to involve some stories in? pirates….tropical islands….ancient cave people…..where in our school would bears live?…castle adventures,  have all featured in recent Creeping Toad projects

Charges: £250 a day: includes storyteller’s fee, travel and materials. Can be paid on the day or I can invoice you

To book: contact Gordon directly at

creepingtoad@btinternet.com

or by telephone: 

landline: 01298 77964

mobile: 07791 096857

sometimes new stories call for ancient animals

Spring stories

Stories for the beginning of summer

the lodge at Beacon Hill

Over Beltane weekend, I'm doing two sets of storytelling to welcome the changing season

These will have a distinctly magical feel and might include tales of old Ireland and from the mountains and glens of Scotland. Then again, they might not.  There will, however, almost certainly be boggarts and beasties and probably some gurt hairy lumps and certainly a few flowers and quite possibly a tale out of the deep midwinters of long ago - just so we don't forget the snow that has been and that will roll around again!

Friday 3rd May, Matlock storytellingcafé

6.45pm: food available and  drinks, etc

7.30 - 10: stories start (with a break) through to 10pm

Tickets cost £7 from Greenway Cafe, Snitterton Road, Matlock or call 01629 580023

Storytelling Cafe is in the Imperial Rooms, Matlock, DE4 3NL

Sunday 5th May: Beacon Hill Country Park, Leicestershire

Join myself and the Beacon Hill team for a lively Beltane day. The event is free (car parkingcharges apply)   and will include stories in the big lodge (it's beautiful - come along just for the tipi if nothing else!), music and games. Usually there is a delightfully wild Morris side and often maypole dancing (and often that is improvised, too!). Bring a picnic and make a day of it - and when you can't take the merriment any more, walk up to the top of the Beacon Hill  - the second highest point in Leicestershire and made up of some of the oldest rocks in England

Beacon Hill

morris with lots of shouting!

Hoorah for the small and wriggly!

When the tide runs out: life in ancient rockpools

a finger-crinoid rests on our Ancient Landscape

We've just had a lovely day at Castleton Visitor Centre in the Hope Valley in Derbyshire. After snow a couple of weeks ago closed the centre, and the roads, and dramatic Winnatt's Pass, and froze our first "ancient rockpools" day out, today really counted as the start of public workshops for our Ancient Landscapes project

 

a sample rockpool was used to get people started

86 people joined us during the day to look at fossils and models of ancient

dangerous fish!

animals, and to stroke, prod, squeeze and generally explore our Ancient Landscape installation. Then most people made for themselves either a fossil fingerpuppet or an ancient rockpool from these far-off Carboniferous days (or both). Given what we were finding in our imagined rockpools, it's probably just as well we humans weren't around then!

We did make some practical discoveries, however, including "the easy way to draw a trilobite" - details will follow in another blog. And we met Toby with his lovely fossil blog - why not take a look? Fossilfriends

hoorah for the small and wriggly!

This project's activities always raises that question of " exact should we be" very nicely: just how much do we push "this is what it looked like"? On the whole, we share ideas, samples and models with people and let them improvise...so our orthocone nautiloids end up looking suspiciously like belemnites, and the few trilobites that were still around in Carboniferous days were almost certainly not a spectacular as our ones. And Hoorah for the soft wriggly and unexpected things that have never, ever been fossilised! But it si good to embrace a world without dinosaurs and to find people are quite happy working with small wriggly, squirmy, swimmy creatures and to ponder the shapes of ancient seaweeds....

But mostly, we made things....

Next event is Saturday 6th April -Miller's Dale

Skulls!

Book of the moment: Skulls

Skulls, an exploration of Alan Dudley's curious collection

Simon Winchester

Black Dog & Leventhal, 2012

ISBN-13: 978-1-57912-912-5

A beautiful book. It celebrates bone, with photographs that revel in the curve and the line, the sharp edges and deep shadows that make skulls so captivating.

Skulls is as rich and as stark as the bones it holds. There is minimal text. For each skull, we get the basic zoological information and that's it. But that's all that's needed. I find myself drawn in, turning pages, skeletal browsing and brooding a bit. The collection itself presented is intriguing. These are all from the collection of a single man. Alan Dudley has a collection of 2,000 skulls and a passion for collecting that eventually brought him into court with a handful of skulls that had slipped into his possession in breach of international and national law

A reminder not to lose one's own perspective perhaps. But then, open the book and revere the animals brought to you here, through the temples of their bones and be inspired.

 Natural History Book Shop - you could get a copy here

Black Dog and Leventhal - publishers

my own bones tend to end a bit more festive than the beauties in this book

The Grumpy Wizard

apropos of nothing at all....some Year 1 children and I were playing with words, hats and props last week and ended up with an unexpected story poem which was so delightfully silly, I thought we should post it!

The path to the Wizard's house

THE GRUMPY WIZARD

He had a pointy hat

And he had a pointy nose,

He had pointy fingers

And even pointy toes.

He pointed at the girls,

He pointed at the boys,

He worked some nasty magic

And turned them into toys

(not me!)

He took bits of cats,

He took bits of dogs,

He stirred a smelly potion

And turned them into frogs!

(you missed!)

He grabbed his magic wand

And made a fearful spell

There was a bang! and a flash!

But all that came was a smell

(oooo!)

Growing very angry

He grabbed his tall, tough broom

He woke it up with curses

And swept them from the room

(you missed again!)

"No, no, no", he shouted

"I'll get rid of all you lot"

He grabbed a bucket of water

And chased them with his mop

a path runs past the wizard's house 

The children all ran laughing

And up and down the stairs,

They jumped on the wizard's bed,

And played on all his chairs

The wizard started crying

And sat down on a stone,

He said that he was sorry

And didn't want to be alone

The children became his friends

He taught them how to bake

They cooked themselves a feast

With sandwiches, juice and cake

Year 1 (various classes)

Whitefield Infant School

March 2013

the Wizard's house is a ruin now, our story, the children and the wizard himself all long gone

Mountain tales

Mountain tales

a day of storytelling and storymaking in the Cairngorms, 

Sunday April 14th 2013

last year, this little character entertained us

an environment full of starting points

 As part of a weekend of activities on the Wilderness Guide Training Programme, I will be leading a story day at Glenmore Lodge

My day will include chance to:

• experiment with ways of making up stories with groups,   
• using the world around us - the world your wilderness walk has taken you through - to shape new stories         
• draw instant poems from weather, landscape and moment       
• techniques for learning and telling traditional stories

Make the most of those round-the-fire evenings…..

This weekend also includes workshops on natural navigation, astronomy and Scottish geology and landforms by some very exciting workshop leaders. (Watching the rings of Saturn through a  telescope on a cold Cairngorm night was one of my highpoints of last year!)

Each workshop lasts a whole day and you can book in for one day or two - or if you are inspired, perhaps you will do the whole training programme

For booking details and prices contact: http://www.wild-scotland.org.uk/pages/contact-us/

the wider horizon, 2012