Heads rolling across the market place....

Beware of the bridge!

Traditional Hertfordshire Project

an old lady with a wheeled basket, an innocent moment? probably not!

 

There was another day of storyshaping – thank you Whitehill Junior School in Hitchin! A day of ideas and possibilities, plunging into the depths of Wymondley Woods (from the safety of the school hall), rolling bowling balls and skulls and toppled carriages down Hitchin High St, burying treasures in St Mary’s Church, in fake graves (look for the tombstone with a chest carved onto it), in the tunnels under the Market Place (“you can get into them from my house”)

We despatched people to hold parties on roundabouts on 15^th June to watch for the headless ghost of Cavalier Goring riding from Pirton to The Priory, still hoping for safety from the pursuing Roundheads (at least they’ve still got theirs!)

Jack O'Legs as a puppet

Heads, or the lack of them, became a recurrent theme: there were headless horsemen, headless horses, and even a carriage that rolled around the streets collecting all these stray heads, until it toppled over (took a corner too fast) and spilled heads across the Market Place. We recommend not going ghost-hunting on the anniversary of that particular incident

And we heard of the (Horrible) Hair Rugs of Hitchin. There was, it seems, a household of elderly ladies and gents who would take pity on the poor waifs of the town and invite them in for tea and cake – and shave their heads (“you’ve got nits, my dear. This is the only way to get rid of them”).  No medicated shampoo here!. The out of the stolen hair the old folks would spin fine threads but with a slightly greasy feel, and weave rugs…so now, if you find yourself sitting on an old rug in a Hitchin house you should always rub it carefully between a thumb and forefinger then compare that feel with the feel of your own hair and make your own decisions about where you want to sit…..

There is a wonderful exhibition of Hitchin folklore panels that will be travelling around the county. The exhibition is full of interesting snippets and words and stories. We just added some new ones….

the Headless theme continues....

Public event on Saturday 10^th: wonderful music (thank you, Paul Scourfield), wonderful Morris dancers (thank you Baldock MidnightMorris) and wonderful people – and more headless characters….and thank you North Hertfordshire Museum for bringing me along to be part of all this!

thank you, Midnight Morris, for music, laughter and enjoying the dance!

Lost People and Marvellous Minerals

Lost People and Marvellous Minerals

events at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery

February 2016

visiting the Crescent in Buxton

We began with the people who used to live here, or might have lived here, or really should have lived here…and we ended up in kangaroos.

a villainous type, with staple scars

“Lost Peoples of the Peaks” built puppet characters inspired by the pictures around us on the walls of the Project Space at Buxton Museum. So we saw the elegant ladies of Haddon Hall, a deer that liked a woodland and some villainous types who loitered with pillage in mind in the caves of Dovedale.

There were wolves, too, and a cheerful rabbit and a remarkably stout mouse. And from somewhere a kangaroo hopped into the picture. We claimed it was the last of the Roaches Wallabies (if you have never heard of them then that is a sad story for another day). Explaining away the elephant was harder.

 

she wandered off among the wild rocks and tumbling streams

precision work

There were crystals of amethyst and citrine and delicately pink rose quartz. We wondered at the weight of galena and the glow of Blue John and tried to trick each other with Fool’s Gold. We met salty halite and the delicate strangeness of mica. We marvelled at minerals and took those inspirations to fashion our own crystal pictures. In an explosion of glue, tissue and cellophane, visitors made their own sheets of translucent crystal pictures. As precise as chemists, we measured out borax or alum or copper sulphate and armed with sachets of chemical and instructions,  our mineralogists have gone home to try to grow their own crystals. Hopefully, photos will follow….there are hearts and stars, snowflakes and scorpions crystalising around pipecleaners all over the Peaks this evening. It doesn’t always work!

Events at Buxton Museum

17^th February: Lost People of the Peaks

18^th February: Marvellous Minerals

There are  more events coming:

Check in at the Museum website

Or on the Collections in the Landscape blog for the next adventures

Many thanks to all our hard working, imaginative 

and very patient visitors! 

