storytellings, 2025

treasures to unpack, stories to unfold

Spring stories,

summer tales 2025

Stories in school and other excitements with Creeping Toad,

and ideas for public events!

 celebrating the richness of the changing year, here are stories, puppet-making story-building, pop-up landscapes and boxes of treasures. Outdoors or indoors, the natural world will give us stories and offer inspiration for child-led creativity!

Important dates:

World Book Day 6th March 2025- booked but other dates that week are available
On tour in northern Scotland:

• 18th - 27th March 2025
• 28th April - 9th May 2025

other days, other dates, other places!

With stories spinning from the first signs of spring through earth giants and thunder-tigers to summer flowers, here are stories and activities to enchant and inspire.

Gordon MacLellan – Creeping Toad – is one of Britain’s leading environmental art and education workers. Take a look at the Toadblog: Creeping Toad

Drawing on 30 years of professional experience, Gordon’s work blends environmental experience with creativity. “Much of my work uses storytelling and story making but I also make small masks, giant masks, flags, lanterns, pop-up landscapes and create wild and wonderful occasions. We might work outdoors and take ideas from the world around us and our discoveries there. Indoors herds of model mammoths combine with boxes of treasures to give children material to work from”

A day’s visit to your school - or a public event in a library, museum, the park at the end of the road, might include:

storytelling performances: lasting up to 60 minutes for up to 90 children at a time stories out of anything! outdoors or in, we'll use leaves and pine cones, twigs and stones and shells to inspire words, create poems and shape a set of stories never told before (allow 60 minutes for a class session)

NEW WORKSHOP: tools for writing

Taking natural objects, we'll build characters, use landscapes to describe journeys and reveal issues, problems or maybe terrible crimes. This workshop will give children ideas and tools for building stronger imagery into their writing and confidence to experiment and be adventurous with their writing. Most Creeping Toad sessions create stories but this is more focussed on literacy skills

puppets: we can make quick finger puppet animals or adventurers and create instant stories...or we might play with light, colour and shape and create an instant shadow puppet show or make rod and ribbon puppets to wander across a classroom....

from across lands and times: I can select stories to suit times and places: so we have had days of Native American stories, or Egyptian or Greek or Roman, there have been Chinese tales and African animal stories….lots of exciting resources to draw on here, to make new writing vibrant and lively. Castles are popular, too, with boxes of treasures to inspire a new adventure and release a bold princess or courageous dragon

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!

long, low, meandering river pop-up

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. These can be steered in various directions and we might listen to stories from Viking days or medieval and Stuart stories and even add some Scottish explorers and their adventures and disasters…

your own themes and ideas: or are you exploring a particular theme that you would like to involve some stories in? In recent projects, we have also made talking stone puppets, a giant eagle to hang from a classroom ceiling, prehistoric rockpools, a swarm of shadow dragons, pop-up castles

Charges: £280 a day (if you are a long way from my base in Buxton, Derbyshire, that price might need to increase a little
Fee includes storyteller’s fee, travel and materials. Can be paid on the day or I can invoice you.

Activities can be adapted to suit groups from P1 through to Secondary

For further information: visit the Creeping Toad website at

http://creepingtoad.blogspot.co.uk/

To book:

contact Gordon directly at

creepingtoad@btinternet.com

or by telephone: mobile: 07791 096857

slightly wild "prehistoric mouse"

Northern words and winter

 

snow on the Cairngorms, Nov 2024

Northern words and winter

 

extract from Wave Soaring

I feel very honoured that one of my poems has been included in the latest issue of Northwords Now (Winter 2024/25). NNow features "New writing, fresh from Scotland and the wider North (Sgrìobhadh ùr à Alba agus an Àird a Tuath)"

 

(So, yes: it includes work in English, Gaelic and Scots)

 

Copies are free and the printed copies can be found in bookshops, information centres, cafes and all sorts of places across the Highlands and Islands, or you can download a free copy from the website: 

https://www.northwordsnow.co.uk/Issue45

 

The cover image of Issue 45 is "Wave Soaring" by my lovely friend Alice V Taylor whose work can be seen here: 

https://www.instagram.com/alicev.taylor/?hl=en

 

As we are sort of in the cold now, the full text of "Now we are in the cold" follows. It is part of my latest collection, "Waiting for the Snow" and was first published in Issue 4 of Forget-me-Not Press (2022) "In The Dark":

https://forgetmenotpress.net/in-the-dark

 

Waiting for the Snow can be found on ebay or direct from me

 

 

Now We Are In the Cold. 

 

Now we are in the cold,

Now we are the hunting time,

And the wild geese fly in from the north of the world,

Stitching grey clouds to the hills below

With the long, wavering threads of their flight.

