Its been an incredibly busy but wonderful time at the Inspirational Outdoors Conference at the start of this week.   My head is busily digesting everything and eager to put some new ideas into practice.   

This is the second year of the conference, it was fantastic last year and has now grown into a 2 day event packed full of workshops, talks, discussions and so many amazing ways of sharing ideas; the delegates came from across the UK with some international presence too and the ideas were flowing all over with such excitement.   

I was really delighted to be running sessions this year, as well as attending the whole conference, it was a deeply immersive experience and the layers of inspiration run deep.   I camped at the venue along with a few other participants, which enabled us to cook our meals outside as we watched dusk set in and continued to discuss so many aspects of creativity outside.   The 20 minute walk down the hillside to the beach is an added bonus and enabled us to be sat on the sand watching the sun sink below the horizon as we unpicked our ideas and thoughts around the millions of ways connections with nature encourage creativity, calm, learning and ignite curiosity.

I ran sessions which were a bit of a whistle-stop tour of exploring ways of working with clay outside and of working with natural materials to generate colours; the participants were wonderful with their ideas and enthusiasm and warm energy as we explored lots of different things.   It left me buzzing with further ideas and being able to share thoughts about ways of working creatively outside with groups feels very important.   It feeds deeply into all the long term groups I'm working with in Nottingham and Derbyshire. 

I was able to participate in so many sessions, discussions and listen to talks, its such a vital thing to have time to do this, it reinforces so much and ignites so many ideas.   Meeting and listening to Niki Buchan speak was wonderful, she'd travelled in from Australia to talk with a wealth of knowledge and examples of outdoor education from across the world.   We were all transfixed.  The fantastic Gill Mulholland from The Eden Project ran brilliant sessions on using the outside to ignite stories and poems and so much more, I also learnt to make pewter casts over an open fire, something I've wanted to have a go at for ages, the really lovely Lisa Chell ran a  great session on this.    Phil Waters ran a wonderful storytelling quest with the entire set of delegates and there was so much more going on, its hard to know where to start to digest it all!

The venue is the deeply inspirational Mount Pleasant Eco Park which holds unexpected delights at every turn - worth a visit just to see everything that's being developed there.  

​The conference is organised by the wonderful Niki Willows an outdoor play specialist and Martin Besford of Highway Farm (again, one of the most inspirational educational settings I've visited in the UK).  

Details of next years conference are here: ​https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/inspirational-outdoors-2019-cornwalls-outdoor-play-learning-conference-tickets-47063722862?aff=erelexpmlt

HUGE THANKS for the photographs below, I was too busy to take many images this year, so most of the images below were taken either by Martin Scull for the conference or by Simon Turk of Treecreepers which I am incredibly grateful for.  

These were all taken last weekend, on a rainy overcast day at Caudwells Mill in Rowsley, close by in Derbyshire.  Its a great spot (with loads of wonderful walks nearby) and the mill is one of many mills dotted around this part of Derbyshire.  It's great that this particular one is still a working flour mill - and its open for you to explore.    I was really drawn to the muted textures, patterns and layers of objects inside the mill and the way there were so many views to the hills and fields and the river outside. 

​The sounds inside were amazing, layers of rhythm from all the machinery; it reminded of me of many past projects I've worked on, including a residency very many years ago in a water mill in Bedfordshire.   Those memories of past projects always give rise to reflective thoughts about the projects I'm working on now - and to how inspired I am by the groups and places I'm working with at the moment and by the landscape around me here in Derbyshire.

​Again a place like Caudwells Mill really feeds my interest in the layers of human and natural history in the landscape, so many questions about past generations were running through my head in Rowsley.  The mill is very close to all the amazing prehistoric sites on Stanton Moor, so there's thousands of years of people working and using the landscape very evident in all the stone and water.    (Also there's a great café at the mill which helps seed thoughts!).

​

Another remote calm spot here in Derbyshire is Lathkill Dale, which a few days ago was filled with the colours, sights, sounds and smells of late summer - all very soothing.   There were many buzzards soaring and calling, ravens. dippers, grey wagtails and many other birds, including robins singing their wonderful late summer song which feels very evocative of this time of year.    There's something special about these times of transition from one season to another.

​Lathkill Dale is another of the many wonderful places where the remnants of human history mingle with nature, there's old mine workings and a couple of buildings which hint at many stories, as well as nearby stone circles and sites from thousands of years ago, so recent and very ancient human history is nearby.

​These images were taken last week, on one of the last days before the new school term began.    I really love the work I do in schools and its a privilege to be able to work creatively with young people exploring connections with nature and questions about the world, but its also a welcomed change in pace when the school holidays enable longer walks with the camera and time for deep exploration.

