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

stories the bones told me

Tales of the Wonders

a world of cave bears and shadows

booklet £5.00 (includes UK P&P)

from creepingtoad@btinternet.com

During 2017, I was one of a team of artists working on an Arts Council England funded project at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery. “Collection of the Artists” invited us to respond to the museum’s collection creatively, exploring different themes through the artefacts in the museum and the local landscapes they came from

COTA has drawn to a close now and the finished works can be seen in the museum or accessed through its digital platforms (see list below).  I joined the COTA team as a storyteller and poet and had cheerful times talking to visitors, working with schools and other groups and simply sitting with bits of the Collection or wandering across hills and hiding in holes to listen to the stories the bones were telling me….

The resulting work from me can be seen in the Museum, accessed through the digital platforms (see the Wonders of the Peak app) or you can get your own copy of the collection either direct from me or from the Museum
As a taster, here is one of the pomes from Tales, for the stories you need to get the whole booklet!

Revealing

Time gently and untidily shelves

The memory of

Barrows and tunnels,

Treasures and tollroads,

Until all that is left

Are the bones and bits,

We sift from the debris of centuries

And the ghosts of facts,

And the stories we tell .

“Tales of the Wonders” is a 24 page A5 booklet including a selection of stories and poems inspired mostly by the prehistoric sections of the collection. My theme was “home”, wondering how people made new connections to places as wandering mesolithic peoples settled into our Peak District landscape as farmers and hunters, leaving marks on the landscape that we can still find and visit today. How did the Peaks become “home”?

Here is a story of the fox cubs who first found closed-in Fox Hole Cave as a sanctuary. Here is the last day of the people of Fin Cop and a Neolithic lullaby from Liff’s Low. There are poems from the waters of the Buxton and the old woman wandering the Gardens here who has been prehistoric healer, Roman goddess and Edwardian well-woman. Here are cave bears and compasses and walking away from the wandering herds….

Doxey Pool and storyteller, photo by Adrian Lambert

The COTA team

• Potter Caroline Chouler bound bone from Fin Cop into bowls 
• Richard and Amanda from Kidology, played the dreams of cave lions and landscapes and captured the precision of crystals
• Textile artist Seiko Kineshito has hung the colours and textures of the peaks in a cabinet
• Metalworker Simon Watson shaped ideas into bronze
• I was there as a storyteller and poet
• and photographer Adrian Lambert had the challenge of catching us doing all of the above!

Pop-up Theatres - a new instalment

Following on from the Pop-up Theatres piece from back in November (Pop-up Theatres), we are delighted to invite you to visit a slightly crazy film of the process!

If this doesn't play too well, follow this link direct to the film on YouTube: Historical Entertainments

A New Year begins in Ancient Egypt

It is a while since I last posted here with a Midwinter of escaping from workshops but not escaping for plans and proposals and grant applications....

Quick catch-ups

Wintry Lanterns in Sherwood Forest: 17th December 2011

And more recently there has been a trip back in time to Ancient Egypt at Annesley Primary School. PArt of an ongoing relationship with this lovely school, the Year 3s and I have been adventuring across the desert to the rich Nile Valley...at the same time, with the Year 1s I've been taken off to a rainforest somewhere (nothing too specific continentally but with lots of animals, hot, humid atmosphere and quite possibly Terrible Adventures)...more of that will follow

characters encountered on our journeys....

The lovely Sekhmet statue in the picture above is mede by my friend Maria Strutz

Making our own scarab beetle seals

...and building stories

and in a darkened temple room (or maybe a school classroom) a single ray of light illuminates a wall of  pharaohnic masks

practice mask

Pop-up Theatres

First images from this week's "Pop-up Theatres" workshops for Buxton Museum and the Enlightenment! project

Roman Ribchester

A week of Roman stories - not the ancient, well-worn, seasoned stories of heroes, villains, Aeneas, Romulus, gods and monsters but brand new, wild and unexpected tales from the imaginations of pupils at Springhill Primary School in Accrington

Ribchester museum display

During, and after, a visit to Ribchester Roman Museum we've been teasing out our own take on life, perils and marvels in Roman Britain

First ideas are attached....more will follow

A ROMAN MORNING

Silence.

Bees are buzzing, birds are singing,

Wind rustles the leaves,

The last butterflies of summer are flying.

Slowly, the morning fills with noise,

Soldiers marching,

Training horses,

Neighing horses,

Trotting horses.

Masons chipping stones,

Teachers whacking children,

Children swim in the river,

Dive in the water,

Fishing for food not fun.

On the grassy riverbank,

Chidlren play ancient cricket

5W, Springhill Primary School at Ribchester Roman Museum, 27/09/11

Stories are gradually taking shape....collectively (above), individually (below) using palces and objects explored at the museum

Some of the results have been quite alarming....