The town beneath the sea

 

Stories under the Sea

Littleborough Arts Festival

Sunday 27^th June

 

100 years from now, or 200, or 500. The Ice Caps have melted and the rising seas swallowed Liverpool, and Manchester, and Preston, Blackburn and Rochdale. People fled from the remorseless sea, finding crowded refuge in the hills of Lancashire and Derbyshire and the mountains of North Wales. But when the waves came to Littleborough, the people there found that they loved their homes, their towns, their families and their friends too much to leave. They stayed. They adapted. They changed…

 

 

This was where we started. Encouraging people to think about how the world changes, about climate change and consequences, we’ve been collecting the Stories Under The Sea as part of this year’s Littleborough Arts Festival. More events will follow but last Sunday saw the first stories from beside the waves take shape. We heard of shoppingtrolley submarines and mermaids on motorbikes. There were starfish and crabs and lobsters. In these distant days, seagulls nest in the spires of the churches and seaweed replaces grass in underwater gardens. There are new pets: dogfish, catfish and rabbitfish. There were seal-pigs and cow-sharks. People built double-decker-bus boats and dining-table rafts. As the generations move on, we find mermaids and fin-boys. At last, the Monster of Hollingworth Lake can wake and stretch and swim free again. Littleborough changes but its people remain and its story continues

 

 

 

Over the next few weeks those stories will be worked over and shaken about a bit so that when we all meet again in august – where there will be a trail of watery art-pieces through Hare Hill Park, the stories that I tell will include stories washed in by the tides of June

 

Make your own undersea book

On Sunday, we were making concertina books: these are very easy to make and just need a sheet of A4 paper, a piece of card for a cover and bits and pieces you’ve probably got at home. You can find instructions for making one here: Concertina book

 

You can download the book cover and useful pictures we were using here. These lovely pictures are by Alice Smith

Next events: follow the Festival on facebook: @littleboroughartsfestival  or on twitter - @boroartsfest to keep track of the next time the tide runs in.....

 

and just who is the Octopus Diver and what is her, his or its name?

 

 

A wonder of woodlands

A wonder of woodlands

free public events in Buxton, Derbyshire

July 2021

As part of the Buxton Civic Association’s Stronger Roots project, I’m coordinating an arts engagement programme of public events. The next wave of these starts with July…why not come and join us if you are in Buxton or thereabouts?

Art in the woods

During Buxton Wild Week and the Buxton Fringe there will be a number of art sessions in the woods of the town. You might like to hone your identification skills and make your own tree book, you might like to sketch, to be creative in Gadley or Corbar or Sherbrook woods or wander through the stories the trees tell us in Grin Low. Or exercise your imagination and shape a new story

IN THE FACE OF A SUDDEN SURGE IN COVID INFECTIONS IN BUXTON, BUXTON WILD WEEK EVENTS HAVE BEEN CANCELLED 

The post below holds links and details for all these events but to try to summarise….

 

Wednesday 7^th

10.30 - 12.30:   The woods of Grinlow

 

Thursday 8^th

10.30 - 12.30: Tales of the wild woods, Buxton Country Park

1.30 -2.30: Art in the woods (BWW), Corbar Wood

5 – 6: Art in the Woods, after school session (BWW), Gadley Wood

6.30 – 7.30: Art in the Woods (BWW), Gadley Wood

IN THE FACE OF A SUDDEN SURGE IN COVID INFECTIONS IN BUXTON, BUXTON WILD WEEK EVENTS HAVE BEEN CANCELLED 

Friday 9^th

1.30 – 2.30:Art in the Woods (BWW), Sherbrook Wood

4.30 – 6: Art in the Woods, after school session (BWW), Grin Low Wood

6 – 7.30: Art in the Woods (BWW),  Grin Low Wood

IN THE FACE OF A SUDDEN SURGE IN COVID INFECTIONS IN BUXTON, BUXTON WILD WEEK EVENTS HAVE BEEN CANCELLED  

 

Saturday 10^th

11am - 1pm: Sketching Trees with Geoff Chilton,  Buxton Country Park

 Sunday 18^th  

11am - 1pm: A Blockbuster with trees with RobYoung,  Buxton Country Park

Wednesday 7^th July

The Woods of Grinlow

Make your own tree book!

Combining finding out about the trees in Grinlow Woods with art, this workshop will take us through tree identification to printing, rubbing, drawing and writing to help us remember those trees. We’ll build our own books, lacing together pages, pictures and discoveries to make Tree Books to keep memories fresh and to add to as the leaves lengthen and ash-keys grow

Venue: Grinlow Woods, meet in Poole’s Cavern Car Park, event accessible for wheelchairs

Artist: Gordon MacLellan of Creeping Toad 

Time: 10.30 – 12.30

Materials are provided (but you are welcome to bring your own!)

