Creativity, London

Creativity Conference,  London

 27th June 2025 
 Vue Cinema, Piccadilly, 

The Raindance Film Festival….and in one cinema we gather to talk about creativity, inspiration, passion and delight: what inspires us, how do we keep creativity flowing, how do we nurture our imaginations…. 

 I’m involved in two presentations at this first UK flowering of the Creativity Conference *

Wonder, Enchantment and Landscape: essentially, saying to people: let things go, abandon preconceptions and go for a walk: wherever: urban park, inner city street and plane tree square, mountain glen or roadside verge: just go and look and listen and breathe yourself into the richness of moss and stone and water and an excitement of dandelions….1 way of keeping creativity going: let the world have a conversation with you (presentations are only 9 minute long!)

 Then there is a panel on storytelling: 

Our starting point might be a few questions….but who knows where this will go! 

"why do we/you tell stories and maybe how do you use them?"    

"what sort of stories do you use?"   

"what do you hope the stories you use will do for the people who read/listen/experience them", which isn't necessarily the same as #1 above   

The answers to these are not likely to be discrete and starting at any one of them will bring in the others. I happily work across the spectrum of stories from ancient myth to 'just 5 minutes ago' craziness....maybe overall, for me there is the thought 

 "don't just say we use stories, it is good to think about why we use them and what we hope they can do." 

 Following up the conference 

 if it seems appropriate, I’ll post my powerpoint on google drive and add a link here

finding my books: 3 main books around just now 

Baba Yaga: tales of an old witch - a small booklet 

Waiting for the Snow: my latest collection of poems 

Old Stone and Ancient Bones: an earlier collection of poems (get through my website)

Sacred Animals: a manual for building a creative, personal spiritual relationship with the world around us

(links will take you to ebay pages for books...you could also visit my website's shop page)

The Creativity Conference is a global meeting of minds to explore the essence of creativity. We invite incredible creative speakers to share the wisdom they have gained from successful projects - and our definition for 'Creativity' is very particular: 'Any intentional decision'.

The Creativity Conference

Golden leaves and stories

 Gold Leaves and Fingerprints...

recent Creeping Toad adventures

in the rain in Corbar Woods: a damp and damper day that eventually drove us out of the woods and away from the last bluebells and the baby rabbits. But before the rain really hit, we heard about the Mystery of the Golden Leaf (spoiler: it was a cat on a scooter), and we met the fingerprint people who lives among the trees

footprints and other clues....

In Corbar Woods....

yesterday saw the second Leek Loves Books festival. More rain. But authors, talks, poets, the "What is Leek reading now" board (and the board itself made for very interesting reading....and round in the Toad corner I was telling stories and working with people to make puppets....and either making up stories to go with puppets or watching young people create their own puppet shows! The young people in these pictures all arrived together so i am hoping that the photos (sent in by a parent) are OK to use: if they aren't just let me know!

Spring wildlife

 A Book of Spring Wildlife
make your own concertina book

In the first of a series of events Celebrating Woodlands working with Stone and Water and Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, we invite you make your own Book of Spring Woodlands. We made boos like this on a very damp day in Corbar Woods on Tuesday 27th May. But if you would lie to make your own book, why not rummage around at home, find some bits and pieces and have a go...

 

You will need:

·      1 piece of thin cardboard (about 15cm x 10.5cm) - cereal packet card is a good weight

·      scissors

·      glue or a gluestick

·      paper for the bookblock (see below)

·      pencils, wax crayons, coloured pencils, scrap paper…

·      if you want some line drawings to get you started, you could print off the pdf sheet here

 

Make your bookblock: this is the set of pages that make the body of the book. You might use a long strip of paper (A2 (flipchart sized) cut into quarters lengthwise works well and makes 4 books – or one very long one) or take a sheet of A4 (standard printer size) and cut or tear it in half lengthways. Overlap the ends by about 1cm and stick them together (see below)

 

Write a poem for a page?

Falling sky splinters
Into scabious and cornflower blue,
While tormentil nestles in the grass,
Droplets of sunshine on the green

 

that first set of folds

Concertina: fold your strip of paper in half and then in half again. Unfold it: this should give you 8 sections of about the same size. Use those folds as guides to now fold the paper into a zig-zag pattern

 

folded to give a concertina

 

Try an acrostic perhaps? 

M - many harvest mice hiding

I  - in the long grass, swaying,

C - curl up in careful nests

E - every night in safety. 

 

Now you are ready to make your book! It is easier to work on the book before you fit it into the cover. Work on one side of your paper. On your pages you might:

• write
• draw
• add a patch of scrap paper and draw on that
• make a pocket
• do a rubbing
• print
• add a map
• make a pop-up
• think of something else…. 

Beetle stamps....

add a pocket

how about a map?

 

When it is done decide if you are having 

a) a book that unfolds completely – stick one end page into the cover. You could now work on the back side of your pages (Beetle stamps picture above: stick one end of the finished block into the cover)”

Or 

b) a book that is fixed at both ends. If you are going for this, you might need to refold your concertina so it looks like the picture below(Both ends ready to glue in)

 

Cover: fold the card in half. Decorate the cover. Glue in the book block….Title? Author?