​For me, its times in contemplation with natural spaces where solace and peace lies, that's where discoveries are made and there always feels so much to notice.    Even when its places you've been to hundreds of times there are always more and more layers to peel away - and the changing seasons mean that each day new things are revealed or changes take place.

​ 

These were all taken two days ago, up at Over Owler Tor near Hathersage in Derbyshire, a really amazing landscape with wide moorland views, hills, rocky outcrops and twisting pathways at every turn.  I do love autumn but also seek to really cherish these late summer evenings and I've been out with the camera and a note book exploring a lot recently (especially precious time trying to cram moments full of wonderings in nature before the school term starts again and my work schedule changes).

​I'm very aware that there's a slightly comic look when climbing a hill laden down with camera equipment (and a picnic), but its worth it and there's a huge sense of reward that comes with then waiting and watching as the light changes and the sun gets lower in the sky.   Several times recently I've had owls and bats about me on the way back to the car, its a special feeling sharing that transition from day to night, those moments of change in nature are filled with so many tiny details.

​I wasn't alone up at Over Owler Tor - there was a tortoise and a frog there too (if you look in the images below they should leap out) and I like to think that the ancient people who used Carl Wark Hill Fort very close by would have also seen creatures in the stones (not so sure they would have seen a tortoise though).

Its the last day of August today and I've found myself reflecting back on the summer and the different places,  events and moments which have been inspiring - and these little Shepherds Huts were very much amongst those thoughts.   We all need a little escape and definitely for many of us there is something very appealing about the quirks of tiny spaces - its why so many of us love dolls houses, sheds, beach huts, caravans and Wendy Houses.    And put such spaces into a remote rural setting with views over wide landscapes then so many special things come into play.

​I'm very aware that when in use by Shepherds all those years ago these Huts were rather a basic living space with sacks of straw to sleep on and non of the fancy wooden furniture you find in them now...  but they are incredibly appealing and cosy and they do conjure up so many thoughts.    And there is something appealing in the fact that the huts can be moved around and taken to all sorts of locations amongst fields and woodland and hills...

​These images were all taken at a wonderful location we stayed in very recently, deep in the hills of the Scottish Borders, a gorgeous place which definitely felt very remote and away from it all, just what we needed.  The huts themselves are wonderful and the location is stunning, there were so many little details of textures, colours, patterns and different combinations of these at every turn.    We found ourselves creating stories and anecdotes about everything - as well as breathing deep restful breaths at the lack of "stuff" and clutter...   Its such an interesting experience to live in a small space for a while and to not need so much stuff...    Getting up early and sitting out watching the mist roll over the hills as you sup your morning coffee...   cooking and eating outside, lighting the fire and watching the dusk roll in and night fall as bats and owls flit about and call...    All very peaceful and idyllic.   I'm very aware that its an escape from many other things, but an escape which recharges the batteries and gives strength to return to all the other things. 

​

​

August is always a time of year when schools projects ease off and there's a bit of a change of pace, its often a time when there's a bit of space to sort through work equipment and resources, to do some research and planning for further arts projects.   And with that often comes a chance to sort out my work room and even pay my own wildlife garden some attention...  so with trying to work through a huge list of jobs, I've been ensuring I intersperse it with time in the local landscape with the camera, maps and some space to ponder and contemplate.

​I've been living in Derbyshire for several years, but I grew up in the fens, so the landscape here is much more hilly than the flatness of the fens, but there is a wildness - even an appealing bleakness - about both places and also traces of ancestors to be found in many ways.   I live near Belper, a landscape that's part of the Derwent Mills World Heritage Site, a fascinating place full of ancient woodland, steep river valleys, moors and scattered throughout with buildings connected with the Industrial Revolution.    But there's also vast ancient history here and lots of that is clearly evident all around with stone circles, hill forts and traces of things like lead mining from the Romans and before that too.

​These are images I took last week between the ancient stone circle of Arbor Low and the steep industrial valley of Lumsdale, both nearby, really enchanting places and if you time it right, wonderful when hardly anyone else is about.  Arbor Low is an a high exposed site, with views for miles around (and wild winds often too!), its easy to speculate about why ancient people would have found the location captivating.    The stones are now all lying down, no one seems to really know why, but it does give the place an air of quirkiness too.  At sunset there's a real sense of the landscape settling down for the night as you can see for such vast distances and watch flocks of birds going to roost.  

​Lumsdale contains much more recent ruins, dating back to a set of mills and associated buildings which possibly go back as far as the 1600s.  Its a really fascinating place with an amazing combination of ruined stone buildings, waterfalls, woodland, ponds and tracks through the valley.  

