A season for stories, schools 2023

 Summer stories, 2023

Stories in school and other excitements with Creeping Toad

celebrating the richness of the changing year, here are stories, puppet-making story-building, pop-up landscapes 

and boxes of treasures 

Scottish dates:

15^th – 26^th May 2023

4 – 12^th September 2023

other areas: just get in touch

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

Drawing on 30 years of professional experience, Gordon’s work blends environmental experience with creativity. “Much of my work uses storytelling and story making but I also make small masks, giant masks, flags, lanterns, pop-up landscapes and create wild and wonderful occasions”

 

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)

finger puppets: we can make quick finger puppet animals or adventurers and create instant stories

From across lands and times: I can select stories to suit times and places: so we have had days of Native American stories, or Egyptian or Greek or Roman, there have been Chinese tales and African animal stories….lots of exciting resources to draw on here, to make new writing vibrant and lively. Castles are popular, too, with boxes of treasures to inspire a new adventure and release a bold princess or courageous dragon

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 in a setting, key characters and the words that set the adventure running

tales of old Scotland: a collection of stories of Highland folklore and Scottish histories, of heroes and sorrows, bravery and the magics of sea, mountain and moor. These can be steered in various directions and we might listen to stories from Viking days or medieval and Stuart stories and even add some Scottish explorers and their adventures and disasters…

your own themes and ideas: or are you exploring a particular theme that you would like to involve some stories in? In recent projects, we have also made talking stone puppets, a giant eagle to hang from a classroom ceiling, prehistoric rockpools, a swarm of shadow dragons, pop-up castles

 

Charges: £280 a day 

Fee 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 P1 through to Secondary

 

For further information: 

explore the rest of this blog or

visit the Creeping Toad website at

https://creepingtoad.com/

To book: contact Gordon directly at

         creepingtoad@btinternet.com

         or by telephone: mobile: 07791 096857

A Feast for Lost Travellers

A feast for lost travellers

 on tour in northern Scotland, April 2016

snow on the mountains

It is always tricky during workshops to catch the moments I treasure as photos. My camera tends to get left in corners or daubed in glue or lost in a pile of cloth. Wherever it lurks, it is rarely to hand on those critical moments when….

across the whirling, weird, wonderful waterfall
where the freaky, fabulous, flying fish
feast on lost travellers 

 (poem by Daviot School's storytellers)

drawing and story notes, Daviot

So I often feel slightly off-kilter when I’m trying to report back on the latest adventures as the images I’ve got do not do credit to the excitement of activities. (So come on, last week’s schools! All photos gratefully received - especially ones I can post here!)

I am working up in the north of Scotland just now…2 weeks of wildness from the beautiful woods of Middle and led more and a day for the Woodland Trust with alternating sunshine, rain and occasional hail. The weather then rather set the standard for the rest of the week,working indoors as the clouds variously added rain to puddles, hail to drifting lines across playgrounds or even snow in squelchy moments while it gathered in more dramatic sweeps across the mountains

A return to Daviot on Monday warned of the risks of wandering across the hills, let alone venturing boldly into any ruined buildings you might stumble across. But beyond the hills and the trees, the sea is always waiting….

a smooth sea on a sunny summer’s day,
darting dolphins dancing in the dark waves,
the voice of the sea invites us to dance with the dolphins

storybox theatre in action

We were making story boxes there and it was a delight to see people turning storybooks into instant puppet theatres….

exploring the haunted house while lightning hovers overhead,
climbing carefully through the crumbling windows,
into the echoing corridors,
following the sound of flapping wings to the room
of the rattling bones and chattering skulls

a castle from Culbokie

and a mysterious door from Kiltearn

fine details in Kiltearn

cheerful adventures in Strathdearn

Other hosts during the week were Culbokie (tales of old Scotland and heroes for adventures), Strathdearn ( exciting story landscapes) and Kiltearn (some very carefully precise artwork there, picking out the stones in old walls and enthusing about……..

