Tag Archives: storytelling

Stone Age Days

Flint stripStone Age Days

a celebration of prehistoric inventiveness

and wild imaginations

 

As the glaciers melted and the last Ice Age ended, people followed the returning herds and joined the deer, the wild horses, the bears and the wolves in finding shelter here in the woods and hills of Britain. Mammoths still wandered the moors, cave bears lurked in the darkness, wolves sang long wavering songs to the moon, and there were lions in Derbyshire. And people quietly spread across the land

Why not bring me as a storyteller, artist and zoologist  into your school (or museum or visitor centre or club!) and wander along the lost paths of Stone Age Britain

Tools 2

What could we do?

Depending upon the length of the workshop (half day or whole day), a session could include

  • Storytelling – listening to the sorts of stories Stone Age children might have heard around a campfire on a dark night
  • handling, thinking about and drawing tools and artefacts: flint, bone, shell and antler tools, pottery
  • working with appropriate materials: making bags for carrying, pots for storage, lamps for a dark cave night, improvising, inventing
  • designing Stone Age landscapes using models
  • looking at the animals we shared our land with (quality plastic models to handle and draw)
  • cave artwork: planning and drawing in pastel on black and sand-coloured papers guided by an experienced artist
  • pop-up card sculpture landscapes: creating a moment in the life of a Stone Age family and using this to…
  • telling a new Stone Age story: a child’s adventure in a Stone Age World (children will write, draw or just tell their own story

 

With these sessions

Each child will:

  • listen to stories
  • make up new stories
  • handle materials
  • understand why some materials last and others don’t
  • know the names of some of the animals (living and extinct) from the period
  • appreciate the inventiveness of Stone Age people
  • build confidence in their own skills as artists and creative people

Cave drawing 2 copy

I will bring

  • stories
  • furs and rugs to set the scene, instruments for atmosphere
  • an extensive collection of model animals including a small herd of (regrettably plastic) mammoths
  • a handling collection of fur, antler, shell, pottery and stone including flint tools
  • any other materials we might need
  • 30 years of experience of working with groups
a cave epic unfolding along a wall
a cave epic unfolding along a wall

To make a booking

Contact Gordon:

creepingtoad@btinternet.com

or call: 07791 096857

Costs

£250 for a day workshop: this generally includes time, travel and materials 

Pop-up Cave life
a cave-day pop-up

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Winter tales and Spring stories

 

 

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.

 

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!

 

 

 

 

a summerfull of stories

A summerfull of stories

a simple cardboard, cut-out castle can help set stories in motion, Tiny! 2014

 

These last few weeks have seen a whirlwind of activity as the Summer Reading Challenge workshops start running through their Mythical Mazes and Derbyshire Legends

 

But there have been other livelinesses as well…

Buxton Art Trail, 2014

Buxton Art Trail – telling stories surrounded by wonderful artwork in the woods of Grin Low. I was just there to tell stories: so many other people had added so many wonderful creations to the woods: a fleeting moment: 48 hours and they were all gone again. Congratulations to Ruby Moon for holding it all (holding us all!) together

Tiny! our Tiny! adventurers were back for another day of delightful craziness in the Pavilion Gardens in Buxton

 

Just telling stories: Brownies at Thornbridge Outside near Bakewell (audience over the day of c 150), in the Magic Storytelling Yurt for High peak Community Arts  in the Buxton Festival (total audience: c 280)…and today in New Mills

 

and it is hardly surprising that in the middle of all this, after an exciting day preparing for Hen Harrier Day (10th August – get out there and soar like a Harrier), I subsided into a heap and slept for 24 hours and decided that i would have to forego the pleasures of Druid Camp. Apologies to anyone there who was dreading a Toad workshop. Another time?

 

telling stories at the Brownie gathering

 

I don't sit still for very long when telling stories!