​Both places invite you to really ponder about past uses and the lives of those who lived, worked and used the sites in many ways.  I love the way natural materials like stones contains marks which hold traces of past lives, old stone steps worn about by thousands of footsteps over the years or stones which have been cut and shaped by ancient hands.   

​And amidst the intensity of trying to sort out vast amounts of arts equipment, forest school resources, project planning and more, time out in landscape such as this provides such a sense of soothing and inspiration.    Special places to breathe deeply and take in far more than just fresh air... 

​

After returning from Wales with some new energy I've found time to dig out lots of pots and pans that I use for natural dyes and to experiment with the wonderful technique of eco printing, something I've been meaning to explore for AGES!  ​Its already really addictive and hopefully I can make lots of time to play around with ideas before autumn sets firmly in and leaves and petals are then harder to find. 

I got together with the very wonderful Claire Crowley and Claire Uttley, two other creative forest school leaders who also wanted to explore this technique.    We spent at day at AMC Gardens (where I work a little bit of each week) and used the plants around us there to test lots of ideas out.    Once back home we've all continued to experiment - the day together was exactly the impetus we each needed.

​Bundle dyeing is a technique lots of people know through the work of the amazing artist India Flint, who creates really beautiful work and has published some very inspirational books, there are quite a lot of people exploring the technique now, partly through a desire to create work that has low impact on the environment, partly as part of a desire to slow down and take a more mindful approach to creating work and also as part of the interest in using the plants around us as a source for creations.

​I've been using plants to print with for many years, but mostly by working with printing inks and then layering up plants and papers through the printing press, which does give results I really love.     I've been exploring natural dyes for some time, but mostly onto raw sheep's fleece and then using this for felt making (though I'm determined to learn to use a spinning wheel too!).  This technique of eco bundle dyeing / printing is one I've been researching and its wonderful to finally feel I've begun my journey with this. 

​I love working with plants that surround me in different places, its part of forming a deep connection with the land and its definitely something I indent to continue to develop.  I grow many plants in my own little wildlife garden that are good for dye stuff and this printing process is like asking them to yield up new secrets!

​The actual process is very much about trial and error and also about stopping, slowing down and not needing a quick fix.    Taking time to walk and explore and gather the plants is important, some research into which plants are good for dyes is important too (although testing many out will give interesting and surprising results).    I'm especially enjoying the results onto paper and it will feed into all the little books I've been making.

​The paper and fabric is bundled up tightly and steamed (for at least an hour, but often much longer) and then left to cool before opening (the longer its left, the more the colours "cure").  There's lots of ways of adding mordants and colour modifiers and then also over-dyeing and re-dyeing etc, so its all very much about testing and experimenting and then recording results - its that wonderful cross over between art and science.

​I'm just off to gather more leaves!  

I think many of us need a little time away every now and then to places that fill us with ideas, inspiration and solace.   We each need different things and perhaps the key thing is knowing yourself well enough to work out what you need to seek out to recharge your batteries.    For me its wild landscapes, time immersed in nature, time alone and time with small groups of people I'm close to.     I'm a real introvert and need time away from crowds and noise and anything fast paced, I need time to walk and listen and reflect and ponder and discover.     I crave time to sit and watch the natural world and to focus and notice small details.

​There's a wonderful place in North Wales that a special group of close friends return to again and again, its our own organised retreat full of gentle creativity, experimentation, space to wonder, time to make things, walks, time to watch the light change over the sea, dog walks on the beach, kite flying and really good food.    We've just returned from some time there and the place has woven its magic over us all again.

​I really love being outside in all weathers, and although we did have a lot of sun too, its the wilder days where the colours of the landscape are muted and the wind whips about that I feel inspired by.     I've not altered the colours in these photos, there was such a wonderful colour palette provided by the natural world - with some great additions by the buildings dotted about (and a quirky little steam train!).

​This is the bottom end of the Snowdonia National Park, around the Mawddach Estuary and Cadair Idris, its a wonderful place full of mountains, hills, coast, vast swathes of beaches, wild estuaries and interesting little villages and towns dotted about.   The sounds of the sea and birds and wind rustling through the dunes are still in my head and processing all the photographs I've taken is a really good way of landing back here in Derbyshire and reflecting on what I felt and discovered in Wales.

​We always all bring sets of materials to make things with and its a wonderful opportunity to test out new ideas amongst supportive, like minded, creative friends.   I found myself needing to spend a lot of time outside watching the light change, wondering and photographing.    I also found time to weave, crochet and test out different yarn bindings; it also gives me a sense of permission to experiment and test out new things and since getting back home I've been really busy testing out eco bundle printing (another blog post to follow) which I've been wanting to explore for AGES!