Now it is May Day and the world turns towards summer (at least in theory). i was woken, to my delight, this morning at 5.30 by ravens having a loud discussions in the trees at the end of the garden and yesterday spent a sunny afternoon (hoorah!) watching the racing waters of Rogie Falls

Next week is fully booked but I am due back in Scotland in September if anyone out there reads this and would like to plan a session…

With many thanks to the lovely pupils and 

welcoming staff, 

our storytellers, artists and inventors of adventurers at 

Culbokie Primary
Daviot Primary
Kiltearn Primary School
Strathdearn Primary School

and with the Woodland Trust

a ruined castle from Kiltearn

and an adventure involving bats, caves and a bridge from Strathdearn

Kelpies

lists and more lists!

Heading north for 4 weeks on the road with a mixture of school workshops in the Highlands, writing time on Orkney and catching up with friends and family in between.

Getting ready 4 weeks of workshops call for some hefty packing however, trying to anticipate what might be needed and how much white card, how much black, any coloured card at all, or just be mean? How many workshops indoors, how many out? If we're outside can we use this card, or heavier, or let's just pick up sticks and lie furiously!

sort of ready for the journey!

En route to first workshops in Linlithgow (photos from that will follow), I stopped off at The Kelpies in the Helix Park in Falkirk. A monument by Andy Scott to the value of the heavy horses of the lost industries of the area, these statues are stunning. They tower, literally tower, over everything, especially when you walk right up to them and just stand there, open-mouthed, gazing up, muttering Kelpie-prayers and remembering (for me at least) not the heavy horses of the land but the ancient spirits who have haunted so many Scottish rivers and only brought  their "strength of ten" to the aid of humans when tricked and bound by silver-enchanted bridles or similar...

"Sair back and sair banes,

Frae carryin' the Laird o' Morphie's stanes

The Laird o' Morphie canna thrive

Sae lang as the Kelpie is alive"

Traditional : the Kelpie's Curse

Jim Carruth's words are used to evoke the legacy of the horses of central Scotland

Echo the great beasts that work among us

unbridled in this kingdom between canal and firth

here to harness the river

and carry each weary traveller

Bow down your strong heads to taste the water

Stretch up your long necks to face the sun

Jim Carruth (in front of The Kelpies statues)

And I am always inspired by Kelpies: their cold, dark pools and the rushing waters and the horse-Kelpie or the man-Kelpie on the riverbank enchants me!

Kelpie

Water,

Peat brown, tea brown

Staining mugs,

Baths.

Tanning skin.

Glowing golden, rushing,

Brown with life, spilling out of the moors

Off the purple-heathered muir-burn hills.

Rushes spiked and quivering,

Moss swallowing wood and stone,

And the body that sinks in the peat-bog wallow.

Feel the cold,

Pickled branches, pickled bones,

Drowned twig fingers

To comb the weeds from my hair,

The dream of the Kelpie in a dark pool.

from my book of poems Old Stone and ancient bones 

(what do you mean, you haven't bought a copy yet?)

Mountain tales

Mountain tales

a day of storytelling and storymaking in the Cairngorms, 

Sunday April 14th 2013

last year, this little character entertained us

an environment full of starting points

 As part of a weekend of activities on the Wilderness Guide Training Programme, I will be leading a story day at Glenmore Lodge

My day will include chance to:

• experiment with ways of making up stories with groups,   
• using the world around us - the world your wilderness walk has taken you through - to shape new stories         
• draw instant poems from weather, landscape and moment       
• techniques for learning and telling traditional stories

Make the most of those round-the-fire evenings…..

This weekend also includes workshops on natural navigation, astronomy and Scottish geology and landforms by some very exciting workshop leaders. (Watching the rings of Saturn through a  telescope on a cold Cairngorm night was one of my highpoints of last year!)

Each workshop lasts a whole day and you can book in for one day or two - or if you are inspired, perhaps you will do the whole training programme

For booking details and prices contact: http://www.wild-scotland.org.uk/pages/contact-us/

the wider horizon, 2012

More Small Things, and snow-covered mountains

A weekend in the Cairngorms with cold but bright days and snow on the mountains. Wonderful!

