A library in a field

Make your own Haymeadow Book

This idea can lend itself to all sorts of situations – you could put together a little book-building kit and make books about different places or different occasions

On our National Meadows Day event, we invited people to gather their own experiences, reflections and knowledge about the meadows they were visiting into little books….These are concertina books which essentially fit one long folded strip of paper into a cover. Once you are used to doing these, you could experiment – stick books together by the cover to make thicker volumes, have sections that fold out in different directions….

1. Finished books

You will need:

• 1 piece of thin cardboard (about 15cm x 10.5cm)
• scissors
• glue or a gluestick
• paper for the bookblock (see below)
• pencils, wax crayons, coloured pencils, scrap paper…

2. card cover and tearing paper for book block

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 cut into quarters lengthwise works well) 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

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

3. First folding should give you this

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 (Picture 3). Use those folds as guides to now fold the paper into a zig-zag pattern (Picture 4)

4. Concertina fold

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.

5. You might write, draw or print on pages

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

6. Add a patch perhaps or a rubbing?

make a pocket
do a rubbing
print
add a map
make a pop-up

think of something else….

7. Make a pocket?

8. Add a map?

When it is done, decide if you are having

a) a book that unfolds completely – stick one end page into the cover (picture 9). You could now work on the back side of your pages

9. 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 picture 10.

10. Both ends ready to be glued in

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

11.Would a feather to fit into your book?

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

Rippling ribbons of colour

Voices from the hay

 a BM125 event

gathers thoughts, feeling and wonders from an old meadow

An earlier blog described the new BM125 project and the following grows from the first public event there.

With BM125, we are encouraging people to reflect creatively on the connections between the Museum collections and the local landscapes they came from. Wherever we can, we will record those reflections. So here is our first collective poem, growing like a meadow itself from many seeds whispered on the wind or as word-pollen and thistledown blown on the breeze of people’s voices.
There will be a spoken version available soon as well

 

We sink
Into a field rustling and bustling with life,
Into a froth of grass,
Into a sea of grasshopper sound,
A dream where nothing changes.
The cows sleeping under a willow
Have been resting there for centuries.

 

Memories are rooted in these meadows,
In the fleeting lives of butterflies,
In nodding seedheads,
In thistledown drifting on a hot breeze.
Farms, families, paths, tools and stories,
All knitted to the earth as tightly as the turf.
Childhood holidays rooted here too,
New names, first meetings,
Stonechats, curlews, those grasshoppers again
 

The rhythm of a scythe echoes across centuries
They walked where we walk,
Those old farmers on a summer day,
The slice and hiss of a blade and
The whetstone that hones the edge,
Finding shade under these same trees,
Cutting the waving grass from the same sward.

Harebell and cranesbill
Selfheal and tormentil,
Scabious and burnet,
The names are an enchantment
A spell for a meadow,
Whispered on a dusty wind
Colour, scent, pollen and promise,
Foxtail, cocksfoot,
Fescue, vernal and bent,
The rooted and the free,
Meadow brown and large white,
Ringlet and tortoiseshell,
Prayers blown between earth and sky.

Futures are rooted in this rare and ancient place,
Still growing memories
Having fun in the river, catching insects,
A diving beetle!

Knapweed and burnet knod purple heads
Studding the rippling ribbons of colour
Black medick nods, yellow heads in the hot dry grass.
Seeds of the future in a rare and ancient place,
Lose the meadow and the memories wither too,
The cows across the field will sleep only in the present. 

SNIPPETS
And here is a set of small pieces that didn’t quite fit into the larger poem

 

1. Bumblebees embroider the meadow
Knotting threads with flight paths
Charting by pollen, by nectar, colour coding
Scent-coding, the maps of their lives.



2. Yellow rattle whispers,
Dry and sandy,
Small bones in a bag,
A snake’s angry warning.

3. Bony fingers in the tops of the ash trees
Point a warning to the future

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

5. The promise of memories to grow with the hay
The dread of fields empty of hope

With many thanks to all our poets and artists
There will be more BM125 events and posts here and in other blogs and on other platforms from our artists

 

Rustling and bustling with life

a sea of grasshopper sound

One field of grass, 

rustling and bustling with life

National Meadows Day

July 6th 2018

Buxton Museum and Art Gallery is 125 this year and to mark that anniversary, the BM125 project will bring together experienced with new and emerging artists with 12 months of artistic initiatives (we were hoping for a cake but the weight of the candles and their collective fieriness might prove inhibiting: a cake barbecued by its own candles?)

Over the next few weeks, these new artists will be introduced and the shapes of their work will unfold

Surrounded by a sea of grasshopper sound*

Meanwhile, there is an events programme running through the whole project, again exploring and celebrating the Museum collection and its relationship to the landscapes that collection came from. I am coordinating and delivering a lot of the events work and, as with the artists, the events will be looking for creative elements that can be recorded in some way and posted online. Impromptu puppet shows are planned, storytelling and poetry readings will be recorded, the collection, placing and possibly blowing away of land art photographed….

One field of grass, rustling and bustling with life

Seeds of the future in a rare and ancient place*

The first of these events drew Creeping Toad into a partnership with the DoveValley Centre, South West Peak’s Glorious Grasslands project and Stone and Water’s Summer Excitements events project. National Meadow Day (Saturday 6^th July) found us loitering in the dry but beautiful meadows of the Upper Dove Valley, revelling in the sweep of grass, sudden flutters of butterflies and swallows flickering overhead. There were meadow walks and river dipping, insect drawing and book-building. Meadows are part of our agricultural heritage as much as any old farm tools or buildings or ancient farmers. Their use, management, decline and recognition reflect our own awareness of the importance of our agricultural landscapes. You may find old scythes and seed drills in a museum, you may even find a toothless ol’ farmhand, but a meadow needs the earth beneath its roots and the weather that ruffles the grasses. You won’t find a meadow in a museum and they cannot be collected. They can be protected, grown and valued as places where history, culture and wildlife coincide. So, we took the museum to the meadows, inviting visitors to think, reflect and record their thoughts about the importance of such places both to themselves as individuals and within the landscape.

bony fingers on the ash trees are pointing to a sad future

Memories of childhood holidays: learning about flowers and butterflies; seeing birds not seen at home and insects, stonechats and grasshoppers*

A collective, communal-meadow poem as created during the day and will be posted shortly. Then there will be a “make your own meadow-book” post. Keep an eye open for these next posts….

Bumblebees embroider the meadow

Knotting threads with flight paths

Charting by pollen, by nectar, colour-coding

Scent-coding, the maps of their lives*

* samples from words collected during the day

amd many thanks to our spontaneous poets and artists - 

more of your work will follow soon!

twilight slowly claims the fields

 

 

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