Deep dales and wild places

Deep dales and wild places

A new story for the Moorlands

with Gordon MacLellan

Wednesday 17^th February 2016

Flash Village Hall

(off A53 between Leek and Buxton)

7.30 – 9.30pm
SNOW WARNING 16TH FEB: HEAVY SNOW IS FORECAST FOR THE AREA TOMORROW. I WILL AIM TO POST STATUS ON HERE BY 4 PM TOMORROW (no, happen we're not bein' nesh: the road to Flash closes quickly!)

From the Dale of Goyt to the sweep of the Warslow moors, the South-west Peak is a landscape full of variety and excitement. Old stories are embedded in these hills with Gawain hunting for his Green Knight, stray mermaids, lost loves and wandering brigands.

This evening will explore some of those old tales and invite people to add ideas about the Moorlands today and help start some new stories.

Where are your favourite places, dreaded places, secret places, wild and windswept treasures, where are best places for picnics, or long walks or playing or walking the dogs? We will gather those ideas and feelings and start spinning a new landscape of stories and poems.

Join me for an evening of ancient tales and modern wonders

Practical stuff:

• Free
• Refreshments provided
• No booking needed but if you are coming it would be helpful if you could let us know!
• finding the hall: turn onto Brown Lane (signposted to Flash) just south of Flash Bar/Knights Table. Hall is 100 yards along Brown Lane on left

Ffi: creepingtoad@btinternet.com

Organised for: http://www.southwestpeak.co.uk

Images: 

double sunset at Glutton

icicles in Lud’s Church

Book review: The Ash Tree

The Ash Tree

Oliver Rackham

Dovedale in the 19th C*

Everyone knows ash trees. They are one of those trees that are simply there. Seldom huge and spectacular, or ancient and excessively gnarled or especially anything. We don’t generally eat their nuts or play with them or watch for them or decorate our houses with their leaves. But ash trees are always there. Ash is a tree that doesn’t quite. It produces wood but not that hard or strong or long lasting timber. That wood rots quickly. It doesn’t burn well. Its useful but doesn’t give building timber. It makes good cups. Good tool handles. Deer eat its coppice shoots. If they last long enough, those shoots sprout leaves that were used as good winter fodder for livestock. The wood bends well when steamed. The Ash Tree’s chapters on ash biology and its place in our history make fascinating reading: endless contradictions. Ash trees often don’t live long enough to really become individual landscape features as some yews and oaks do but “ash” turns up as an element in more place names than any other tree. Ash trees are just there. In 2013, as the hysteria about Ash Dieback was running through the media, I visited the upper Dove Valley here in the Peak District and looking out over a beloved landscape, I realised that almost all the big trees, those majestic figures in the middle of fields, on field corners, by the ruined barn over there, the fallen cottage here at the break of the slope are ash trees. I cannot imagine this dale without them, but soon they might not be there any more.

caves in Dovedale

The hysteria around the awareness of Ash Dieback Disease in 2012 was the push that produced this book and running through the slender but very tasty volume is the threat of what may – or may not – come with a return of Ash Dieback (which often doesn’t actually kill the trees) and grimmer warnings of other troubles whirring closer on beetle wings. The Emerald Ash Borer is the one to worry about.

The AshTree is good. It calmly and  lovingly fills in the background. It spreads a canopy over ash tree ecology, and unravels historical contexts. This is a book by someone who really knows what he is talking about, a long time champion of the British landscape. Rackham is – was (he died last year) – one of the leading ecologists of the last 20^th Century. His works are classics and if you haven’t read books like his History of the Countryside then, really….(I know, you’re waiting til they make the film). There is a sense, however, of a weary warrior. People like Rackham have given the same or similar warnings for years, to be ignored or dismissed over and again or to see recommendations so diluted down that money would have been far better spent elsewhere. The underlying politics makes fascinating and frustrating reading too and gives much to think about – not least a quick woodsman’s axe swing at tree-planting schemes.

Monsall Dale, 1808 with presumed ash trees

This book is a study of a tree and as such it is an interesting and rewarding read but as a study in the sensible approach to landscape conservation it is almost more intriguing and leaves me wanting to throw things.

The Ash Tree, Oliver Rackham, Littletoller, 2015; ISBN 978-1-908213-42-6

It also reminds me of:

Wych Elm: a wonderful exploration of this tough bristly branch of the elm family from the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, and

The Black Poplar by Fiona Cooper. I love Black Poplars. they have a powerful presence and are trees that always call em to just stop and sit beside them for a while

*there is a sort of logic to the pictures - images of Dovedale in the early 1800s. There are ash woods across most of these slopes now

Stories Alive! a thunderstorm of chopsticks

Stories Alive!

twilight music 

18th Jan 2016

it's quite hard to catch stamping feet....

Ben wrestles sticky tape

We began with noise…

This was a twilight session for teaching staff from the 5 nursery schools of the Stories Alive! Project. As the project draws to a close, we have been looking at areas we would like to develop more – not necessarily as a project but perhaps within individual nurseries. Our musician/storyteller, Ben McCabe had done an excellent job of inspiring both children and  staff musically during earlier workshops, giving all of us new confidence  in ourselves as musical people, so we gathered for an afterschool session with him.

We began with noise….