I was there to deliver a day on stories for activity and expedition leaders for Wilderness Scotland to extend their storytelling skills. This was part of an activity leaders' development programme, a joint venture betweenWS and the Institute for Outdoor Learning . Enthusiastic participants, nice venue and beautiful setting. What more could a'body ask for?

evening walk and knotted tree-roots on the banks of the Green Lochan

Lochan reflections

We spent Saturday evening in the company of Rupert Hutchinson watching planets rise and constellations twinkle slowly into sight as the skies darkened. Saturn looked like a cartoon of itself: such a small, precise image through the telescope. Venus and Mars glowed and we lost Andromeda somewhere behind Glenmore Lodge.

There was also an echo of an earlier post in the tiny peblle person who emerged during one of our exercises and promptly charmed the whole company so we took lots of photos of him/her/it posing….

Camster Cairns, September 2011

O, a surpise. A glory sitting on ridges above a boggy field: a round cairn and a long cairn, low doors facing the road, facing the east, gated but inviting. How much has this scene changed in the 5,000 years these cairns have stood here? Distant trees. Those shaggy tough-looking ponies could step across the centuries easily and the dark, wind-rippled lochan over the ridge behind me, might have bathed weary cairn-builders.

The moss came later, I guess. The sphagnum that swallowed the grassy stamping ground plateau in front of the cairns – although the obvious ceremonial spaces are a terrace and steps on the ends of the long cairn and behind it too, where the slope is gentler. The eastern doors, open onto steep slopes that spill down to that dance floor. Well, it was a dance floor for me, capering along the musical xylophone of the wooden boardwalk…

Too much talk, too much thinking! The passageway gates are not locked and visitors are invited to crawl inside…..

            How well did we build for our Dead?

            These stones, so carefully chosen, carefully stacked,

            Hand by hand,

            Muscle, bone and determination.

            A passage, a chamber to face the sunrise

                       

                        Here we rest,

                        Here we lie,

                        Bodies taken by fire and wind

                        Our bones charred to hold memories

                        Not just mine and ours but everyone’s

                        The tale of our people, soaked into our bones

                        Sunk into these stones

                        Stories not told for so many years

            How well do the Dead receive us?

            In these beautiful chambers,

            Rooms that ring with voices, with song, with chanted prayer

            A close tunnel, a crawl under watchful spaces

            Into this room that holds the voices of the Dead

            A cist opened out,

            Stone slabs that hold you, a thrill of contact, of connection

            A place to stop

            To be still in the darkness

            To listen for the sunrise

Thurso, Sunday 11th September 2011

After a day of adventures, Thurso is grey and rainy. Empty shops, boarded up, going to auction or just looking abandoned. The options for a tasy meal tonight are diminishing

Driving across an emptied landscape, warm with purple heather and golden green sphagnum in sprawling patches. Warm, maybe, but bleak with it, long shallow sweeps from one horizon to the next, ridges crested with plantations, and those peat-bog lochans that just lie there, caring nothing for burns in or rivers out, just drawing their water from these deep bog-soaks. What hope here for the crannog, sunk now beneath those dark waters? Trout? Eels? Or just the safety or life perched out on those kelpie-dark waves

A long history of human life and abandonment, from crannogs to the sad gable ends of long low houses standing in too many places across the wide mosses, legacies of shifting populations, or shifted moiré forcibly. Are these tumbled remains old enough to have been clearance settlements or do they speak of a longer, more lasting drain of people from the hills. Given the vehicles I tend to drive, I am wondering about breakdowns here. No mobile reception. In 20 miles I’ve seen two other cars. A farmhouse ahead: a sharp modern shape, but the ever-present sheep are loitering in the garden. and through the windows, these rooms are empty too

and I've left my camera leads and card reader at home....photos piling up and no postings! Frustrating! Will add images later