Booking: this event is free but places need to be booked: The Woods of Grinlow Tickets, Wed 7 Jul 2021 at 10:30 | Eventbrite

Thursday 8^th July  

(4 events)

Tales of the Wild Woods

There are stories to be told in these woods, mysteries waiting to be unfolded. Join storyteller Gordon MacLellan from Creeping Toad for a storywalk through the woods, with stories to tell and new tales to grow. Gordon will share some of the storytellers art: encouraging visitors to create their own stories. Spinning wonders out of fluttering leaves and bird calls

Venue: Grinlow Woods, meet in Poole’s Cavern Car Park, gentle walk. 

Artist: Gordon MacLellan of Creeping Toad 

Time: 10.30 – 12.30

Materials are provided 

Booking: this event is free but places need to be booked: Tales of the Wild Woods Tickets, Thu 8 Jul 2021 at 10:30 | Eventbrite

Buxton Festival Fringe

10^th July

Sketching Trees with Geoff Chilton

The elegance of beech trees, the strength of ash, the grace of birch and the richness of hazel: our woods are full of wonders and in this event, we invite you to take a bit more time to really look, to get to know our trees. Join Geoff Chilton, a resident artist from the Green Man Gallery in Buxton and learn to sketch the trees of Grinlow Woods. Geoff will take you through a systematic approach to simplifying the drawing of a subject that can at first seem daunting

Venue: Grinlow Woods, meet in Poole’s Cavern Car Park, gentle walk. 

Artist: Geoff Chilton, https://earthpigpottery.com/

Times: 11am- 1pm

Materials are provided (but you are welcome to bring your own!)

Booking: this event is free but places need to be booked: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sketching-trees-tickets-161001839837?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

18^th July

A Blockbuster With Trees? 

Do you write? Do you want to write? Have you written before? Or not at all? Turn our woodland wonders into drama, action, adventure, romance, comedy…horror? Would you like to write a movie with award-winning writer and former BAFTA screenplay judge, Rob Young? Warm, witty and welcoming this workshop will play with laughter, delight and wild ideas….create a hero and walk them through a film, transform a painting into a movie, see a woodland glade as a dramatic set: it’s film-school in a forest!

Venue: Grinlow Woods, meet in Poole’s Cavern Car Park 

Artist: Rob Young, https://robyoung.info/art/

Times: 11am – 1pm

Materials are provided 

Booking: this event is free but places need to be booked: A Blockbuster With Trees? Tickets, Sun 18 Jul 2021 at 11:00 | Eventbrite

Tall Tree Tales

Tales of Tall Trees

or maybe tall tales of trees

~ the Stronger Roots Project ~

The shadow of a tree falls over the path, over your path, over your shoulder. The shadow of a tree falls over your heart with joy and delight. Or wariness, perhaps, as the branches sway while the wind is still, as the trunks creaks and leaves sigh.

Turning, we see the whisper of a tree-promise, floating away down the path, a leaf of opportunity to chase, to catch, to treasure….

We were talking about trees. Telling stories about trees. Listening to personal tales of trees: the best woods for den-building, the best trees for rope swings, the places where you would be disturbed (by interrupting adults), the places where you wouldn’t. Glades for picnics. Where there were rabbits. A stream to splash in. Children whose year of interrupted education had given them time to really get to know the woods of their town

During Buxton Wild Week, I was telling stories in two of our local schools: Buxton Juniors and Burbage Primary. I was there as part of Buxton Civic Association’s Stronger Roots project. Coordinating the Arts Engagement Programme within the wider project, we’re holding all sorts of events through the town over the next few months. 

We have made books among the bluebells. This weekend we made puppets inspired by the woods around us. We’ll be using tree identification to inspire printing and personal tree-books in early July (Buxton Wild Week, 2). There will be a sketching workshop and a film-story-be-inspired session as part of Buxton Festival Fringe later in July. 

Through August there will be Woodland Tuesday workshops: free, small, creative, and possibly quite frivolous, activities every Tuesday through the holidays. I’ll post details as plans finalise, or you can find more here

At Burbage, as well as stories, we had time to draw. They didn’t set out to be tree shadow pictures: we were looking at scribbling techniques and using that process to draw quickly and confidently, but when I came to look at the results, they felt like the shadows of trees falling over our lives.

