Woodland Tuesday workshops 2023

Woodland Tuesdays 2023

A summer of leaves, laughter and making things
In the woods of Buxton

Woodland Tuesdays are back! As part of Buxton Civic Association’s ongoing Stronger Roots initiative, the Creeping Toad team are planning a series of lively, creative workshops in woodlands through the summer

There will be pirate mornings, goblin and fairy moments, drawing, scribbling, sketching playing with leaf-ink and mud-paint and mapping the journeys of adventurous mice! 

• Events are free
• Activities take about 30 - 45 minutes and while you can drop in at any time through a workshop, it helps us a lot if you book a place through the eventbrite link
• individual links are attached to the workshop entries below but the whole set can be found here
• Materials are provided (apart from Gnome Morning on August 15th - please bring a short, clean cardboard tube if you can)
• If we are not at the main entrance to a wood, follow the flags to find us

Buxton Museum and Art Gallery

as well as making mischief and maybe some monsters in Buxton's woods, Creeping Toad will also be doing workshops as part of Buxton Museum's "make and take Thursdays". We're still sorting dates just now but details will be available soon on the Museum's eventbrite page: here. Keep an eye on the Museum's social media as well ("Buxton Museum" will usually take you there!)

July 25^th: Wild Woodland People in CORBAR WOODS: twig arms and stick legs, leaf wings and wild hair: we’re making forest monsters! Or maybe mud witches or flower fairies or leaf bears! Mixing woodland materials with heads, eyes and maybe some teeth, make a wonderful character, or a strange creature from the darkest corner of Corbar Woods!

Corbar Woods: entrance at the junction of Corbar Woods Lane and Corbar Road, Buxton

Eventbrite link: Wild Woodland Folk

 

August 1^st: Mouse Adventures, in GRINLOW WOODS, explore the woods through an animal’s eyes. Where would you go? Where is there danger? Where is there safety? Where is home or water or food. Where would a mouse have adventures? Design your own mouse house, mole home or squirrel castle, make your own animal puppet and map the woods for an animal adventure….

Grinlow Woods: Buxton Country Park, Green Lane, Buxton, Sk17 9DH (parking in the car park is charged)

Eventbrite link: Mouse Adventures

 

you might tell a mouse story...or a rabbit voyage or a mole mission....

August 8th: Woodland Artists: CORBAR WOODS: sketch, scribble, draw, colour, make paint from mud or leaf-greens, add bark rubbing and messy finger paint with mud and charcoal. Turn the wood into adventures, animals, excitements and monsters. Then tie your pictures together to make your own woodland sketchbook

Corbar Woods: entrance at the junction of Corbar Woods Lane and Corbar Road, Buxton

Eventbrite link: Woodland artists

 

August 15^th: Gadley Gnomes! GADLEY WOODS: deep in the woods of Buxton live a race of secret people….gardeners and growers, makers and animal friends, the Gadley Gnomes have lived hidden lives until now. Help us create our own Gnomes with birds nest beards and pointed hats, boots with curly toes and coats with bumblebee buttons. Please bring a small cardboard tube with you!

Gadley Woods: entrance off Gadley Lane off St John’s Road (A53) or down Gadley Lane off Watford Road off St John’s Road

Eventbrite link: Gadley Gnomes

August 22^nd: Grinlow Pirates! GRINLOW WOODS: make your own pirate captain. Fill a tiny treasure chest with nature’s treasures and make a treasure map of the dangers and daring adventures of the Pirate of Grinlow woods!

Grinlow Woods: Buxton Country Park, Green Lane, Buxton, Sk17 9DH (parking in the car park is charged)

Eventbrite link: Grinlow Pirates

 

August 29^th: Wonderful Woodland Giants: GRINLOW WOODS: who lives in our woods? Who lurks in the shadows or plays in the sunlight? We’ll make giant faces using leaves and twigs, earthskins and glittering mirror eyes. We might tell stories of monsters and feasts or friendly tree-people. Then we’ll make miniature versions in clay to take home and keep our woodland giant stories green and growing!

Grinlow Woods: Buxton Country Park, Green Lane, Buxton, Sk17 9DH (parking in the car park is charged)

Eventbrite link: Woodland Giants

 

Cakes, hats and picnics!