Over 2015, Stories Alive! placed 5 artists in 5 Nursery Schools (see below) in and around Burnley in East Lancashire. Our teams have been challenged to develop sets of activities to help embed storytelling and storymaking in Nursery practice, in families and in the children we are all working with. There have been storyhouses built, storysacks made, stories mapped, little adventures, big adventures, whole storyworlds of adventure. Because of the carefulness of photographs of young children, I’ve charted relatively little of the project so far but will hopefully catch up a bit now….

So we began with noise….

chair drummers, poised

We sang a journey: improvising an adventure with repeating sounds, actions and words, reflecting on the value of combining sound and movement. We played musical I-spy, creating improbable stories with improvised lines

It wasn’t all just fun, you know. We talked about the importance of playing with sounds for developing verbal skills. We thought about rhythm, story structure, dance and the abstract thought processes that represent action or objects with sounds and the value of recording patterns of sound - creating group scores as a way of thinking about writing. And we made a spectacular amount of noise with sets of cooking chopsticks (other wooden rods are available) on the backs of chairs (other furniture is also available)

ready for action

And that was fun. The rest of the evening was fun, too, but this was spectacular. A rippling seashore of noise breaking over the chairs: rattles and scrapes and thumps and scratches and 50 people laughing and concentrating and releasing a thunderstorm in a school hall

This has been a good project. This is still proving to be a good project!

Nursery schools involved

Taywood 

Newtown

Rockwood

Basnett Street

Rosegrove 

thunder

Stories Alive! is supported by Grants for the Arts 

and the Stocks Massey Bequest

Summer woods: the stories of the trees

Summer Woods

finding the stories of the trees

Saturday 18^th June 2016

Morgans Woods, Horsham

At midsummer, step into the long green shadows of the trees, touch earth and bark and wonder, pause, listen and reach out to the storyteller within you

Join artist and storyteller Gordon MacLellan, the Creeping Toad, for a day of delight, storymaking and discovering the stories the trees tell us

winter trees...

Summer Woods offers a creative connection to woodland. We will write a journey that will take us into the heart of the wood, shaping poems to feel our way through the trees, exploring, finding moments to treasure: characters, faces, maps of connections. This will be a playful day, a cheerful encounter with a woodland, a reminder that a smile helps us learn.

Working in the ancient woodland of Morgans Wood, we will gradually build our own links to individual trees or glades until by the end we will each (hopefully!) have a story to tell and have built our own tree book with drawings, poems, riddles and that story from the heart of the wood. Here in the Sussex Weald, oaks and hornbeams grow their stories and buzzards sing their songs over the treetops.

...cheerful leaves...

To book: contact Gordon to book and pay, form below

Costs:  full price £80, early bird booking £70 (before 31^st March 2016) (includes drinks and materials, bring your own lunch).

Payment: can be by cheque, BACS (contact Gordon for details) or Paypal (to: creepingtoad@btinternet.com)

Directions and any other instructions sent with booking confirmation

Camping: spaces for overnight camping are available at £10 a night (bring your own tent!) (see note below)

For more information about the workshop, contact Gordon at creepingtoad@btinternet.com

BOOKING FORM

Please provide the following information:

Name:

Address:

Email:

Telephone:

landline

            mobile

How many places are you booking?

Payment: how are you paying?

Directions will be sent with booking confirmation

Will you want to camp before or after the workshop?

How will you be travelling? Nearest Station is:  Horsham

If coming by car, can you offer any spaces to other participants?

 

...glowing trees

Camping further information

If you want to camp, we need to know on booking or well in advance. There is space for small tents and some campers. All camping is self-catering and water will need to be brought onto site. Please note that facilities are very basic and no showers or buildings are available. Small manageable fires may be permitted on request. £10 per head per night payable on the day.

who knows who - or what - else we might encounter?

Stories for the great outdoors

Stories for the great outdoors

or maybe

fir ye gurt ootseid?

 April 22nd 2016, 

Glenmore Lodge, Aviemore

 

this little character appeared on an earlier session

WildScotland are running their excellent “Art of Guiding in the Great Outdoors” training programme again this year. Here programmes can suit everyone from beginners to experienced group leaders, “allowing them to understand their guests better and to enhance their experience of the environment in which they operate”

I am involved in the “day modules” section where you can book on for individual sessions (rather than the whole programme) including such delicious treats as “Gaelic in the Landscape”, “Introduction to Bushcraft”, “Wild Stargazing”(with the delightful Rupert Hutchison). There are lots more: follow the link to become over-excited… And you could spend a day with me looking at some Environmental Storytelling

spinning stories out of scraps and found materials

“Stories, whether traditional or newly written, offer people an emotional, creative and intuitive way of engaging with the world around them. Well told, stories offer an audience ideas and experiences without dictating how they should feel or what a story should mean, encouraging listeners to value their own reactions to the places they encounter in a Guided Experience. This module will work with both established traditional stories and techniques to use in developing new stories with a group.”

During the day we will experiment with traditional stories, exploring ways of remembering and of telling and of making a story your own. We will wander, exploring as storytellers, gathering elements for stories from woods and weather, the stone beneath us, the sky above and just about anything that saunters past

Date: April 22^nd 2016 in Aviemore

Cost: £95 + VAT

To book: contact Wild Scotland

Tempted? I hope so!

See you in the mountains!

 

come away with a story to tell