All of this makes me think of workshops  our local community group Stone and Water ran last summer. Out of these sessions came various collective poems….one of which ends:

We are the people 

Who made the swings,

Who built tree houses,

Who fought with sticks,

Who made the bows,

Who fired the arrows,

Who fought the dragons,

Who camped in the shade,

And toasted marshmallows (on an ashwood fire.)

with many thanks to the pupils, teachers and attentive ears 

of Buxton Juniors and Burbage Primary Schools

Bumblebuzzing

The Great Bilberry Bumblebee Hunt

Markeaton Park, Derby, 12^th June 2021

We went bumblebee-watching, bumble-waiting and bumble-hoping. In this strange suddenly hot but-still-often-delayed summer there were a few bumbles about but not as many as we might have wished for. The Bilberries weren’t here: they are far more country-cousins than town bees. Further out than “country” Bombus monticola belong to the moors and upland villages of the Peaks. But places like Markeaton are gateways to the world of the high-country bees…walk through a park, enjoy the flowers, the butterflies, the bees…and next time you’re picnicking in the Peaks you might notice the bee that looks a bit different….

Here on the edge of Derby city, there were still bees about. And cheerful people! People following that wooden trail of carved posts, enjoying tongue length (? go and investigate Garden Bumblebees), wing beats (we had several 16 arm-beats a second and an unconfirmed 20….no comparison with a bumble’s 200). I was positioned at the end of this trail of questions, puzzles and discoveries. By the time they reached me, our bumblebee-hunters were ready to pause, to rest in the shade and chat, to draw their discoveries into big pictures of the bees they had seen, or hoped to see, or knew were there but had not yet seen…..

So we met the fabulous Markeaton Silver-winged Unicorn Bee. Like everyone before us, we didn’t meet the Camouflaged Bee because it is so good at what it does. We met fuzzy bees and friendly bees, Queen Bees and princess Bees, bees looking for pollen, bees loaded with pollen, bees nesting in wellies….

The Great Bilberry Bumblebee Hunt was an event organised by the Pollinating the Peaks project of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. Look in on the BCT website or keep on Twitter eye on @BuzzingPeak for information on the next events

Meanwhile, sit back, relax and enjoy some of our artists’ work from Markeaton Park. There is a bigger gallery here on the @creepingtoad facebook page.

Leafy pages and alchemist inks

Leafy pages and alchemist inks

Creeping toad training workshops in Dartington
27, 28th July 2021

From home-made ink to hand-made paper, from sudden stories to adventures in poetry, Creeping Toad is heading down to Devon again this summer to lead two days of training for activity and workshop leaders with Wildwise at Dartington. (the link will take you to the whole Wildwise training programme - lots there to tempt you!)

We’re offering two days of workshops: hands-on, have-a-go, try it for yourself, make a mistake and work out what went wrong days in the woods and garden of Dartington. These days are aimed at workshop leaders so they are a mix of practical and theory. Why do this? Where could this idea take a group? And the chance to simply have a go. That’s the best way of learning after all: to try for yourself, share the experience, and try again 

July 27th Alchemist’s Cupboard 

Times: 9.30 – 4.30 

Venue: Dartington, Totnes, Devon (more details with joining instructions) 

A day for experimenting: exploring traditional and improvising new uses for natural resources. The processes here draw on ancient techniques: grinding and roasting pigments, gently drawing the colour or potency of a plant into oil or suspension. They also encourage people to look more carefully at natural resources, find different ways of understanding what a plant or lump of rock has to offer: textures, colours, fibres all come into play here 

July 28th Wild Words and Leafy Pages 

Times: 9.30 – 4.30 

Venue: Dartington, Totnes, Devon (more details with joining instructions) 

Instant stories, sudden poems, an excitement of words: when we step outside into a wider environment, there are adventures everywhere and this workshop will explore ways of building those tales with groups. Alongside our storymaking, we will explore ways for recording our tales in storysticks and bundles, big books, small books, one piece books, pop-up landscapes and fold-out theatres. A workshop for anyone who wants to find new, or extend their existing, ways of playing with stories with groups or just for themselves. 

Questions? if you want to find out more, as a first step, visit the Wildwise website and the pages for the individual courses. if you have other questions initially, either talk to Wildwise (info@wildwise.co.uk) or try myself: creepingtoad@btinternet.com

BOOKING 

Rates: £80/95/120 (rates are for individuals, voluntary-charitable-organisations and businesses

1. Email: info@wildwise.co.uk Please provide your contact details and how you would like to pay i.e. BACS or card

2. By phone: call 01803 868269 (message service when office unattended)

3. Online booking (Eventbrite fees apply) – check the website for links for this: https://wildwise.co.uk/pages/programme/2021-dates/161