Creativity, London

Creativity Conference,  London

 27th June 2025 
 Vue Cinema, Piccadilly, 

The Raindance Film Festival….and in one cinema we gather to talk about creativity, inspiration, passion and delight: what inspires us, how do we keep creativity flowing, how do we nurture our imaginations…. 

 I’m involved in two presentations at this first UK flowering of the Creativity Conference *

Wonder, Enchantment and Landscape: essentially, saying to people: let things go, abandon preconceptions and go for a walk: wherever: urban park, inner city street and plane tree square, mountain glen or roadside verge: just go and look and listen and breathe yourself into the richness of moss and stone and water and an excitement of dandelions….1 way of keeping creativity going: let the world have a conversation with you (presentations are only 9 minute long!)

 Then there is a panel on storytelling: 

Our starting point might be a few questions….but who knows where this will go! 

"why do we/you tell stories and maybe how do you use them?"    

"what sort of stories do you use?"   

"what do you hope the stories you use will do for the people who read/listen/experience them", which isn't necessarily the same as #1 above   

The answers to these are not likely to be discrete and starting at any one of them will bring in the others. I happily work across the spectrum of stories from ancient myth to 'just 5 minutes ago' craziness....maybe overall, for me there is the thought 

 "don't just say we use stories, it is good to think about why we use them and what we hope they can do." 

 Following up the conference 

 if it seems appropriate, I’ll post my powerpoint on google drive and add a link here

finding my books: 3 main books around just now 

Baba Yaga: tales of an old witch - a small booklet 

Waiting for the Snow: my latest collection of poems 

Old Stone and Ancient Bones: an earlier collection of poems (get through my website)

Sacred Animals: a manual for building a creative, personal spiritual relationship with the world around us

(links will take you to ebay pages for books...you could also visit my website's shop page)

The Creativity Conference is a global meeting of minds to explore the essence of creativity. We invite incredible creative speakers to share the wisdom they have gained from successful projects - and our definition for 'Creativity' is very particular: 'Any intentional decision'.

The Creativity Conference

Golden leaves and stories

 Gold Leaves and Fingerprints...

recent Creeping Toad adventures

in the rain in Corbar Woods: a damp and damper day that eventually drove us out of the woods and away from the last bluebells and the baby rabbits. But before the rain really hit, we heard about the Mystery of the Golden Leaf (spoiler: it was a cat on a scooter), and we met the fingerprint people who lives among the trees

footprints and other clues....

In Corbar Woods....

yesterday saw the second Leek Loves Books festival. More rain. But authors, talks, poets, the "What is Leek reading now" board (and the board itself made for very interesting reading....and round in the Toad corner I was telling stories and working with people to make puppets....and either making up stories to go with puppets or watching young people create their own puppet shows! The young people in these pictures all arrived together so i am hoping that the photos (sent in by a parent) are OK to use: if they aren't just let me know!

Spring wildlife

 A Book of Spring Wildlife
make your own concertina book

In the first of a series of events Celebrating Woodlands working with Stone and Water and Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, we invite you make your own Book of Spring Woodlands. We made boos like this on a very damp day in Corbar Woods on Tuesday 27th May. But if you would lie to make your own book, why not rummage around at home, find some bits and pieces and have a go...

 

You will need:

·      1 piece of thin cardboard (about 15cm x 10.5cm) - cereal packet card is a good weight

·      scissors

·      glue or a gluestick

·      paper for the bookblock (see below)

·      pencils, wax crayons, coloured pencils, scrap paper…

·      if you want some line drawings to get you started, you could print off the pdf sheet here

 

Make your bookblock: this is the set of pages that make the body of the book. You might use a long strip of paper (A2 (flipchart sized) cut into quarters lengthwise works well and makes 4 books – or one very long one) or take a sheet of A4 (standard printer size) and cut or tear it in half lengthways. Overlap the ends by about 1cm and stick them together (see below)

 

Write a poem for a page?

Falling sky splinters
Into scabious and cornflower blue,
While tormentil nestles in the grass,
Droplets of sunshine on the green

 

that first set of folds

Concertina: fold your strip of paper in half and then in half again. Unfold it: this should give you 8 sections of about the same size. Use those folds as guides to now fold the paper into a zig-zag pattern

 

folded to give a concertina

 

Try an acrostic perhaps? 

M - many harvest mice hiding

I  - in the long grass, swaying,

C - curl up in careful nests

E - every night in safety. 

 

Now you are ready to make your book! It is easier to work on the book before you fit it into the cover. Work on one side of your paper. On your pages you might:

• write
• draw
• add a patch of scrap paper and draw on that
• make a pocket
• do a rubbing
• print
• add a map
• make a pop-up
• think of something else…. 

Beetle stamps....

add a pocket

how about a map?

 

When it is done decide if you are having 

a) a book that unfolds completely – stick one end page into the cover. You could now work on the back side of your pages (Beetle stamps picture above: stick one end of the finished block into the cover)”

Or 

b) a book that is fixed at both ends. If you are going for this, you might need to refold your concertina so it looks like the picture below(Both ends ready to glue in)

 

Cover: fold the card in half. Decorate the cover. Glue in the book block….Title? Author?

 

would a feather fit into your book?

 

Please, send us a picture of your finished book! creepingtoad@btinternet.com

 

Thanks to the Buxton Civic Association for letting us be inspired by Corbar Woods

Derbyshire Wildlife Trust's Community Fund for being able to offer this event to y'all

 

NEXT EVENT: summer in Lightwood Nature Reserve on 6th July