Umbrella frogs and wartrees

Art, stories and creativity

exploring stories through art 

Chapel-en-le-Frith Primary School

June 2017

a walk through a work-in-progress tin forest

We travelled this week from Chapel to Africa and beyond. We walked on beaches, rescuing dolphins. We helped lonely beasts find new friends. We slipped over the edges of the world to where the Wild Things are and explored the seas of strange imaginations among Tin Forests and Lost Things.

We took some books and unfolded them, sliding in betwen the pages, expanding ideas, letting inspiration ricochet off ourselves and each other
I’m not going to do a detailed breakdown of what we did with ac class and sessions were so hectic I didn’t get all that many photos but what did gow out of it allw ere some wodnerfully tasty words, so I’ll share those

Books:

• The Greedy Zebra (we made animal models)
• Handa’s Surprise (animal masks)
• The Lost Thing (narrative poems)
• The Tin Forest (shadow puppets and a tabletop forest)
• The Lonely Beast (puppets)
• Dolphin Boy (drama, puppets)

shadow puppet tree for a wild thing

Where are the Wild Things now?
1. Across a hot and sandy desert,
Over a long, rotten wooden bridge
Past the horrible green trees
In the dark, scary woodland where the tiger owls growl,
There is a cave,
beneath a mountain where the grizzly bear snores

2. Through space and time,
Through the magical bond between the past and future,
Between the power of infinity and space and time,
Through the crystal cave where a green dragon guards a treasure of gold and diamonds and rubies and on beautiful golden horse,
There the wild things are watching through the horse’s sparkling legs.

wild thing princess

The Lost Thing
Where do you go to find a lost thing?

Through the bluebell woods,
Past the spooky houses,
Behind the Blue John Cavern ,
And over the creepy bridge…
Dangerous rocks will come tumbling down.
Dark crystals glitter,
Under steep cliffs
Where roses grow,
Roses as blue as the darkest sea.

There is an abandoned warehouse there,
Haunted,
Broken glass catching the light
Cries echoing through the cracked windows,
Lights flicker,
Shadows move.
There!

Venom leaker,
Baby carrier,
Creepy crawler,
Glass staining,
Mysterious object
Someone’s.
Someone else’s,
Lost Thing.

In a Tin Forest there are egg and bacon trees with frying pan birds and spatula squirrels whose flat tails can flip the fruit off a tree in no time. Umbrella trees and lollipop trees, that grow in a shimmer of pipes and tubes. There is a bicycle tree whose wheels turn gently in the breeze and a frying pan tree catching food from the air.

Other sifters of the breeze include the scavenger trees, netting trophies from the storm winds: a shopping trolley, a ladder, a wheel, a bike chain and a crutch. A rubber glove tree grows nail varnish bottles as fruit.

Umbrella frogs open their wide mouths as they hang from the branches of a trees. They catch food on their long hooked tongues and then snap their folding mouths shut around their prey.

A Rollercoaster Tree sprouts spring swings while a Wartree grows spearhead leaves but when it is cut in its turn it will bleed, rusting slowly into dust.

with many thanks to all the staff and young artists 

of Chapel-en-le-Frith Primary School

The mysteries of Fallibroome

Magic, mystery and wild imagination

Fallibroome Creativity Week

13 - 18th February 2017 

The Wizard of Alderley

  

What a week that was! I’ve arrived at Sunday after 5 days (Saturday was caught up in remarkably sensible discussions elsewhere)of giants and aliens, adventurous children, terrible dragons, a wizard, a horse and a set of sleeping knights, 100 painting, gluing artists, an eagle…

It begins to read like a shopping list for an adventure tale – but that would be another story

This week was Fallibroome Academy’s Creativity Week (this year’s theme was “Magic and Mystery”) where children from the partner primary schools all throw themselves (quite literally, there is a lots of dance and drama) into days that set imaginations free and running

