Lighting the Woods

LIGHTING THE WOODS

Take time to pause,

To breathe, to walk, to wander, 

To enjoy the woods of Buxton.

Step out in the darkest time of the year into an evening of wonder and remember summer flowers, butterflies, autumn toadstools and appreciate the winter cold

 

On Saturday February 21^st 2026, we invite you to take a walk through Grinlow Woods…tiny lanterns will flicker among tree roots, giant tree people will watch from the shadows, leaf-lanterns and shimmering birds will fill the branches. Join us for an evening of wonders

 

Creeping Toad is joining forces with Stone and Water, the Babbling Vagabonds and Buxton Civic Association to create Lighting the Woods, a project that will celebrate the woods of Buxton. The underlying theme is just that: "local woods: their wildlife and wonder"

 

And it depends upon our town's creativity to make it happen! We need to people to help make tiny lanterns, create woodland windows that will fit together into curtains to hang, nimble fingers to make little glowing animals!

 

The plan

We're aiming to set up a short self-guided walk from the car park at Poole's Cavern on Saturday 21st February in a loop round the woods. The walk will be there for about 3 hours and there will be lanterns to glow over, poems to read,  small, strange characters to spot…big, strange characters to wave to!  

There will be public events in January and February where anyone can come along (dates and venues below) and make a lantern to add to the collection (and make another to take home!). 

 

Events

Public events are still finalising: hopefully a couple more will join this list

All events are free

 

January: 

Sunday 25th: at Poole's Cavern: Woodland windows and wild birds : free, drop-in public event: woodland inspired art. Coinciding with RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch, we'll be encouraging people to have a go here at the Cavern but then to take information away to do a Birdwatch survey of their own at home

Event link: https://fb.me/e/5swu3d7Qk

Times:10.30-3.00

Venue: Buxton Country Park, Temple Road, Buxton, SK17 9DH

Moreinformation about the Birdwatch: 

https://www.rspb.org.uk/whats-happening/big-garden-birdwatch

 

February: we’ll add details nearer the time:for now, get these dates in your diary!

Sunday 15th: Buxton Country Park: bottle lanterns: drawing on the patterns of winter trees, leaf skeletons and the shapes of hibernating animals 

17th Buxton Library: bugs and beasties: using shiny scrap and fluorescent card to give us some wildlife for the final event

19th: ss at the Crescent: we’re joining the BCHT for their “Where we live is…Creative’ event. Come along and make some woodland wonders! We’re going for bottle lanterns, shadow shapes, tree windows  and  general wildness 

21st: Lighting the Woods: final event: late afternoon wanderings in Grinlow Woods

 

 

 

 

All teeth and claws

 The Lost Cats of Derbyshire
a new project, public events and a wonderful procession

cave lion skull in Buxton Museum

Once upon a time, big cats roamed the hills round Buxton. Scimitar-toothed cats* (Victory Quarry, Dove Holes) were here when humans wandered into the Peaks about 30,000 years ago, while cave lions lingered until about 12,000 years ago, (Hindlow Cave, near Earl Sterndale). Lynx loitered longer than anyone realised and might have been prowling Scottish forests into this millennium. Then there are our domestic moggies now, offering affection and purrs and sometimes causing chaos among our small birds and mammals

And, of course, at the moment, we have Mysterious Big Cats being reported like shadowy ghosts from across the county!

 

We’re celebrating cats! Especially the Lost Cats of our hills, cats who knew this land in different climates, with warmer– or colder – days and using their stories to look at the world around us as it changes again

 

cave lion reconstruction

As part of the Our Street programme with Buxton’s Heritage Action Zone, Buxton Museum and Art Gallery are bringing these lost cats back to the town. We’ll look at the animals that used to live here, reflecting on their lives as climates changed and wondering what they might make of our modern world and how our cats will respond to current climate changes. Connecting with the Art Fund’s The Wild Escape initiative, this project will use museum collections (we have amazing fossils and bones in Buxton Museum) to inspire people to reach out from those Museums and explore the world around us in new ways

 

Homotherium reconstruction

A partnership between the Museum, and Our Street, Lost Cats will draw together other local groups as well. Buxton Civic Association, the Babbling Vagabonds, Stone and Water and ourselves here at Creeping Toad are all involved. There will be a programme of events encouraging public participation. As the project develops further, there might be art exhibitions, origami cat workshops and a mysterious cat trail along Spring Gardens with the Our Street Youth Board. 

 

Events will be posted on the Museum, Creeping Toad and Stone and Water blogs and through the social media of all the partners (links below)

 

Getting started

drawing a tiger's eye

Big Cats: Big Pictures: our first event on Thursday January 5^th at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery….details to follow. This will be a free event, inviting people to look at the Collection’s fossils and bones, handle models, sketch, draw, colour and while we can’t do lifesize pictures of scimitar-toothed cats, we can probably manage a picture as big as a cave lion’s face….

 

Look out for:

• Another event on Thursday 23^rd February
• d-i-y guide to making your own Big Cat Puppet to join the procession
• more events in March and April
• workshops for local schools

 

All this activity, will build up to a procession, the Carnival of the Cats on Earth Day, Saturday 22^nd April 2023. A parade of big cats, small cats, cat-masked children, ancient ghost cat puppets will prowl along Spring Gardens and into Pavilion Gardens.There in the gardens, we’ll invite people to bring along their own snacks for a Kitty-cat Picnic (what would you bring for such a picnic? Mouse-shaped cakes? Sabre-tooth baguettes? Crunchy cat claws?). 

 

From museum displays, through the shopping streets of our town and into the Gardens that grow in the heart of Buxton, we’ll bring lost cats, forgotten cats, modern cats and maybe even future felines and have a celebration of the wildlife of Derbyshire.

 

*Our cats are Homotherium: their teeth aren't as big as those of "sabre-tooth" cats so they are usually labelled scimitars!

Images: 

• photos are from Buxton Museum and Art Gallery's collection
• "Tiger's eye" and "scribbled lion" are by Gordon MacLellan
• Cave lion and Homotherium reconstructions are from online sources with thanks and apologies to the artists responsible

 

 

 

Summer stories at Carsington

Summer stories

Tales of wild creatures and adventurous children!

ready for stories

Wednesday 29th August

Carsington Water, Derbyshire

the smallest thought can become a story

There are adventures everywhere and stories waiting to be told, or tales waiting to be heard. In the wind whispering through the leaves, in the shadows under the bench, in the sudden splash of something in a pond.

I will be at CArsington Water on Wednesday 29th for a day of tales of brave hedgehogs and naughty rabbits, fierce mice and reckless beetles. We will tell a tale or two and then create our own, making brand new stories for ourselves out of leaves and weather and whatever we find

There will be short sessions through the day, so come along and join in, listen, laugh and create your own tales of excitement, adventure or maybe terror

When: Wednesday 29^th August

Where: Carsington Water, Ashbourne: DE6 1ST

Times: there will be sessions running 10am – 12noon, 1pm – 3pm: any one session of stories and making things up lasting about 45 minutes – but feel free to drop in and drop out as you will!

The activity is free but there is a fee for car parking

Materials provided

Meeting point: outdoor classroom area

Booking: none needed

This will be an event for the Derwent Stories project  run by Stone and Water and like all these events, Summer Stories is open to anyone who wants to join in but activities are structured around families with children with additional needs

Contact for more info: fb: Stone and Water

Email: stoneandwater@btinternet.com

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

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