Category Archives: storywork

art activities, inspiration, storytelling, storywork

Winter tales and Spring stories

December 10, 2014 Gordon

Winter tales and Spring stories

Stories in school with Creeping Toad

December 2014 – April 2015

marking the changing edge of the year, here are old stories, new adventures and chances to create tales that no-one else has ever heard before!

With stories running from the frozen edges of the world right through to the first flowers of spring and the waking of the bumblebees, here are stories and activities to enchant and inspire.

Gordon-woodland-1 — in performance, photo c/o Laurence Crossman-Emms and the Woodland Trust

Gordon MacLellan – Creeping Toad – is one of Britain’s foremost environmental art and education workers…and he tells stories as well! Take a look at the Toadblog: Creeping Toad

Here are some suggestions for activities that you might like to invite into your school,

park, library or thrilling crypt (I’m very broad-minded). Booking details are at the foot of the page

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! usually we might do this outside but given wintry weather, we’ll use leaves and pine cones, twigs and stones and shells indoors to inspire words, create poems and shape a set of stories never told before (allow 60 minutes for a class session)

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 or maybe the thrills of a lifecycle in a setting, key characters and the words that set the adventure running

Winter lights: finding words and images to hold the essence of winter or the hopes of spring in quick poems, we’ll slide words and pictures into lanterns and make a swarm of small glowing lanterns to glow through the darkest nights or gloomiest days

shadow stories: out of my stories might come new stories: drawing on whatever theme we are working with to create quick performances of shadow puppets. Incorporating silhouettes, translucence and transparency, we’ll mix science with story to create an (almost) instant set of story performances to show or perhaps to film

Ancient Lives: add a voice from the distant past to your history topics with stories that our Stone, Bronze or Iron Age ancestors might have listened to. Stories. models, artefacts and drawings can feed into art inspired by cave paintings, carvings and jewellery

your own themes and ideas: or are you exploring a particular theme that you would like to involve some stories in? pirates….tropical islands….ancient Greeks…fairies, frogs and trolls…..where in our school would bears live?…the Great Fire of London have all featured in recent Creeping Toad projects

Charges: £250 a day: 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 KS 1, 2 or 3

For further information: visit the Creeping Toad website at http://creepingtoad.blogspot.co.uk/

To book: contact Gordon directly at

creepingtoad@btinternet.com

or by telephone:

landline: 01298 77964

mobile: 07791 096857

you never know who, or what, will end up in a Creeping Toad story!

art projects, inspiration, public events, storywork

The Hatching

March 31, 2014 Gordon

Rapids-tight — ...nimbly swerving, dodging rocks, waves crushing boulders...

Over the last 3 months, I’ve been dipping into a longer project organised by the Ribble Rivers Trust. Specially cooled aquaria were installed in 6 schools in Burnley who went on to hatch 100 trout eggs each so that the school communities can watch these first few weeks of trout-life before releasing the fish into the rapidly improving River Ribble

My friend, musician Steve Brown and I visited those 6 schools to write poems and stories and make music inspired by this process. The resulting artwork reinforced the experience and has been helping us share the excitements and anticipations of The Hatching with a wider public

Ribble Rivers Trust

“In the past, industrial and agricultural pollution as well as water abstraction and inadequate sewage treatment have caused severe habitat damage to the Ribble and its tributaries, to such an extent that the wildlife supported by the river has been put under threat. The Trust was established in order to enhance the water environments of the catchment, by restoring and protecting the river to make certain that future generations can enjoy the beauty of its wildlife and fauna.” – introduction from the Trust’s website

Activities began back in January with a day with the Canalside Community Association

Then, first sessions in schools, explored the early days of trout-life as the eggs hatched, golden pearls releasing tiny fry into the world and we wrote about rivers and made pop-up landscapes of riverbeds and redds (gravel bed nests where trout spawn)

Redd 86 — life for young trout begins in the gravel of a cold, clean river bed

This is a silver stream, so cool and fresh as can be

Fish eggs like little beads

Eels as big as santa’s bag of treats

The robins sing in such harmony

Freezing through the splashing, popping,

Water rushing stones

Water bubbles

Huge strong rocks blocking the icy flow

Water smashing over rocks

Splashing people,

Water thrashing,

Water crashing,

Soaking the grass,

Running on into the pool.