Dragon 7

He arrives like curtains drawn across the sun

An exploding volcano of a dragon

His teeth are a saw,

Housed in the doom of his jaws

Eyes that glow as bright as lava,

Welcome you to the burning pools of his heart

first ideas for aliens

Trips to the Whitworth and Manchester Art Galleries, rub creative shoulders with adventurous science, dance workshops, Forest School and…I’m involved as one of the artists so tend to get swallowed by my sessions and don’t really build a sense of the whole thing other than the sheer scale of the organisation. But it is wild and wonderful and the Thursday evening sees a sharing event at Fallibroome where children and excited families fill the whole theatre. This year we saw dancing cats (well done, Mottram!), an almost abstract Wizard of Alderley (Nether Alderley – magnificent), the Wizard as a drama, Peter Pan in 5 minutes (well controlled, Tinkerbell). There were sound experiments on stage, a wonderful rescue of a stolen bride with fire breathers and jugglers and dancers (just what every rescue needs) and Fallibroome’s own dance club showed just what out of school clubs can offer determined young people. (Apologies for anyone I missed)

Dragon 5. 

Angry lightning,

A Lion’s roar,

A midnight evil,

Her heart a closed door

enchantment window in progress

But for my sessions….we went from charming – aliens from the book “The Loon in the Moon”, to mysterious – enchantment windows (you never know what you might see when you look through – we hoped for unicorns), to magnificent – a 3metre long frieze of Alderley Edge with contributions from 90 children, to captivating…images of the storytowers will follow. I did lots. The children I worked with did more. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and hope children did too!

a small but cheerful alien

Then we hit the Bollinbrook Dragons….I make no judgement, just post some of the reports below. The photos didn’t even get that far

 

Dragon 1. 

Diamond bright eyes in lizard scale skin

Dagger teeth are butcher’s knives

And his breath scorches in a shotgun blast

And his soul,

His frozen soul would freeze your heart

Dragon 2. 

She is a bright summer day until you open the wardrobe doors of her heart

Bedrock bones and dagger teeth,

With cheetah stealth she’ll stalk you,

Watching from eyes as cold as glaciers,

Welcoming you into the cauldron of her mouth

And the dark abyss of her winter soul

And we ended with the Friday afternoon giants of Mottram. At least we can end on some smiling faces. Don’t know what they are smiling about, of course...

Giant

Our giant is a stormy night in winter

With arms that cling as tight and wrap as strongly as a squid’s tentacles

His fingers prickles like cactus spines

He is an exercise machine of a giant,

Fast, strong, relentless,

Spring-loading his legs into trampolines,

He hammers people as nails into the ground,

But his hunger,

His hunger is a black hole that could swallow whole worlds.

at least some of our giants smiled!

With many thanks to all the staff and children (and apologies to the cleaners) of

Whirley Primary School

Bollinbrook Primary School

Upton Priory Primary School

Nether Alderley Primary School

Mottram St Andrew Primary School

And Fallibroome Academy!

Wandering houses and Titania’s troubles

Wandering houses and Titania’s troubles

Fallibroome Arts Week, 2016

The mountains of Ancient Greece

a temple from Ancient Greece

 A week of slightly deranged creativity draws to a cheerful close. These last 5 days have bounced me from Leek to Blackshaw Moor to Nether Alderley, Prestbury and Whirley. This could simply be a collection of delightful names if the names weren’t also accompanied by some delightful people

The majority of workshops were part of the magnificent Fallibroome Academy’s Arts Week where they coordinate arts input, trips and performances among the Academy’s feeder primaries where teachers take workshops to each other schools, classes go on trips to art galleries and the likes of me come into school and disturb the equilibrium a bit….

 

retelling myths

This has been my third year as part of Arts Week and I love it! I meet wildly enthusiastic children in friendly schools where people just dive in and have a go at whatever gets thrown at them…..

In Nether Alderley, we met Victorian explorers and the people, buildings and myths of Ancient Greece

The Storm.

Clouds in the sky,

Rain is coming.

Tip, tap,

Raindrops going tip, tip tap.

People in the puddles go splish, splash, splosh

While the thunder bangs and lightning crashes

With bobble hats and boots

Or no hats, no shoes, no long trousers, only shorts

We go out in the rain and the rain goes splash

And the wind goes whoosh

A storm strong enough to blow us away!