Next August livelinesses:

Tuesday 5th Long Eaton library: Derbyshire Myths and Legends workshop

Wednesday 6th Worksop Library: Summer Reading Challenge workshop

Thursday 7th, Ogden Water Country Park: storywalks inspired by butterflies, bumblebees, bimbly-bees and the wild creatures of the woods (they have booked me, and i will be there even if I’m not on the programme!)

Saturday 9th: Derbyshire Myths project: Killamarsh (10am – 12 noon) and Dronfield (1.30 – 3.30) libraries

 

Buxton Art Trail, 2014
a Tiny! bird

 

a bumblebee summer?

A bumblebee summer

 

 

– well, we can always hope! Good sunshine, glowing flowers, increasingly friendly gardeners – let’s hope it’s enough

And it is a summer for creeping toads! I’m involved in events through July and August and am going to start posting them in some sort of order now


weekend of Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th and  Sunday 27th July



Saturday 12th

 

we might not meet the skull under the leaves but we'll still tell a few tales...

“Come and discover works of art along a waymarked trail in Grinlow woods, July 12th and 13th, with storytelling at the end of the trail. A bunch of local creators, dreamers, makers and arty folk have had much fun and frolics dreaming up woodland installations…………”

Grinlow Woods at Poole’s Cavern car park (Fringe Venue 94: on Green Lane in Buxton): 11 Jul 6pm to 10pm, 12 Jul 10am to 10pm, 13 Jul 10am to 6pm. Free 

Further information: 07970 868 018

I am there telling stories on the Saturday: tales of tall trees and stone people, stories from the green shadows and the still pools and the dripping caves. 

Times: I am due “on” in the story tent at 12, 2 and 4pm but this will be approximate!

last year's encampment

Tiny! Wildness: the return of our annual, ever-so-slightly potty Tiny! adventures. Come and find us in Pavilion Gardens: we’ll be the ones sitting under a tree with flags, bunting and lots of bits. This year we’re going for a new set of Tiny! friends: aiming for nothing bigger than our hands. There might be heroic children, dragons, kings, queens and elephants. Who knows? We are sure some Tiny!PIrates will put in an appearanceSunday 13th

Free (and frivolous)

Pavilion Gardens (Fringe venue 33). “Search” for: “Pavilion Gardens, Buxton” and you’ll find us: 13 Jul 10:30am to 12:30pm, 2pm to 4pm Free, Ages 4+
Further information: 07825 177 355

Sunday 27th July

And on this day, I’m telling stories in the High Peak Community Arts Yurt in Pavilion Gardens but at the moment, I don’t know just where or when! Watch for details!

 

you can always rely on a Tiny! PIrate - for something


Nottinghamshire Libraries with the SRC

Hen Harrier Day! Flex your feathers, m’hearties! We will need all our pirates out there supporting some of our most elegant birds!


 

Storytelling for a Greener World

I have been involved in this new book and rather than ramble on myself, I’ll use the Press Release to tell you about it!

And you can buy your own copy at: Hawthorn Press

 

Since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring brought environmental wellbeing to widespread attention, pollution, global warming and animal loss have risen. Despite rising environmental awareness, nature needs more care than ever.

Storytelling for a Greener World explores how storytelling and story-work enable meaningful change. Stories can help us re-connect with each other, with our environment, and ‘to see a world in a grain of sand’. Whether it is a friend describing a skein of geese in evening flight, the tale of the man protected by a tree, or children getting inspired by kittiwakes, such moving stories invite meaning and action.

The crystal clear Introduction explains the core principles and methods of story based learning, with helpful examples. Chapters by some of Britain’s finest storytellers provide a treasury of over 40 engaging stories to retell as well as:

-Clear descriptions of creative story work, activities, approaches and tips.

-Explanations of how storytelling engages people and aids learning about the environment; Analysis of successful story-based sessions.

-Advice on how to choose sustaining stories and develop innovative story work.

