A wonder of woodlands

A wonder of woodlands

free public events in Buxton, Derbyshire

July 2021

As part of the Buxton Civic Association’s Stronger Roots project, I’m coordinating an arts engagement programme of public events. The next wave of these starts with July…why not come and join us if you are in Buxton or thereabouts?

Art in the woods

During Buxton Wild Week and the Buxton Fringe there will be a number of art sessions in the woods of the town. You might like to hone your identification skills and make your own tree book, you might like to sketch, to be creative in Gadley or Corbar or Sherbrook woods or wander through the stories the trees tell us in Grin Low. Or exercise your imagination and shape a new story

IN THE FACE OF A SUDDEN SURGE IN COVID INFECTIONS IN BUXTON, BUXTON WILD WEEK EVENTS HAVE BEEN CANCELLED 

The post below holds links and details for all these events but to try to summarise….

 

Wednesday 7^th

10.30 - 12.30:   The woods of Grinlow

 

Thursday 8^th

10.30 - 12.30: Tales of the wild woods, Buxton Country Park

1.30 -2.30: Art in the woods (BWW), Corbar Wood

5 – 6: Art in the Woods, after school session (BWW), Gadley Wood

6.30 – 7.30: Art in the Woods (BWW), Gadley Wood

IN THE FACE OF A SUDDEN SURGE IN COVID INFECTIONS IN BUXTON, BUXTON WILD WEEK EVENTS HAVE BEEN CANCELLED 

Friday 9^th

1.30 – 2.30:Art in the Woods (BWW), Sherbrook Wood

4.30 – 6: Art in the Woods, after school session (BWW), Grin Low Wood

6 – 7.30: Art in the Woods (BWW),  Grin Low Wood

IN THE FACE OF A SUDDEN SURGE IN COVID INFECTIONS IN BUXTON, BUXTON WILD WEEK EVENTS HAVE BEEN CANCELLED  

 

Saturday 10^th

11am - 1pm: Sketching Trees with Geoff Chilton,  Buxton Country Park

 Sunday 18^th  

11am - 1pm: A Blockbuster with trees with RobYoung,  Buxton Country Park

Wednesday 7^th July

The Woods of Grinlow

Make your own tree book!

Combining finding out about the trees in Grinlow Woods with art, this workshop will take us through tree identification to printing, rubbing, drawing and writing to help us remember those trees. We’ll build our own books, lacing together pages, pictures and discoveries to make Tree Books to keep memories fresh and to add to as the leaves lengthen and ash-keys grow

Venue: Grinlow Woods, meet in Poole’s Cavern Car Park, event accessible for wheelchairs

Artist: Gordon MacLellan of Creeping Toad 

Time: 10.30 – 12.30

Materials are provided (but you are welcome to bring your own!)

Booking: this event is free but places need to be booked: The Woods of Grinlow Tickets, Wed 7 Jul 2021 at 10:30 | Eventbrite

Thursday 8^th July  

(4 events)

Tales of the Wild Woods

There are stories to be told in these woods, mysteries waiting to be unfolded. Join storyteller Gordon MacLellan from Creeping Toad for a storywalk through the woods, with stories to tell and new tales to grow. Gordon will share some of the storytellers art: encouraging visitors to create their own stories. Spinning wonders out of fluttering leaves and bird calls

Venue: Grinlow Woods, meet in Poole’s Cavern Car Park, gentle walk. 

Artist: Gordon MacLellan of Creeping Toad 

Time: 10.30 – 12.30

Materials are provided 

Booking: this event is free but places need to be booked: Tales of the Wild Woods Tickets, Thu 8 Jul 2021 at 10:30 | Eventbrite

Buxton Festival Fringe

10^th July

Sketching Trees with Geoff Chilton

The elegance of beech trees, the strength of ash, the grace of birch and the richness of hazel: our woods are full of wonders and in this event, we invite you to take a bit more time to really look, to get to know our trees. Join Geoff Chilton, a resident artist from the Green Man Gallery in Buxton and learn to sketch the trees of Grinlow Woods. Geoff will take you through a systematic approach to simplifying the drawing of a subject that can at first seem daunting

Venue: Grinlow Woods, meet in Poole’s Cavern Car Park, gentle walk. 

Artist: Geoff Chilton, https://earthpigpottery.com/

Times: 11am- 1pm

Materials are provided (but you are welcome to bring your own!)

Booking: this event is free but places need to be booked: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sketching-trees-tickets-161001839837?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

18^th July

A Blockbuster With Trees? 

Do you write? Do you want to write? Have you written before? Or not at all? Turn our woodland wonders into drama, action, adventure, romance, comedy…horror? Would you like to write a movie with award-winning writer and former BAFTA screenplay judge, Rob Young? Warm, witty and welcoming this workshop will play with laughter, delight and wild ideas….create a hero and walk them through a film, transform a painting into a movie, see a woodland glade as a dramatic set: it’s film-school in a forest!