Running home,

Running home

Wet footprints in the hall

(Whirley Primary School, Reception)

At Whirley Primary School, we also discovered the scenes that Shakespeare missed out of Midsummer Night’s Dream

 

he forgot the angry trees

...and the dramatic castles

...he didn't tell us that Demetrius was carrying a ring

 And today in Prestbury Primary’s Reception classes, we heard of adventures….

 

brave nights cross a bridge over a river

There was the house that needed a pee, so it stood up and went for a walk. Eventually it found a swimming pool and relieved itself but having tasted freedom, the house didn’t want to go back to its own place in the  street and wandered off exploring. It found a cave and squeezed inside looking for treasure. But the cave was the home of a lion who, alarmed by the arrival of a whole house, roared! The house was so frightened that it ran all the way home and jumped into its space in the street. But it was in a such a hurry that it landed the wrong way round with its back door where the front door should be*. If you walk through Prestbury now, you might find the back-to-front house and then you will know it is the house that went for a walk

an adventure storyboard

 

an adventure following a path through a wood and flowers

Or there was the pirate who lived in a tall, beautiful house that had no kitchen, So he went off hunting for a kitchen. He looked in the wood of blue and yellow trees: no kitchens here. He looked under the bridge where the trolls lived: no kitchens here. He went into outer space on Alexander’s Flying Boat. They few to the Dark and Dangerous Planet: no kitchens here. They went to Saturn: no kitchens here! Coming back to Earth, the pirate went into a shop in Macclesfield: kitchens! Kitchens! Being a pirate he tried to steal a kitchen but it was too big to carry. So he went home and dug up some of the treasure he had hidden under his bed and went back and paid for a kitchen. Now he is a happy pirate

 Many thanks to the artists and storytellers of Nether Alderley, 

Whirley and Prestbury Primary Schools

* It is just possible that the house ended up upside down, “like that house in London”.

 

Midsummer Night's Dream: the Fairy Woodland

Summer stories

ready for stories

 Summer stories

Stories in school with Creeping Toad

Summer 2015

celebrating the richness of the season, here are old stories, 

new adventures and chances to create tales that

no-one has ever heard before!

With stories spinning from the first signs of spring right through to earth giants, summer flowers and thunder-tigers, here are stories and activities to enchant and inspire.

me, in action at Plas Power Woods*

I am now taking bookings for the summer term -and would welcome enquiries from schools, clubs, parks and nature reserves looking for public events, and just about anyone really! We all breathe the same air, maybe we can all enjoy the same world!

 Where

I am based in Buxton in Derbyshire and organise work spreading out from there. I am due in the north of Scotland for two definite blocks of time

Scotland

April: 20 - 29th

August 24th - September 4th

Other than that will be working across England, with a few days now and then in specific areas - Sussex for example in April and May.

So, if you're interested in a workshop get in touch and we'll sort something out

planning Arts Week? shaking your literacy up a bit? designing a celebration? hoping to get to grips with the stories of stones or the speaking and listening of your children....

Who are workshops for?

Most of my work is with school children from Reception through to the end of Primary , but activities can be adapted to suit Reception or High School students. Equally, public events might be aimed at families or shifted to suit particular audiences - I'm writing stories and poems with adult groups just now on one project and training teachers on another.

What could we do?

A day’s visit to your school might include

storytelling performances: lasting up to 60 minutes for up to 90 children at a time

stories out of anything! outdoors or in, we'll use leaves and pine cones, twigs and stones and shells to inspire words, create poems and shape a set of stories never told before

(allow 60 minutes for a class session)

story and book workshops: taking a bit longer (allow 90 minutes for a class) as well as discovering those stories no-one has ever heard before, now we will build those into the books that no-one has ever read before and leave the classroom with a library no-one has ever visited before!

pop-up storyscapes: allow an hour for a class: gathering ideas, images and words we’ll make quick 3-d landscapes holding the essence of a story or maybe the thrills of a lifecycle in a setting, key characters and the words that set the adventure running

a shadow puppet visit to a castle

shadow stories: out of my stories might come new stories: drawing on whatever theme we are working with to create quick performances of shadow puppets. Incorporating silhouettes, translucence and transparency, we'll mix science with story to create an (almost) instant set of story performances to show or perhaps to film