​For me it feels very special finding places that you want to return to again and again, its always a sense of welcoming an old friend and peeling away layers and discovering more and more things.   The land has so many hidden elements, so much that changes and yet also a wonderful sense of solidity - of history that stretches back thousands and millions of years, and to me that feels very soothing.

On Saturday July 30th Katy Doncaster and I ran land art workshops in North Yorkshire as part of the 80th birthday celebrations for the Campaign for the National Parks.

​There was a series of guided walks and land art workshops all taking place in parallel across the UK National Parks, each celebrating and contemplating the distinctive local landscapes.    The land art creations were curated by Richard Shilling and there were artists working in many different venues creating a series of mandalas and other patterns with natural materials gathered on the day. 

​Katy and I were based at the North Yorkshire Moors Visitor Centre, a great spot on the high moorland near Danby, a really beautiful area.    We had a really lovely calm day with some wonderful participants - MASSIVE thanks to everyone for their ideas and gentle creative energy and contemplations.

There's lots more images and text if you scroll down the page - and if you click on the individual photos they should open up as larger images.

We all looked, gathered, collected and selected different natural treasures - the act of looking and gathering becomes a huge meditation and contemplative act and we had some wonderful conversations about this.   I find often its that act of really looking closely and gathering that becomes so significant in sessions like this.  Its wonderful to see what people are drawn to - different people will notice and gather different things and that then brings attention to a whole set of additional elements you might not otherwise have noticed.  

​We spread our collected treasures out and really looked closely at the details in then - empty snail shells, beech nut cases at different stages (each a different colour and texture), lime flowers, hazel leaves, twigs, grass seed heads...  it brings your senses into such a new way of looking and focusing. 

​We created a couple of large mandalas -  one of them began to be woven together as people got interested in ways of pinning leaves to each other... and this led to ponderings about standing that mandala upright to let the sunlight shine through.    So, up it went!   This gave a whole new dimension to it and meant there was a great play of light and shadow, it also enabled us to add to the patterns by weaving in further leaves and seeds.

​People made their own wonderful individual patterns too, one participant sat and drew which was very peaceful, others went straight into creating three dimensional structures and its so special how ideas bounce around and dance about between everyone.    It was a very contemplative space - I think people felt able to both work on their own creations but also to add to the group pieces and importantly to have time just to "be" in the space and spend time taking in the calmness, the natural materials, the sunlight and the atmosphere.   Mindfulness and flow state in true form.

​For me its great when I am able to step back and observe and really contemplate what's going on and photograph some of the ways people interacted with everything.  I was very inspired by the atmosphere of the whole day and we had some wonderful conversations with everyone who took part.

Although we were incredibly careful and respectful in the materials we gathered, it is important to forge strong connections with the natural world through actually touching and using natural materials.   There were certain things we wouldn't pick or use and we had lots of really interesting conversations around plants, plant names and ways of using natural resources.    Common plants such as goose grass (cleavers) take on a whole layer of extra meanings when you realise you can gather them and stick them into all sorts of shapes...  The nearby lime trees had shed lots of flowers onto the ground, each a slightly different shade of green-yellow-gold...   Part of this kind of gathering is about noticing the details in different plants and this then leads to so many wonderful questions and thereby a bond is formed as you investigate.

​Huge thanks again to everyone who took part and everyone involved in organising the day. 

​#happy80thCNP will take you to further images to the other events that took place the same day, the following links also have lots of information

​http://www.cnp.org.uk/38degrees-CNP

​https://parks.38degrees.org.uk/

​https://speakout.38degrees.org.uk/campaigns/1072
​

Sometimes its hard to find exact words to describe experiences, especially when those experiences have been so tactile, so deep and layered with so many small moments that add up to quite overwhelming feelings.   Our residential project at Lockerbrook a week ago (June 6th – 10th) was like that and for me.  It was also layered throughout with deep thoughts about what education should and could offer children and adults (as opposed to the extreme pressures, data driven measures and budget cuts now littered throughout the education system and which many of us are now feeling all too deeply).
 
The project was a whole week residential for a group of year 4 and 5 children at Dunkirk Primary School (aged 8 – 10).   None of them had been there before although a few of the children have siblings who came away with us there in March 2015 as part of a week long residential Erasmus funded camp with Dunkirk’s link school in Finland.  Dunkirk is situated just on the edge of Nottingham city centre and although Derbyshire isn’t far really, most of the children haven’t explored Derbyshire and it was another world entirely for them.   Lockerbrook Centre (see link here) is high up in the Dark Peak area of north Derbyshire, an area of high hills, wild moorland, strange eerie rocky outcrops, vast reservoirs and little farm tracks.

