Lantern workshop for December

When: 1st and 2nd December 2012
When? 10am - 2pm
Where: Hadfield Hall, Hadfield, Glossop, SK13 2AA

What: a lantern making workshop, using willow and tissue to make simple processional lanterns with the opportunity to maybe be a bit more adventurous!

What? just come along and join in. Drop in during the session - give yourself at least 45 minutes to make your lantern (more for the more intricate ones). We'll provide materials and give you the chance to end up peeling glue off your fingers

leaves, pictures, patterns can all be
fixed into our lanterns

Cost: it's free! (I think)

Who: High Peak Community Arts have brought Creeping Toad (me!) in to lead lantern sessions with local schools and now with the public

lanterns might be fish, pirates ships...

What's it for? We are making lanterns for a procession on Friday 7th, meeting at the Hall at 6pm and then processing through the streets of Hadfield before the switching on of the Christmas Lights

and even party girls 

So come and join in, be creative, make a mess and then join the procession on Friday and add your light to lift the winter darkness!

a procession from Calke Abbey last December

Stories for a lonely Beast

Over the last 3 weeks, I've been working with children from Whitefield Infant School at Wycoller Country Park.

Each of three Year 2 classes has had a day at the Park working with musician Steve Brown and myself, using the wonderful Wycoller environment to inspire stories, poems songs and music about the Lonely Beast. In the book by Chris Judge, the Lonely Beast goes all over the world looking for other beasts to befriend...we picked up on his arrival in Wycoller....here are a couple of the children's poems

Arriving at Wycoller

The Lonely Beast went to Wycoller and saw

1 ruin where there might be dangerous ghosts, and saw

2 dogs barking loudly behind the gates, and heard

3 birds singing in the trees, and saw

4 slippery, mossy rocks beside the river, and saw

5 parked cars with nobody in them, and saw

6 houses full of frightened people, and took

7 big steps to get up the steep hill, and heard

8 chattering children splashing through the river, and heard

9 quacking ducks racing across the pond and saw

10 leaves drifting beside the high trees

How to find a Wycoller beast

Look under the bridge over the fast, stony river

For trolls in the shadows and slime,

Creep beside the river, with the tall trees dropping leaves,

Run up the long stairs where the goblins hide,

Then back down the path, sliding in the mud,

By the pond where the ducks play

And in the ruins, inside the fireplace,

Maybe Beasts hide there

Lanterns in Haregate

Tucked away on the edge of Leek in the Staffordshire Moorlands is Haregate, an estate of curving roads and open spaces with the ragged edges of the Roaches rising on the horizon. It is also the home of Borderland Voices and over the last couple of weeks of October some friends and I were working with Haregate schools and youth groups to build the components of a lantern procession

this looks amazingly synchronised!

autumn themes and colours

Come the event, a dramatic Hallowe-en evening, it rained. And rained. One youth group got stranded somewhere on the way back from Nottingham (serves 'em right for spending a day down in dungeons!)

lanterns loitering, waiting for adventurous processioneers!

a Lady lantern admiring herself!

But a hardy company assembled and we squelched our way, undaunted, round the estate, entertaining equally damp guisers and giving all those folk hiding behind their curtains someone to point at, wave to and talk about

And then we were warmed with soup and spider bread and pumpkin cupckaes!

Delight persists even in the rain!

(Thanks to Andy Collins and Viv Young for the photos - and with Sarah Males and the school and youth groups for your help, enthusiasm and hard work! And thanks to Andy for getting it all going and keeping it all together!)