 

would a feather fit into your book?

 

Please, send us a picture of your finished book! creepingtoad@btinternet.com

 

Thanks to the Buxton Civic Association for letting us be inspired by Corbar Woods

Derbyshire Wildlife Trust's Community Fund for being able to offer this event to y'all

 

NEXT EVENT: summer in Lightwood Nature Reserve on 6th July

 

 

 

The Woods in Spring

The Woods in Spring

free public event

Tuesday 27th May

First flowers and new nests, bumblebees buzzing and beetles trundling: join the Stone and Water team (including Creeping Toad) in Corbar Woods, Buxton, (thank you, Buxton Civic Association!) to explore the excitements of spring

Make your own Spring Wildlife Book and set out into the woods or walk (wander?run? trundle?) up the hill to Corbar Cross, adding your own discoveries to your book as you go!

If you want to find out more about the plants and animals you see, try the Wildlife Trust's Wildlife Explorer

We'll be inviting you to make your own Spring Wildlife Books: if you can't join us on Tuesday, there are suggestions to help you make your own book, here

Where: Corbar Woods, Corbar Rd, Buxton, SK17 6RQ

Finding us: come into the woods at the Corbar Rd entrance and follow the flags up the hill

What3Words: honest.shelved.household....or very near there!

Nearest bus stop: #61 to Cavendish Hospital

• Free event: no booking or tickets required

• Materials provided

• Activity takes about 45 minutes to complete

• Please note: there are no toilet facilities in Corbar Woods!

This is the first of our Celebrating Woodlands events 

with the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust's Community Fund

Lightbulb trees

Under the Lightbulb Trees

the Lost Stories of Glossop

Crystal trees and lightbulb trees

and the Rabbit who has an orchard of Easter Eggs,

Sunburst spiders,

a cat called Red Leicester,

and the place where unicorns go.....

 

Have you ever walked down a street and wondered, "Just what might have happened here?", or looked up at a building and thought "why on earth has it got that statue there?"

 

There is often (always?) a sensible response to questions like that. There are archives to explore, libraries to visit, historical societies to consult, maybe even householders to chat to...and those usually provide those sensible answers. With Lost Stories we were wandering off along uncharted streets and opening long lost story cupboards....Lost? Well, no, as that suggests that at some point, someone knew they were there. 

 

This project wasn't about sensible, historical or accurate answers. It was about sheer unbridled imagination. Encouraging participants to start with what they could see: in a photo, on a map, out of a window or growing next to them in a park and we then invited them to start drawing and talking and letting their imaginations run 

 

In a world where information and misinformation is so readily available, we wanted people to embrace an idea that simply invited them to come and out and play, here, where the cheese vans run, or, here, where the elephants wait, or, here!, where the unicorns play.

 

The Lost Stories of Glossop started with photos from the Glossop Heritage Trust and the Picture the Past archives and invited people to invent buildings, parks, and wild adventures that might have, could have, should have, happened in Glossop, Gamesley and Hadfield (with a quick detour to Chinley)

 

In the current collection, you can hear about those cheese vans, about a buried treasure that can traced by smell (only no-one dares to dig it up). Here is the Pink Palace of Chinley and the misadventures of William Worm.

 

The current collection of stories can be found at:

Lost stories texts

 

Lost Stories was part of the Glossop Hub for Derbyshire Makes, coordinated by High Peak Community Arts

 

and beyond a single reference, no-one knows anything more about Lightbulb trees. Funding is being sought now for an expedition into the Glossop Wilderness to find a grove of these rare plants and, for the first time ever, film them....or possibly find that dragons nest among the lightbulbs and eat camera crews....

And a little bit about Derbyshire Makes: 

Launching in February 2025, Derbyshire Makes shines a spotlight on the industrial history, inspiring landscapes and local communities that make Derbyshire unique. Taking place over three years, this programme of making-related events and activities begins with an annual free festival, from Friday 28th March to Sunday 27th April 2025. Spread across six local town centres in the spring, there will be walks, talks, exhibitions and more. A roving workshop on wheels. And a mass making project all about designing, making and showcasing textile-based creations – led by Alex Murphy, Derbyshire resident and recent contestant on the BBC’s The Great British Sewing Bee.

 

People from across Derbyshire and beyond are all invited to be a part of it: families, young people, adults and retirees. Come with your Nan, or your newborn. Make your mark, make a mess, and make a difference – because Derbyshire Makes needs you to make it special.

 

With many thanks to

Glossop Heritage Trust 

Derbyshire County Council:

Archives

Glossop Library

Gamesley Library

Hadfield Library

High Peak Borough Council

Derbyshire Makes

High Peak Community Arts

 

and all the scribblers and drawers, the cutters and gluers and storymakers and wonderfully crazy people who joined in our workshops!