We pushed the Project Space to a limit these two days

Family event: First signs of spring, 8th April 2015

First Signs of Spring 

Pop-up card-making workshop 


Wednesday 8 April 2015, 

10am-12pm 

Buxton Museum, Terrace Rd, Buxton, SK17 6DA

Tel: 01629 533540 

 Join Creeping Toad for a seasonal morning. Celebrating new growth,  wriggling tadpoles, flowers, nests, and the first ducklings down in the ponds, we'll take our favourite moments of spring and turn them into pop-up cards

• Free, materials provided
• No booking needed, just come along and join in - allow at least 30 minutes for your making
• If you are 7 years old or less please bring a grown up with you, please

Summer events, 2013

Stone and Water, the community group I am deeply involved with here in Buxton are lining up some summer holiday events as part of our ongoing Ancient Landscapes project

They are all designed as lively family events but stray grown-ups are welcomed in their own right too! So why not come along and enjoy a fossil and a bit ofcreativity for your own sake!

The Ancient Landscapes Project is supported by the Peak District National Park's Sustainable Development Fund

Event summaries: details follow

All events are free (car parking charges may apply in some places). Family events suitable for children from 4 years and over

1. Tuesday 30th July: Life in ancient seas, at the Moorland Discovery centre, National Trust Longshaw nr Hathersage

- make your own prehistoric rockpool model! Sessions 11 - 1 and 2 -4, no booking needed

2. Thursday 1st August: Monsters from the Limestone, Buxton Museum and Art Gallery: SK17 6DA, making large puppet fossil animals from the depths of the ancient Peak District seas!, 10-30 -12.30, 1.30 - 3.30

3. Tuesday 6th August: Winnat's Pass Walk: exploring the millstone grits of the Dark Peak. Meet: Castleton Visitor Centre Car Park, S33 8WP, at 2pm. Walk 2 - 4pm, some steep slopes and off paved footpaths

4. Wednesday 7th August: Life in Ancient Seas at Leek PlayDay

Brough Park, Leek, 11 - 3: meet the Ancient Landscape team and make your own finger-puppet fossils or ancient seascape

Events in detail

I found this image on line
 - apologies to original artist!

1. Life in ancient seas

Date: Tuesday 30th July 2013

Venue: Moorland Discovery Centre, National Trust Longshaw, nr Hathersage

Times: 11 - 1 and 2 - 4

Booking: no booking needed just drop by and join in

Cost: free: materials provided (donations welcomed)- car parking charges may apply

Organisers and more information: this is part of the Ancient Landscapes project organised by Stone and Water (http://ancientlandscapes.blogspot.co.uk/).

What's happening?

Come and paddle in a prehistoric sea! Explore life in the Carboniferous Seas of 300 million years ago that eventually gave us the limestone, shale and gritstones of the Peak District. We'll look at fossils to understand the animals of the times, draw those animals and the corals and seaweeds they lived in. Then visitors can make their own model rockpool as a piece of ancient seaside to take home

2. Monsters from the Limestone

Date: Thursday 1st August 2013

Venue: Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, terrace Rd, Buxton SK17 6DA

Times: 10.30 - 12.30 and 1.30 - 3.30

Booking: no booking needed just drop by and join in

Cost: free: materials provided (donations welcomed) - car parking charges may apply

Organisers and more information: this is part of the Ancient Landscapes project organised by Stone and Water (http://ancientlandscapes.blogspot.co.uk/).

What's happening?

Exploring life in the Carboniferous Seas that eventually gave us the limestone, shale and gritstones of the Peak District. We'll look at fossils to understand the animals of those times, and build our own limestone creatures as puppets and masks - make a pet trilobite, wear a giant brachiopod, or have a tame crinoid or nautiloid to ripple home with you….

Basic activity is straightforward with lots of options for people to experiment with

we cna only hope the Pass will
be this bright in August -
it was blocked with snow in March!

3. Winnat's Pass Walk

Date: Tuesday 6th August 2013

Meeting point: Castleton Visitor Centre Car Park, Castleton, Hope Valley S33 8WP

Times: 2 - 4pm

Booking: no booking needed just drop by and join in

Cost: free: materials provided (donations welcomed) - car parking charges may apply

Organisers and more information: this is part of the Ancient Landscapes project organised by Stone and Water (http://ancientlandscapes.blogspot.co.uk/).