Venue: Grinlow Woods, meet in Poole’s Cavern Car Park 

Artist: Rob Young, https://robyoung.info/art/

Times: 11am – 1pm

Materials are provided 

Booking: this event is free but places need to be booked: A Blockbuster With Trees? Tickets, Sun 18 Jul 2021 at 11:00 | Eventbrite

Tall Tree Tales

Tales of Tall Trees

or maybe tall tales of trees

~ the Stronger Roots Project ~

The shadow of a tree falls over the path, over your path, over your shoulder. The shadow of a tree falls over your heart with joy and delight. Or wariness, perhaps, as the branches sway while the wind is still, as the trunks creaks and leaves sigh.

Turning, we see the whisper of a tree-promise, floating away down the path, a leaf of opportunity to chase, to catch, to treasure….

We were talking about trees. Telling stories about trees. Listening to personal tales of trees: the best woods for den-building, the best trees for rope swings, the places where you would be disturbed (by interrupting adults), the places where you wouldn’t. Glades for picnics. Where there were rabbits. A stream to splash in. Children whose year of interrupted education had given them time to really get to know the woods of their town

During Buxton Wild Week, I was telling stories in two of our local schools: Buxton Juniors and Burbage Primary. I was there as part of Buxton Civic Association’s Stronger Roots project. Coordinating the Arts Engagement Programme within the wider project, we’re holding all sorts of events through the town over the next few months. 

We have made books among the bluebells. This weekend we made puppets inspired by the woods around us. We’ll be using tree identification to inspire printing and personal tree-books in early July (Buxton Wild Week, 2). There will be a sketching workshop and a film-story-be-inspired session as part of Buxton Festival Fringe later in July. 

Through August there will be Woodland Tuesday workshops: free, small, creative, and possibly quite frivolous, activities every Tuesday through the holidays. I’ll post details as plans finalise, or you can find more here

At Burbage, as well as stories, we had time to draw. They didn’t set out to be tree shadow pictures: we were looking at scribbling techniques and using that process to draw quickly and confidently, but when I came to look at the results, they felt like the shadows of trees falling over our lives.

All of this makes me think of workshops  our local community group Stone and Water ran last summer. Out of these sessions came various collective poems….one of which ends:

We are the people 

Who made the swings,

Who built tree houses,

Who fought with sticks,

Who made the bows,

Who fired the arrows,

Who fought the dragons,

Who camped in the shade,

And toasted marshmallows (on an ashwood fire.)

with many thanks to the pupils, teachers and attentive ears 

of Buxton Juniors and Burbage Primary Schools

Bumblebuzzing

The Great Bilberry Bumblebee Hunt

Markeaton Park, Derby, 12^th June 2021

We went bumblebee-watching, bumble-waiting and bumble-hoping. In this strange suddenly hot but-still-often-delayed summer there were a few bumbles about but not as many as we might have wished for. The Bilberries weren’t here: they are far more country-cousins than town bees. Further out than “country” Bombus monticola belong to the moors and upland villages of the Peaks. But places like Markeaton are gateways to the world of the high-country bees…walk through a park, enjoy the flowers, the butterflies, the bees…and next time you’re picnicking in the Peaks you might notice the bee that looks a bit different….

Here on the edge of Derby city, there were still bees about. And cheerful people! People following that wooden trail of carved posts, enjoying tongue length (? go and investigate Garden Bumblebees), wing beats (we had several 16 arm-beats a second and an unconfirmed 20….no comparison with a bumble’s 200). I was positioned at the end of this trail of questions, puzzles and discoveries. By the time they reached me, our bumblebee-hunters were ready to pause, to rest in the shade and chat, to draw their discoveries into big pictures of the bees they had seen, or hoped to see, or knew were there but had not yet seen…..

So we met the fabulous Markeaton Silver-winged Unicorn Bee. Like everyone before us, we didn’t meet the Camouflaged Bee because it is so good at what it does. We met fuzzy bees and friendly bees, Queen Bees and princess Bees, bees looking for pollen, bees loaded with pollen, bees nesting in wellies….

The Great Bilberry Bumblebee Hunt was an event organised by the Pollinating the Peaks project of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. Look in on the BCT website or keep on Twitter eye on @BuzzingPeak for information on the next events

Meanwhile, sit back, relax and enjoy some of our artists’ work from Markeaton Park. There is a bigger gallery here on the @creepingtoad facebook page.

Leafy pages and alchemist inks

Leafy pages and alchemist inks

Creeping toad training workshops in Dartington
27, 28th July 2021

From home-made ink to hand-made paper, from sudden stories to adventures in poetry, Creeping Toad is heading down to Devon again this summer to lead two days of training for activity and workshop leaders with Wildwise at Dartington. (the link will take you to the whole Wildwise training programme - lots there to tempt you!)