 

Buxton's Pride Picnic

23rd July 2023

Pavilion Gardens, Buxton
1 - 4.30pm

We’re looking for hats

We’re looking for books

We’re looking for stray boas, a floaty scarf or two, a fan to flutter

We’re hoping for cakes…..

 

Buxton Pride Picnic will soon be upon us and we are sure our regular picnickers will already be exercising their hula-hips and practising their “lying around in the sun looking elegant” postures! 

We are part of the Buxton Festival Fringe so pick up a programme or drop in on their website and go and catch some of their delicious shows!

 

We’re looking for some extra contributions as well....

 

Practical stuff first:

Date: Sunday 23^rd July 2023

Times: 1pm – 4.30pm

Location: the lawns in front of the Swimming Pool, Pavilion Gardens, Buxton, SK17 6BE

Parking: free on Burlington Road, pay and display in the Gardens (Burlington Rd entrance)

Buses: stops on St John’s Rd, West Road and Buxton Market Place are all within a few minutes’ walk

Train: we're about 10 minutes' walk from Buxton Train Station

 

one of our new banners from the lovely people
at High Peak Community Arts

Booking? Not needed! Tickets? Who cares! We welcome those who come with happy intentions and an inclusive attitude. Pack your own picnic, stagger along with that huge hamper and settle on the lawns of Pavilion Gardens for an afternoon of chatting and good cheer, lawn games and facepainting, maybe some singing…who knows. Our Picnic is always a very relaxed and friendly event with lots of families coming along and a wonderful range of ages (our youngest so far was just days old and the oldest in their 80s) and species (lots of pampered pooches and the Garden's enthusiastic ducks)

Thanks to all those folks who are helping by putting up posters, by making banners (High Peak Community Arts!) and a special thanks to Morrisons Stores for their donation towards games to entertain the throng!

 

Books

We have a book-swap table and invite people to bring their well-thumbed copies of Oranges are not the only fruit or the copy of Maurice that you never read or the edition of the Ladybird Book of Polari* that gathers dust in your closet. You don’t have to bring a book. You’re very welcome to have a rummage and take away something to read, anyway. We’re looking for books relating to LGBTQ+ people: fiction, non-fiction, self-help, trouble and tease might all work. I argue that the whole Mister Men and Little Miss Something series should be acceptable but am often out-voted….

 

Hats, Caps, Scarves and Flappers

There is also a dressing-up box for those who feel they need a bit of extra glamour to match the wonder of the other picnickers. We have a selection of hats, wigs and goodness only knows what but are always ready to welcome more – clean, please!

 

And then there are cakes

As before, we are inviting entries for the Buxton’s Big Gay Bake Off…Cake Off really

 

Yes, we’re looking for cakes but what they look like……we are expecting to judge as much on the wonder of their names as on their taste and appearance. We are hoping there might be some:

·      Gay Gateaux

·      or Bi-forest Gateaux

·      or Trans Flans

·      or Lesbian Tarts

·      or Camp Croissants

·      or Polari Muffins

·      or just a flutter of Fairy Cakes

·      Seductive Scones?

·      Risque rock-cakes

·      Who knows…..

 

Who knows….

 

Just to be clear:

a)   This isn’t a very serious competition

b)   Entries can be brought along when you come to the Picnic but they must all be registered by 2.30pm

c)   The only prize is everyone else’s delight and acclaim. There might be a rosette or two and the chance to taste someone else’s cake

d)  The Fabulous Judge’s Fabulous Decisions are Final

e)   Make sure your cake is edible – no cheating with glue and plaster please

f)   You are responsible for your own cake so please make sure you take any of it that is left away with you when you leave the Picnic

 

And our Fabulous Judge this year is no lesser a personage than 

Buxton’s own divine Delta Monarch

 

All for now, sweeties!

 

See you in a week!

 

* no, calm down, I know they didn't really do one but it's absence left such a gap in my childhood I've never stopped hoping it would just appear....