Ancient Lives: add a voice from the distant past to your history topics with stories that our Stone, Bronze or Iron Age ancestors might have listened to. Stories, models, artefacts and drawings can feed into art inspired by cave paintings, carvings and jewellery

 

inspired by Celtic jewellery

Old Scotland: sets of stories drawn from a Scottish heritage: tales of clans, of heroes and villains and the wonder-tales of an ancient Celtic world

your own themes and ideas: or are you exploring a particular theme that you would like to involve some stories in? pirates….tropical islands….ancient Greeks…fairies, frogs and trolls…..where in our school would bears live?…the Great Fire of London have all featured in recent Creeping Toad projects

How much?

 £250 a day: includes storyteller’s fee, travel and materials. Can be paid on the day or I can invoice you. 

Activities can be adapted to suit groups from Reception through to Secondary

 To book: contact me (Gordon) directly at

            creepingtoad@btinternet.com

            or by telephone:

            landline: 01298 77964

            mobile: 07791 096857

you never know who, or what, will end up

 in a Creeping Toad story!

* Plas Power Woods photo c/o Laurence Crossman-Emms 

and the Woodland Trust

Taking flight....

Taking flight….

Fallibroome Creativity Week

9 -13th Feb 2015

I thought these palm trees were amazing!
Mottram Reception class

What a week that was! Dragons, monster, flying carpets, Icarus falling out of the sky all over again ( will that boy never listen? never learn?), shadow puppets….

Once a year, in a spectacular commitment to their feeder primary schools, The Fallibroome Academy (a Specialist Arts College) in Macclesfield organises a Creativity Week that either places creative types in those schools, or supports other visitors, or facilitates out of school visits to art galleries and museums.

 

walking through dangerous woods, Broken Cross Key Stage 1

The scale of it leaves me gasping a bit. There are 8 schools and, I think, something happening in each school every day. I'm sure Fallibroome will document to extent of their own organisational skill! Here, I want to celebrate the schools who hosted me and the children, teachers and support staff I worked with…There are some pictures but not a lot - too busy for cameras a lot of the time! (So if any school people out there have pictures, send them through please!)

 

"we ate ice creams in the rain with a pink unicorn",
Broken Cross Key Stage 1

But my week ran:

         from feathering Icarus on Monday morning to carrier bag dragons in the afternoon.

Dragon hatching

  

Dragon 1

      

 

Dragon, 2

 Tuesday unfolded with everyone in Broken Cross Primary School. There were long pictures unrolling in scribbles across the floor, adventures being told, pop-up stories made. We started with the film "Up" and it's first five minutes but that lovely starting point got left behind as we picked up speed….

 

the Gingerbread Man visited Candyland

         Wednesday: and I was off making Chinese Dragons in Buxton Museum, but that's another story!

        

designing dragons

Thursday: and a Reception class (Mottram) set off on a flying carpet (losing a few folk when we went round corners but we had a whole class so we thought with commendable lack of concern,  what's a few children here and there? Our carpet unravelled into personal fragments and children made the landscapes they visited: seasides, icy wastes, jungles, deep waters and high mountains were all touched

And then there were shadow puppets….from a quidditch match - broadcast on Wizardly Flickervision that very Thursday evening to some 500 visitors in Fallibroome Theatre - to ravening dragons on Friday at Upton

Big eyes are watching,

Sharp claws are tearing,

Long teeth are shredding,

Pointed tail is stabbing,

Pigeon wings are fluttering

But golden scales shine bright and

This dragon glows like a sunrise

So, thank you all!

The Fallibroome Academy

Bollinbrook CE Primary School

Broken Cross Community Primary School

Mottram St Andrew Primary Academy

Upton Priory Primary School

Thanks for your enthusiasm, readiness to plunge in and make and improvise and do and for just having a go!

It was a delight to work with you all!

and we might as well end on a sinister note
with the path through the wood to a suspicious house

and a witch's spellbook built into the pop-up