The 21 authors include well-known storytellers, academics, environmentalists and facilitators who have pioneered story-based learning in nature reserves, museums, botanic gardens, schools, companies, NGO’s, universities and communities. This authoritative book is an essential resource for anyone using storytelling in their work.

Editors: Alida Gersie, PhD, widely published author on story making for change, initiated and directed postgraduate arts therapies programmes worldwide, advises managers and thought-leaders on how to improve outcomes in health, environmental learning, sustainable development and the arts. Anthony Nanson, ecological storyteller and award-winning author with MA’s in science and creative writing, which he teaches at Bath Spa University. Edward Schieffelin, PhD, Emeritus Reader in Anthropology at UCL, has done research among indigenous people of Papua New Guinea for many years and worked intensely with WWF South Pacific on issues of rainforest destruction. Jon Cree, ecologist and environmental educator, chairs the Forest Schools National Network. Charlene Collinson consults on sustainability and futures thinking with government and business.

Authors: Malcolm Green, Nick Hennessy, Eric Maddern, Gordon MacLellan, Ashley Ramsden, Hugh Lupton, Chris Salisbury, Helen East, David Metcalfe, Chris Holland, Sara Hurley, Mary Medlicott, Martin Shaw, Kelvin Hall, Kevan Manwaring, Fiona Collins and the editors above.

I just loved these personal stories from the front line, teasing out what constitutes good practice both in the design and in the delivery of storytelling … In essence, it is an inspiring toolkit that will enrich the work of people who already use storytelling, and will encourage others to get stuck in. Jonathon Porritt, Foreword 

 

 

Storytelling for a Greener World: Environment, Community and Story-Based Learning will be released on 1 May 2014, with a launch at Kings Cross, London. A pre-publication celebration will be held in Stroud, Glouc. on 11 April: talks by Alida Gersie and Jonathon Porritt, who wrote the Foreword

 

 

 

 


Hathersage adventures

Today was the first of two days building stories in the wide and exciting grounds of St Michael’s Primary School in Hathersage

 

A few morsels…..

playing with presentation

 

Journey poems led us into stories and building characters

Under the roots,

And over the trees,

Across the forgotten field

Behind the mossy wall.

Through the holly bushes

And there beside a muddy stream, beneath an old grey willow,

A damp goblin lives

 

I use an activity “here, there, everywhere, and nowhere” just to get ideas moving. Today with Year 3s it gave two quick pieces that seemed to feed one into the other…

Group A

Here comes a black knight, marching out of the gloomy forest

There, in the mini-beasts’ home, curious ants creep up towards the surface

Everywhere, a strong wind blows from a ghost’s breath

There was nowhere we could escape from this terrifying school

 

 

Group B

Here are the children standing quietly by the window

(here are the children, climbing out of the window)

Everywhere the teachers are looking,

because there is something suspicious going on

There by the minibeasts’ hotel, the children suddenly disappear

The children were nowhere to be seen!

a lively mixing of characters....

 

I like these two sets… this final image (for now) is a bit grimmer, but I love the “dusty old graves”!

Hopping around in June!

http://creepingtoad.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/hopping-around-in-june.html

Events where you just might find this Toad over the next month

telling tales and spinning stories...

 Sunday June 9th

The Big Bird, Beast, Bug and Botany Hunt

When: 11.00 – 16.00

Where: Dove Valley Centre

Under Whitle Farm

(between Sheen and Longnor)

SK17 0PR

www.dovevalleycentre.co.uk

setting up at last year's Big B day

 

Our Ancient Landscapes project will be there among the Birds, Beasts, Bugs and Botanicals. We’ll be there with fossils to look at and draw, models to handle, people to talk to, a wall to stare at (just in case we can find anything!) and our usual exciting, messy, colourful and engaging creative activities

 

I’ll be there helping on the Landscapes stall but mostly to tell stories of farms and fields and the plants and animals and stranger inhabitants of the Dales and Moorlands

 

 

 

Sunday June 16th

Father’s Day BBQ and Games

When: 11.00 – 15.30

Where: Ilam Park, Postcode: DE6 2AZ. Ordnance Survey grid reference SK132507.

