Creativity, London

Creativity Conference,  London

 27th June 2025 
 Vue Cinema, Piccadilly, 

The Raindance Film Festival….and in one cinema we gather to talk about creativity, inspiration, passion and delight: what inspires us, how do we keep creativity flowing, how do we nurture our imaginations…. 

 I’m involved in two presentations at this first UK flowering of the Creativity Conference *

Wonder, Enchantment and Landscape: essentially, saying to people: let things go, abandon preconceptions and go for a walk: wherever: urban park, inner city street and plane tree square, mountain glen or roadside verge: just go and look and listen and breathe yourself into the richness of moss and stone and water and an excitement of dandelions….1 way of keeping creativity going: let the world have a conversation with you (presentations are only 9 minute long!)

 Then there is a panel on storytelling: 

Our starting point might be a few questions….but who knows where this will go! 

"why do we/you tell stories and maybe how do you use them?"    

"what sort of stories do you use?"   

"what do you hope the stories you use will do for the people who read/listen/experience them", which isn't necessarily the same as #1 above   

The answers to these are not likely to be discrete and starting at any one of them will bring in the others. I happily work across the spectrum of stories from ancient myth to 'just 5 minutes ago' craziness....maybe overall, for me there is the thought 

 "don't just say we use stories, it is good to think about why we use them and what we hope they can do." 

 Following up the conference 

 if it seems appropriate, I’ll post my powerpoint on google drive and add a link here

finding my books: 3 main books around just now 

Baba Yaga: tales of an old witch - a small booklet 

Waiting for the Snow: my latest collection of poems 

Old Stone and Ancient Bones: an earlier collection of poems (get through my website)

Sacred Animals: a manual for building a creative, personal spiritual relationship with the world around us

(links will take you to ebay pages for books...you could also visit my website's shop page)

The Creativity Conference is a global meeting of minds to explore the essence of creativity. We invite incredible creative speakers to share the wisdom they have gained from successful projects - and our definition for 'Creativity' is very particular: 'Any intentional decision'.

The Creativity Conference

Lightbulb trees

Under the Lightbulb Trees

the Lost Stories of Glossop

Crystal trees and lightbulb trees

and the Rabbit who has an orchard of Easter Eggs,

Sunburst spiders,

a cat called Red Leicester,

and the place where unicorns go.....

 

Have you ever walked down a street and wondered, "Just what might have happened here?", or looked up at a building and thought "why on earth has it got that statue there?"

 

There is often (always?) a sensible response to questions like that. There are archives to explore, libraries to visit, historical societies to consult, maybe even householders to chat to...and those usually provide those sensible answers. With Lost Stories we were wandering off along uncharted streets and opening long lost story cupboards....Lost? Well, no, as that suggests that at some point, someone knew they were there. 

 

This project wasn't about sensible, historical or accurate answers. It was about sheer unbridled imagination. Encouraging participants to start with what they could see: in a photo, on a map, out of a window or growing next to them in a park and we then invited them to start drawing and talking and letting their imaginations run 

 

In a world where information and misinformation is so readily available, we wanted people to embrace an idea that simply invited them to come and out and play, here, where the cheese vans run, or, here, where the elephants wait, or, here!, where the unicorns play.

 

The Lost Stories of Glossop started with photos from the Glossop Heritage Trust and the Picture the Past archives and invited people to invent buildings, parks, and wild adventures that might have, could have, should have, happened in Glossop, Gamesley and Hadfield (with a quick detour to Chinley)

 

In the current collection, you can hear about those cheese vans, about a buried treasure that can traced by smell (only no-one dares to dig it up). Here is the Pink Palace of Chinley and the misadventures of William Worm.

 

The current collection of stories can be found at:

Lost stories texts

 

Lost Stories was part of the Glossop Hub for Derbyshire Makes, coordinated by High Peak Community Arts

 

and beyond a single reference, no-one knows anything more about Lightbulb trees. Funding is being sought now for an expedition into the Glossop Wilderness to find a grove of these rare plants and, for the first time ever, film them....or possibly find that dragons nest among the lightbulbs and eat camera crews....

And a little bit about Derbyshire Makes: 

Launching in February 2025, Derbyshire Makes shines a spotlight on the industrial history, inspiring landscapes and local communities that make Derbyshire unique. Taking place over three years, this programme of making-related events and activities begins with an annual free festival, from Friday 28th March to Sunday 27th April 2025. Spread across six local town centres in the spring, there will be walks, talks, exhibitions and more. A roving workshop on wheels. And a mass making project all about designing, making and showcasing textile-based creations – led by Alex Murphy, Derbyshire resident and recent contestant on the BBC’s The Great British Sewing Bee.

 

People from across Derbyshire and beyond are all invited to be a part of it: families, young people, adults and retirees. Come with your Nan, or your newborn. Make your mark, make a mess, and make a difference – because Derbyshire Makes needs you to make it special.

 

With many thanks to

Glossop Heritage Trust 

Derbyshire County Council:

Archives

Glossop Library

Gamesley Library

Hadfield Library

High Peak Borough Council

Derbyshire Makes

High Peak Community Arts

 

and all the scribblers and drawers, the cutters and gluers and storymakers and wonderfully crazy people who joined in our workshops!

 

 

Green leaves and stillness

 

Green Leaves And Stillness

walking in the woods of Buxton

Grinlow Woods, summer 2020

I don’t walk in these woods as often as I would like…or even as often as I intend to. There is that moment when something calls me back to a screen just as I was getting ready to go. Or when I get to my “run away to the woods” bit in the diary and the clouds fall out of the sky*. Again.

But I do get here. It’s only 10 minutes up the hill, and another 10 into the woods and a stone, a bench, a tree root to sit on.

And yes, I will plug my headphones in, and even plug them into my ears as well. Doesn’t mean I am disconnected (thank you, judgemental dogwalker). 

        

Grinlow Woods, November 2021

Now, 

• notes are leaves or tree trunks or flowers, or pebbles or ripples on a stream’s pool.
• chords are movement, or distance, a moment seen through the trees
• songs unwrap landscapes, or maybe wrap me into a landscape
• lyrics often don’t matter much, maybe the emotion is more important. It pushes

 
And silence is an echo, the pause between tracks, a breath between verses. A fading note will do it, too. Everything stops.

 

 These woods open me, draw me out, take me in.

 

A chance to observe. 

To feel.

To experience.

No analysis needed. No cataloguing of bird, birdsong, flowers, trees, fungi. 

Just being.

O, with a note book

 

Grinlow Woods are managed by the Buxton Civic Association and are one of the treasures of our town! The BCA's Stronger Roots project is working on the management of the woods and inviting greater, wider and inventive access to the woods