 

 

Sunrise and tilting at the Crawick

Sunrise and tilting

Midsummer at the Crawick Multiverse

21st June 2023

banners marked
the gateway

That cool blue stillness before a midsummer dawn. Mist pouring into the glens, clouds hiding the glow of the dawn 

We had gathered at Crawick Multiverse to mark the Midsummer Sunrise as part of the Multiverse’s “Summer Solstice Week”. Working with Open University Scotland , there was a week of events and seminars, talks, picnics, performances and ceremonies. The week set out to explore our world using the landforms of the Multiverse as inspiration and encouraging people to learn more, discuss and get involved in conversations about energy, climate change, lunar geology and ancient celebrations. The Multiverse itself is a spectacular piece of earth art, built on the remains of an open cast mine and now run as a charity, inviting people to explore both this landscape and the greater stories it holds, of comet trails and constellations, alignments and cosmic explosions.

A season for the blue-eyed hawks!

A season abounding in every harvest!

Glen of the ridged and pointed peaks.

Glen of blackberries and sloes and apples.

Glen of the ripening fruit. (1)


I was there to tell stories – and lead ceremonies. So, some 30 of us stood in the early morning light and watched for the sunrise over the hills. Marking the Solstice as a turning point of the year, we used poetry and teachings from different cultures that all mark this day in different ways. More animistic than anything else, our ceremony set out to invite people to reflect on the changing year, to appreciate the wonder of the world around them and to welcome that sense of wonder into themselves.

waiting for sunrise, c/o Mike Bolam

We drew on ancient Irish poetry and modern charms, Anglo-Saxon ideas and Sakha traditions and poetry. Some of our readings are available as a download if you want to read them – or use them for your own events. Download the readings here

We waited for the sunrise. The sun was shy and remained cloud-dressed during our ceremony, but to look away from where the sunrise wasn’t was to see that glory of mist and hills beyond the Multiverse, so we revelled in a morning of beauty

We celebrated with strawberries and tunes on a mouth-harp and we released people to explore the site and continue their celebrations in their own ways….all before 6am

Of course, Sunrise isn’t the actual moment of Solstice. That is the Moment of Maximum Tilt, which called for another celebration later in the day as we reached that pivotal point of the year. Noisier, livelier and altogether more raucous, our Maximum Tilt included a squad of school drummers (thanks, Mat!), a local choir and a harpist, a giant inflatable globe to demonstrate orbits, inclinations and tilts and the whole company walking into an inward spiral and cavorting out again.

The arrival of the musicians, photo c/o Mike Bolam

walking a Tilted spiral, photo c/o Mike Bolam

Sun, fair-wheel, elf-disk, candle of the sky, 

you empower the Earth while the wolf gives chase.

a local reminder of those
other traditions - an altar at
Brocolitia Mithraeum

The Crawick Multiverse Summer Solstice Week contained much more than the Solstice itself, but I wanted to mark the ceremonies – hence this blog. You can find out more about the week as a whole with Crawick’s own posts. On Saturday 24th among picnics and song and poetry readings, there was also an exhibition – "The Power of the Sun in the Greco-Roman World” from the The Baron Thyssen Centre for the Study of Ancient Material Religion to remind us of the lineage of our Solstice celebrations.

Visit this BBC news page for more coverage of the event

Grace of the clover,

Grace of the geese in the loch,

Grace of the gunmetal grey clouds,

Grace of the white clouds that catch the light

from Brodgar - the blessing in our readings

Many thanks to my fellow celebrants:

Graham Harvey, Liudmila Nikanarova, and Stephen Peake

Thanks, too to Mat Clements from Where’s the One, to photographer Mike Bolam (https://www.flickr.com/photos/landscapy/) to the Crawick team for all their enthusiasm, patience and hospitality, to Caroline (from the Crawick) and Kieran (from the OU) for managing the herd of cats that we were, with occasional toads creeping into the mix

And thanks to the singers, musicians, yoga teachers, school children, teachers and all the visitors who made 21st June 2023 so special!

Photographs:

unless otherwise credited, photos are by Gordon MacLellan


1: the verse pieces are extracts of the readings used during the sunrise ceremony. The full texts of the English readings from this ceremony can be found here

beautiful skies, photo c/o Mike Bolam