What's happening?

With National Trust Rangers, we will explore the geology of this dramatic gorge, meeting the millstone grit that eventually covered the limestone of the White Peak. A Stone and Water will help the group explore creatively: drawing rocks and shapes, composing instant poems, making up wild stories about the cliffs and caves of the Pass.

This walk will last 2 hours, has some steep slopes and will not remain on paved surfaces. Strong footwear essential and clothing to suit the weather

4. Life in Ancient Seas at Leek PlayDay

Date: Wednesday 7th  August 2013

Venue: Brough Park, Leek (beside the Leek Leisure Centre)

Times: 11 - 3

Booking: no booking needed just drop by and join in

Cost: free: materials provided (donations welcomed) - car parking charges may apply

Organisers and more information: this is part of the Ancient Landscapes project organised by Stone and Water (http://ancientlandscapes.blogspot.co.uk/).

What's happening?

Come and paddle in a prehistoric sea! Explore life in the Carboniferous Seas of 300 million years ago that eventually gave us the limestone, shale and gritstones of the Peak District. We'll be making personal finger-puppet trilobites and pet ammonites and models of ancient seasides…

Summer excitements

As hot sunny days arrive suddenly in a rush, I've been out and about telling stories, being told stories, making a mess and generally having a lovely time sliding people into creative ways of engaging with the world around them

A few examples follow....

Padfield

All geared up and ready for stories: a community day at Padfield village in Derbyshire for High Peak Community Arts

High Peak Comm Arts have a lovely yurt to tell stories in....

all ready for action: chair, drum and puppet.....

There was also a day at Risley Moss Country Park as part of a biodiversity project Warrington Museum have been running. Here, a team of young people and I explored the woods and made tree books, wrote new tree poems and invented some wild tree stories, aiming to use the group's existing bodiversity knowledge to inform our storytelling

MY TREE

My Tree,

It's thin and tall

but not so small,

That's my tree.

Ash and ivy are leaves

that'll scuttle up your sleeves,

That's my tree

Bright red lines are the marks

that dance around the dark brown bark,

That's my tree

There is no tree that smiles with glee

But my tree

BIO-COUNT

One bird chirping in a tree,

Two blue dragonflies fluttering by the tree,

Three damselflies chasing each other over the pond,

Four daisies blooming in the sun,

Five flies flying away,

Six children squelching in the mud,

Eight birds in a flock,

Nine trees almost making a forest,

Ten buildings in the distance

Most recently, we've just had a day of running Away with the Faeries, Goblins and Trolls....but that can make a new post

Ancient Landscapes

Walking through the Peak District, we step on stories that run through all the long years of human life in Britain. They run still further back until the landscapes of 300 million years ago are worn smooth by our feet

The limestone of the White Peak can tell us about ancient seas and fabulous animals from before the days of the dinosaurs. In this project we will explore those rocks: visiting outdoor sites, looking at fossils and formations, building on our understanding of how those prehistoric environments shape the landscapes around us now. We will look at the end of the limestone days, and the climate change that shifted a world from limestone to millstone grit

 Introduction to the Ancient Landscapes project

Today saw our first sessions in the pilot workshops for this exciting project looking at the environments that grew the landscapes we live in here in the Peak district of Derbyshire and Staffordshire. Our first two groups met today - with people from Borderland Voices in Leek and participants of High Peak Community Arts' Project eARTh initiative

generous richnesses from the museum to work with

At Buxton Museum and Art Gallery we discussed the possible form of those ancient worlds, looked at fossils, drawing them, touching them, getting to know them, 

"when I look at this one, I see pictures. I see sunsets. Not my sunsets but maybe its sunsets"

Ideas grew out of fossils and sample artworks - we want to build those ancient landscapes as textile, model and puppet installations

we could make mobiles of sea creatures to hang from the ceiling so people walk under them. We could change lights so that the colour and movement suggests being underwater

Rag-rugs might give textures underfoot

We could record sounds, make a soundtrack of old seas

museum fossils

and extras from my own extensive collection of plastic animals! here a Dunklosteus model

a day of possibilities…where the project might go to next is anyone's guess

a modern coral but food for ancient thought

 Comments within main text in italics are from participants. Opening paragraphs from our project's basic information

Pop-up-theatres

How to make pop-up theatres

Introduction

With the Footsteps project within the bigger Enlightenment!  initiative, we were finding ways of encouraging people to use some of the Museum's collections of prints and postcards of the Peak District.