We’re offering two days of workshops: hands-on, have-a-go, try it for yourself, make a mistake and work out what went wrong days in the woods and garden of Dartington. These days are aimed at workshop leaders so they are a mix of practical and theory. Why do this? Where could this idea take a group? And the chance to simply have a go. That’s the best way of learning after all: to try for yourself, share the experience, and try again 

July 27th Alchemist’s Cupboard 

Times: 9.30 – 4.30 

Venue: Dartington, Totnes, Devon (more details with joining instructions) 

A day for experimenting: exploring traditional and improvising new uses for natural resources. The processes here draw on ancient techniques: grinding and roasting pigments, gently drawing the colour or potency of a plant into oil or suspension. They also encourage people to look more carefully at natural resources, find different ways of understanding what a plant or lump of rock has to offer: textures, colours, fibres all come into play here 

July 28th Wild Words and Leafy Pages 

Times: 9.30 – 4.30 

Venue: Dartington, Totnes, Devon (more details with joining instructions) 

Instant stories, sudden poems, an excitement of words: when we step outside into a wider environment, there are adventures everywhere and this workshop will explore ways of building those tales with groups. Alongside our storymaking, we will explore ways for recording our tales in storysticks and bundles, big books, small books, one piece books, pop-up landscapes and fold-out theatres. A workshop for anyone who wants to find new, or extend their existing, ways of playing with stories with groups or just for themselves. 

Questions? if you want to find out more, as a first step, visit the Wildwise website and the pages for the individual courses. if you have other questions initially, either talk to Wildwise (info@wildwise.co.uk) or try myself: creepingtoad@btinternet.com

BOOKING 

Rates: £80/95/120 (rates are for individuals, voluntary-charitable-organisations and businesses

1. Email: info@wildwise.co.uk Please provide your contact details and how you would like to pay i.e. BACS or card

2. By phone: call 01803 868269 (message service when office unattended)

3. Online booking (Eventbrite fees apply) – check the website for links for this: https://wildwise.co.uk/pages/programme/2021-dates/161

Bluebells, books and springtime

Into the Bluebells

Make your own spring wildlife book

In the first of the Creeping Toad events for BCA’s Stronger Roots project*, we had a day yesterday In the Bluebells of Corbar Woods in Buxton. Sessions were booked and gave visitors time to stop, have a chat and make their own little book to take exploring deeper into the woods…. There are more Stronger Roots events coming up: there will be outdoors, adventurous, creative, sensible and, performance events (and none of those terms exclude any of the others!). 

Find out more: 

https://buxtoncivicassociation.org.uk/

Facebook: @BCABuxtonCivicAssociation

Twitter: BCA1967

It should at this point be said that it is much better for the bluebells if we stand beside them to wonder at their beauty, rather than go trampling through their smoky blue haze. It is also, safer for you: woodland faeries do not take kindly to people disturbing their flowers and as you go singing  "in and out the dusky bluebells" you may go in and not come out.....

For now, however, we thought you might like to make your own concertina book and go exploring for yourself!

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…
• if you want some line drawings to get you started, you could print off the pdf sheet here

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 (flipchart sized) cut into quarters lengthwise works well and makes 4 books – or one very long one) 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 (see right)

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

the first fold 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. Use those folds as guides to now fold the paper into a zig-zag pattern. if you have made your block from a sheet of A4 it won't fold easily in half because of the overlap....just let one end section be a bit bigger than the other...it will still work!

re-folded to make the concertina

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. 

Now you are ready to write 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
• make a pocket
• do a rubbing
• print
• add a map
• make a pop-up
• think of something else….

printing and drawing

try a rubbing? add a patch?

make a pocket?

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. You could now work on the back side of your pages 

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 the picture below

Cover: fold the card in half. Decorate the cover. Glue in the book block….Title? Author? Cover picture

Please, send us a picture of your finished book! creepingtoad@btinternet.com

BCA Stronger Roots Project

“Our woodlands form part of the mosaic that is Buxton. Throughout the pandemic they have provided us with refuge, solace and recuperation. In the coming months our Stronger Roots Project will offer a series of free activities and workshops that will further improve our health, well-being and connections with nature. 

The project recognises the need to repair the ecological damage caused by ash dieback and the important part our woods played during the Lockdown. Buxton people turned to BCA’s nine community woodlands, our Country Park and SSSI for exercise, play, solace and spiritual refreshment. Their appreciation of and need for our sites highlighted the urgency of our work in nature care and nature conservation. This project will accelerate that, enabling us to reach more people faster, whilst responding to the ash dieback crisis. With our partners and the community, we will create flourishing woodlands with enhanced biodiversity and build ecological, social and economic resilience."

Find out more:

https://buxtoncivicassociation.org.uk/

Facebook: @BCABuxtonCivicAssociation

Twitter: BCA1967

The Stronger Roots project is funded by the government’s Green Recovery Challenge Fund. The fund is being delivered by The National Lottery Heritage Fund in partnership with Natural England and the Environment Agency.