Winter waits,

For the silent, cautious deer,

For the birds to settle in the stubble,

For the hungry fox to take a chance.

 

Now we are in the cold,

Now we are in the hunting time,

And the stillness breathes

In the softest voice of the wind,

Whispering between the trunks, under the branches,

Among summer’s bones in the echoing wood.

Winter waits,

In the cracked ice,

In the wonder of an oak leaf, 

Frosted sharp on the bare ground

 

Now we are in the cold,

Now we are in the dark,

And we are hunted by the wildness,

And a bitter wind through the treetops,

And the cold, brittle silence of a snowy night.

And now, winter waits

For the sigh after the storm, 

For the single candle on the window sill

For my heart settling quiet beside a midnight hearth.

more snow on the Cairngorms, Nov 2024

Words and journals

 Where are Toadwords going?

Fossicking in the undergrowth of ideas 
and swapping stories with 

rooks and rats and midwinter wrens
....that's part of what writing is for me...

and music...working with Gifts from Crows

 

Adventures in print....the last couple of years have been lively for keyboards and scribbling pads (I usually write long-hand first, or at least cover an A3 sheet with notes!). I paused to look at where my writing had gone in these months. There are my new books: Waiting for the Snow and Baba Yaga: tales of an old witch that came out this year and Sacred Animals from last year. And then there are reviews, articles, poems and bits in all sorts of other publications....These pick up that Creeping Toad principle of looking creatively and emotionally at the world around us and explore past projects or unpack ideas and possibilities or are just delighted* wanders through the woods of imagination

 

Forget-me-Not Press: online art and poetry journal from Canada: I have work in Issues 4, 5, 6 and 7

Touchstone: the journal of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids

Faith Initiative: Issue 47 June 2023: the aim of the magazine is to open windows on the beliefs and practices of people of different faiths and cultures to foster understanding and reduce racially and religiously motivated violence. 

Homecoming: Aurochs 1, 2 (2023) and 3 (2024): journal of new animist writing

Primary Geography, Autumn 2024 the Geographical Association's journal for all Early Years and Primary Teachers and is published three times a year

Northern Earth, September 2024: exploring earth mysteries in Northern UK - and further afield

Pagan Dawn: the journal of the Pagan Federation

Magnet: 2024, an article on gardens as sanctuaries - both for humans and other-than-human people. Magnet seeks to nurture Christian faith in thoughtful, challenging ways, encouraging, enabling and equipping people of all faith traditions for life. 

Natterchat: the magazine of Froglife: I've hopped (and crept) into most of the latest issues

If you are associated with a publication and would like a Toad-piece, get in touch! Email is probably easiest: creepingtoad@btinternet.com

 

And there is music! a collaboration growing over the last year with the wonderful trio Gifts from Crows has grown into a release on bandcamp of "Whisper along the wind" combining Gift's music with my words and the beautiful images of Johanna Ronn

 

* delighted: at least I enjoy writing! hope other people enjoy the reading of it all!

Opening image: a white-faced owl who spent a day with me (recovering from flying into a window!) in Malawi in about 1984!

 

 

Lost Species Day, Buxton

 Lost Species Day

November 30th 2024

Free event in Buxton

We have lost many species of animals and plants over the last few hundred years. Some by human action, some in the more natural way of things, but we know that now our human activity is accelerating the loss

Monte Verde Golden Toad, Moroccan Bustard, Great Auk, Du Toit’s Torrent Frog, Galapagos Amaranth 

There is a lot we can do now as individuals, as communities and as a species ourselves, to slow those declines but this day and its events offer an opportunity to pause and reflect

Join us for a Lost Species Day event at the Green Man Gallery, Hardwick Studios, Hardwick Square South, Buxton, SK17 6PY

Times: 11:00 - 15:00

Follow on fb: https://fb.me/e/2ylY3MR7P

Steller’s Sea Cow, Levuana Moth, St Helena Heliotrope, Giant Fiji Ground Frog, Stubble Quail

Step out of busy lives and Saturday busy-ness and take to time to stop. Think about the plants and animals we have lost. Find your own resolution to act: on a domestic scale, a local scale or on engaging with something bigger. All sorts of action helps from planting bumblebee friendly window boxes to active membership of conservation, environmental or social justice organisations. Just talking about it all helps: keep the thought active, keep the conversation alive, pursue your local councillor down the street or wave a lost frog flag at your MP

Caribbean Monk Seal, Little Swan Island Hutia, Kalimantan Mango, Montane Hutia, Puerto Rica Hutia

But mostly, this day is a chance to take time to pause and reflect on why these animals and plants matter to you and which of the current ones you’ll champion.