Pop-up theatres were popular Victorian entertainments for children so using some of those 18th and 19th century prints to make theatres like families might have played with seemed like a good way of working with some of the material

We used images from Dove, Monsall and Wye Dales mostly, to make our theatres and built stories that then belonged to those landscapes…

Now, we're presenting two worksheets:

1. Making your own pop-up theatres (this sheet)

2. Building stories for your theatre

You will need:

2 sheets of A3 card (30cm x  401cm) - 1 black or white and 1 coloured

a smaller sheet of card or some scrap bits

two 20cm sticks (thin garden canes are good)

a pipecleaner

glue: gluesticks are OK but a bottle of white PVA would be stronger

stapler

double-sided tape and masking tape

scissors (and maybe a craft knife)

coloured pencils

ruler

Pictures to work with

You can always draw your own landscapes and people - or cut pictures out of magazine - but when we have made theatres as part of the Footsteps project, we've printed out pictures from the Museum collection. These have given us 18th and 19th century landscapes of the Peak district  to work with

Find some to work with at the Enlightenment! blog.  Look at Pictures in the Landscape

You will need at least two pictures printed on A4 paper

What to do

1. Take your white (or black) card and fold it in half. This gives a BACK and a FLOOR to your theatre

2. Glue your first landscape picture onto the folded card to give  the BACKDROP. If you have used our black-and-whte prints, you can always colour them in

3. Choose several pieces of scenery from your other picture. Cut these out and stick them onto scrap card (again colour if you want to). If they start to bend, try giving them a thin painting of glue on the front PVA glue should dry colourless)

4. Fold some card strips to make the pop-up sections. 'X" needs to be the same length as your scenery and 'Y' will determine how far out from the Backdrop the scenery stands

5. Fix pop-up sections and scenery onto your background. You could finish your pop-up here and colour the floor of the theatre to carry the background  outwards

6. Measure and cut the front of your theatre. Be careful here.

Measure:

            A: the distance from the top of the card to the edge of your backdrop -

            B: how deep you want the 'stage" to be - from front to back

            C: how tall you want the front of the theatre to be ('A' also affects this)

Draw a box onto section C and carefully cut it out. If you want to decorate the front of the stage it is easiest to do this now. (We've put several different suggestions on the same theatre)

Fold carefully along the lines, using a ruler: notice the different forwards and reverse folds

7. Fit the front. Double-sided tape is easiest here although you could use glue or a stapler:  stick the top of the theatre on first, then stand the whole thing up and work out just where the front needs to sit on the floor. Peel ff the tape backing and fix the front to the floor

8. Gently fold everything flat (the folds often change a bit now - don't worry). With the sizes we have used here, the top of the stage tends to stick out from the original white card. Use this as a place to write a title. If you want a theatre that doesn't do this, you need to work with smaller pictures and a smaller stage within a starting A3 card

9. Open up and you should have your theatre!

Characters

There isn't a lot of room in your theatre for lots of actors so start with just two or three characters. Working on some left-over card, draw and colour them to suit your story and landscape - with the theatre sizes we've used here, 3 or 4 cm tall is a good size.

Or you could find historic characters in the costume pages of books or on-line

Puppet-rods can be made by taping half a pipecleaner onto the end of a stick and stapling the pipecleaner onto the back of your character. The pipecleaner lets you change angles or even swap which side of the theatre the character enters from

Scripts

What to say and do? Often a story takes shape as we make the theatres but some ideas for scripts will come in the next Pop-up Theatre instalment!

Pop-up Theatres

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