Slowing down, running wider,

The river slips into a pool,

Dark ice-cold water

Deep water, calm water, ripples meandering,

Slow carp in deep pools,

Grasping weeds to pull you down,

Down to the stones where the eels live,

Small fish, silver fish, white fish darting,

Fast as arrows, lightning flickers

Kingfishers dive, chasing fish

Graceful swans glide across the pool,

Carp sneak like ghosts through weeds and water

Trout blend in brown as sand, as stone as shadows

Moss everywhere, under water, on the bank, over the stones, up the trees,

On the stepping stones where you wobble across the pool

Otters waiting

Big trout hunting

Deep dark, cold as ice

Yellow lightning flashes,

Thunder crashes!

Rain comes splashing down!

Every raindrop feeds the flood.

The river overloaded, bursting, flowing to the sea

A soggy disaster, dirty, nasty mess

Huge, wet, destroying, damaging
We are left disgusted, exhausted, vulnerable

But now the river escapes to the sea.

art activities, inspiration, nature writing, storytelling, storywork

Storytelling tour: Wild Tales And Animals

May 21, 2013 Gordon

Wild tales and animals

Stories in school with Creeping Toad September 2013

celebrating the Year of Natural Scotland here are old stories, new adventures and impossible fictions about the wildlife of Scotland

From heroic mice to wrens, eagles and mysterious trees we’ll meet stories that encourage us to look with new eyes on the world around us and remember that there are stories inside the humblest of creatures and the most ordinary of plants, and that we can all have adventures too

I am Gordon MacLellan – Creeping Toad – allegedly one of Britain’s foremost environmental art and education workers…and I tell stories as well! Take a look at the Toadblog:

http://creepingtoad.blogspot.co.uk

Between 2nd and 13th September, 2013 (and probably again in November), I will be working in the Highland area (at least) and is available for bookings….

A day’s visit to your school might include

storytelling performances: lasting up to 60 minutes for up to 90 children at a time

Low-SA-2011 — just give them a chance and stories and children absorb each other

stories outside! using the school ground, we’ll take storymaking out of the classroom and use the immediate environment, the day’s weather and whatever we can find to inspire words, create poems and shape a set of stories never told before (allow 60 minutes for a class session)

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

your own themes and ideas: or are you exploring a particular theme that you would like to involve some stories in? pirates….tropical islands….ancient cave people…..where in our school would bears live?…castle adventures, have all featured in recent Creeping Toad projects

Low-Boggart clay 3 — I rather hope this isn't one of the heroes of old Scotland

Charges: £250 a day: includes storyteller’s fee, travel and materials. Can be paid on the day or I can invoice you

For further information:

visit the Creeping Toad website at http://creepingtoad.blogspot.co.uk/

To book: contact Gordon directly at

creepingtoad@btinternet.com

or by telephone:

landline: 01298 77964

mobile: 07791 096857

Mammoth detail — sometimes new stories need ancient characters

art activities, storywork

Perfect Park Pizza

February 22, 2013 Gordon

In the ongoing, delightful craziness that is my work with Whitefield Infant School, the Reception classes (4 year olds, just turning 5) had been working on senses and cookery. So when it came time to work with me and visit the lcoal park, we explored Victoria Park as chefs, designing pizzas for the animals (real, hoped for or monstrous) that live there

My brief is to encourage classes to use the local environment and to help inspire language….The poems are the children’s own words and images. My job is to shuffle them into an order….I love the language

Getting to the Park itself caused certain issues….

IN THE PARK

Snow is slowly drifting down.

Falling in the water,

Melting,

Snow pirates sailing on the river