In UK, Scottish and Welsh devolved governments have set up species champions where MSP and MS individuals take on campaigning on behalf of their chosen species…maybe you could be your own Species Champion

https://www.scotlink.org/link-campaigns/nature-champions/

https://waleslink.org/category/species-champions/

We’ll be inviting participants at our event to add the names of the species that feel most strongly connected to to our “determination list” and offering participants the chance to make their own memorial to those who have gone - or to create their own little Determined Shrine for those species they will champion

• We’ll be making triptych Icons and Nichos like the ones illustrating this post
• This is a free event and materials are provided
• Just come along for an hour or so and join in
• The Green Man Gallery Christmas exhibition will be on then as well so lots of lovely things of all prices will be available

Jamaican Wood Rail, Parana Pine, St Kilda House Mouse, North Island Little Spotted Kiwi, Aurora Frog, McPhee’s Shrew Tenrec, Rodrigues Solitaire, Dodo

Banner on the first paragraph features images from the 

Extinction Files by Ruth Evans: find  out more HERE

 

Witches, wizards and wonders

Wirksworth Wizarding Day 2024 

They gathered. Wizards, witches, young students, aged crones, occasional babies, the venerable and the unspeakable.... And I was there, spilling a hat full of stories...Wirksworth Wizarding Day was back!  This is always a lovely day and I miss most of the action....I heard about magical markets and the excitement of buying wands, about places to eat, a London Double-decker bus to get on....lizards, snakes and dragons to meet (I suspect that was before the actual moment when anticipation was running high). Someone had seen a Dementor. Someone else wrote a spell to turn people into zebras and was going to go and sit in the market place and try his spell. We reckoned if people didn't change on the outside they might change on the inside and find themselves sitting down to meals of grass....

 

And I was there telling stories: a day of non-stop tale-spinning, yarn-calling, and spell-shaking. Tales of mystery, malice and strangeness: a reminder that we live in a world full of wonders and enchantment even if we don’t see witches, wizards, and dragons as often as we might wish

 

In the aftermath, scraps of wizarding books were found on the floor, in corners, tucked for secrecy into recesses or hidden under chairs...We thought we should share them...

 

Wherever possible original spelling has been retained

 

 

 

WIZARDING DAY SPELLS

 

Fangtooth

FANGTOOTH by Sia

Do not even go neer to a Fangtooth or it will eat you bit by bit. first your feet then your legs and soon and soon. There are not that many left in the wild. there is one left but it is the most dangerous

 

SLYTHERIN

Sly, cunning and mysterious

Like snakes we are

You can't hide from us

Though you have a lightning scar

Harsh and mean we'll be

Even if you do fight back, or

Run, or fly away
In the end, you'll
Never win

 

Peter the grobllin

To turn into a black panther

Although this is written as a single recipe, it feels like 2 voices: try it with one person reading the yellow words and a helpful friend (who is rather worried!) reading the black!

 

Put black lizard tales

And poisoned frogs inside (a cauldron)

No-one has every survived

The potion won't be easy

Herbs and spices will not help (but stir anyway)

Eyes from a hungarian horntail (finish the brew)

Run for your life!

 

FROG SPELL

Get a caldron

and fill it with water

add 3 layers of brown paint

add stinking socks

add a newt's eye

boil for ages

Drink.

Start hopping.

 

A Summoning Spell

 

From deep ponds, I call you

from Rippling stream, I call you

Out of garden wall and flowerbed, i call you.

Great creatures of a damper world

Squat before me now!

 

As the moon rises and

Night draws in and the

Darkness fills the world

Touch my enemies with nightmares,

Once a night,

And every night,

Disturb their sleep with

Slime.

 

POTION OF TRANSFORMATION

This brews a lotion to rub on a wizard’s feet and turn him or her into something else.

No-one has ever watched this potion in action and been able to report back on what it does!

 

Take

 

1 long tail of a rat, and

2 handfuls of crushed snail shells, throw in

3 bones, well-chewed by a dog, and

4 egg cups of graveyard dust

5 whole chillis will make the brew strong and

6 cups of water will fill the cauldron but

7 matches are needed to light the flame

 

Brew the cauldron

Over a dried moss flame, and stir with an

Ivy-wood spoon and never, ever

Lick that spoon!

 

useful advice from a Witch's cupboard

Mice and

Umbrellas and

Green

Wellies will

Often

Result in disastrous

Toasted marshmallows

 

 

Wirksworth Wizarding Day is an annual event in October that transports the small town of Wirksworth in Derbyshire into a more magical realm

Find out more: https://www.wizardingday.com/

https://www.facebook.com/wizardingday/

With many thanks to Coach House Studios for giving us such a lovely space for stories and to all the eager ears (and associated bodies) who joined us for storytelling, who shaped spells, who laughed, groaned and 

were suitably (or unsuitably) excited by everything!