 I’ll be on the Ancient Landscapes team will be at this National Trust event at Ilam Park

 

finger puppets for parents?

Tempting as it is, we won’t be “fossilizing fathers” but we may well invite you to look at some of the fossils we find in the limestone of the area, to make printed fossil cards for Dads, cast your own fossils (for anyone), make trilobite puppets and personal nautiloids….

 

Our activities are free but car parking charges apply. There are lots of other activities on at Ilam that day – but come and hunt us out!

 

Finding the event: Postcode: DE6 2AZ. Ordnance Survey grid reference SK132507.

 

Storytelling tour: Wild Tales And Animals

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

 

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)

 

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

 

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

 

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

sometimes new stories need ancient characters

Stories from the woods

our storytelling camp

Stories that grew out of a beautiful autumn day in Plas Power Woods for the Woodland Trust with some 40 people visiting us through the day, along with several friendly dogs, a possible bear and occasional breezes. We listened to tales of animals and children and monsters and learned that we need

long ago, Conker Trees were the Hundred-handed Giants

to be kind to Conker Trees as they remember when they could still run around the dance and play….

 

the Witch

 

down by the stream, an old witch lives

Deep in the woods, an old witch lives

If you are careful you might find her,

Putting on make-up down by the stream

Mud for lipstick,

Berry eyeshadow,

her hair is leaves and grass

Her eyelashes twigs

Stick eyebrows arch over

Eyes as dark as a forest pool

In skin as green and grey and rough as bark


You might see her there,

A shadow by the rapids

Sharpening stones on the riverbank

Fitting her mouth for teeth

 

The Lost Fairies

One bright autumn day, two woodland fairies, Stephanie and Jasmine, were out exploring the forest. They should have been busy flying the Royal Butterflies but were fed up up with the Butterflies because whenever the girls took them out, the insects all flew in different directions and the little fairies felt as if their arms were going to be pulled off!

 

So today, they had tied the butterflies to a bouncy tree branch and gone off looking for an adventure

 

Stephanie and Jasmine went deep into the woods. Here, they could hear the rushing of the river and the rustling of the leaves. They felt the roughness of bark and smelt the dampness of water and mud and moss

In the middle of the woods, in a pool of sunlight by the river, they met a beautiful blue dragonfly.

The dragonfly told the girls about a wonderful white deer that had been seen in the woods, a rare and magical animal

Through the woods,

Under the oak trees,

Over the logs,

Beside the stream,

Across the river on the stepping stones

The fairy girls went hunting

 

But somewhere

Between one tree and the next,

Between daytime and night-time,

Between sunset and moonrise,

In the mist and the woods,

Where the squirrels look down from the branches,

And the hedgehogs look up from the bushes,

The fairy girls disappeared and

No-one has seen them again. Yet…

 

 

Bob the Duck

 

One sunny and windy afternoon, a very hot duck was swimming in the river trying to cool down, when suddenly a huge holly leaf blew down on the wind and landed on his head! The leaf was very spiky and knocked some of his feathers out.

Bob the duck went swimming away down the river. At a very loud waterfall he stopped and listened to some birds singing. A girl came to look at the waterfall and the birds. Bob didn’t want the girls to see him so he swam further and further down to the very bottom of the waterfall.

But as swam down, he could smell delicious pie. The smell wasn’t coming from the bottom of the pond but from up where the girl was. Bob decided that he didn’t care if the girl stroked him – he just wanted pie!

Bob swam up to the top of the pool and the girl said, “What are you looking for?” and Bob said, “I’m looking for pie”. So the girl showed Bob the way to the pie. But as they walked through the woods, a giant spiky conker fell on the girl’s head. It hurt.

So Bob helped the girl through the wood and forgot that he was missing some feathers. When they found the pie, they both felt better and stayed together to have pie for tea