​There are captions on each of these photographs I took which give a little bit more detail about the project.

The staff / project artists involved aimed for the week to be filled with creative experiences all inspired by the landscape and the remote peaceful setting.   We have used Lockerbrook several times now, it’s a stunning location run by the Woodcraft Folk, so the ethics behind the centre are very strong.  The centre is an old farmhouse with a really interesting history and the building itself will have seen many changes over the years it has sat on top of the steep hillside.  The children were fascinated by the idea of the drowned villages underneath the reservoirs – and we talked a lot about how Lockerbrook Farm would have once looked down onto a village and heard the sounds of children playing, people chattering and going about their daily work, whereas now the building looks down onto vast expanse of water.
 
The timetable for the week consisted of a real mixture of opportunities for exploration and learning and we layered so much into everything we did.  There were walks, morning and evening yoga, den building, working outside with clay, stories, cooking on the fire, songs, time to make books and draw and lots of time amidst all this to let the stunning landscape seep into you.    Everything was thought out to provide deep learning experiences, opportunities for rich conversations and language development and endless opportunities to enhance self esteem and confidence. 

A really important part of a residential like this is all the very essential and basic life skills for the children of washing, cleaning the rooms, eating at a table and chatting calmly whilst doing so, unpacking / packing your own case, getting your bag and packed lunch ready for a day outside, working out what to wear etc – all of this takes time and is crucial to wider well-being.   Much of this “everyday” stuff was of huge significance to the children, its things that can be really hard to fit into a 9-3.30 day at school but which provide such crucial life skills.
 
We built a daily routine to hook everything on – getting up, dressing, breakfast together, clearing away, making packed lunch, morning yoga followed by a day of various creative work outside and then the evening meal and eventually bedtime yoga to relax and be ready to sleep.  Of course, as anyone who has worked on a residential knows, all this is then followed by ensuring the children are in bed, helping anyone who might feel a bit strange away from home, checking on the children constantly and then making sure all plans are ready for the following day.  For adults it’s a wonderful week of work but incredibly long hours with no down time at all. 
 
We were well prepared for wet weather but actually it was hot and sunny all week – which showed off the amazing views brilliantly and also gave us a chance to connect with the local population of midges… (maybe that bit of wildlife wasn’t quite so welcome!).  

On the Monday we spent a long time creating dens in the woodland near to Lockerbrook, the challenge for the children was to build a space that would camouflage them.   They also each created guardians for their dens out of clay and natural materials (I’m often asked about the clay I use and feel its vital to point out its real clay that a potter would use and fire in a kiln, its NOT air drying clay which has pieces of plastic in and is not suitable at all to leave outside).    They worked also to animate their guardians (all still outside) and give them a voice using an ipad and a great app which records voices.  
 
Lockerbrook is situated on top of a steep hillside above Snake Pass, so it involves a walk up through a beautiful wooded hillside to reach the centre.   Once up there you can walk for miles along the hills and we were totally spoilt for choices of routes.    On the Tuesday and Wednesday we undertook two walks to take in a variety of different views, history, geography and stories.   One walk takes in the stunning landslip that forms Alport Castles, the other walk took us past Crook Hill and through the wooded hillside to the reservoirs where we could explore stories of the drowned villages.    Each of these walks was about 6 ½ miles, which is quite an undertaking for most of the children; we allowed the whole day for each walk so that we could ensure there was time for breaks along the way: time for stories, for gathering ideas, for making things and sharing thoughts – and also ice creams at one point… 

 
On the Thursday we decided to use the children’s intense fascination with the villages underneath the reservoirs and enable them to explore their ideas around this.   Its been a strong feature of the way we have worked with the children at Dunkirk over the years that we ask them big questions and give them a real chance to shape their learning.   It’s also so touching and wonderful how the children use this to explore some very strong and powerful world issues.   For me too, the fact that last years Protest Art project fed deeply into their thinking on this project was really important.   Some of the children wanted to make model villages to try and flood to see what would happen, others wanted to know what would happen if they tried to create a way of diverting the water so it didn’t flood the villages and another group wanted to make placards, banners and model people to stage a real protest about flooding the villages – they wanted to know what would happen if people were given a voice.
 
Each evening there was time for reflection and to imbed what had happened during the day.    There was drawing, guided visualisations, making books, sewing (making puppets and more), time to read, time to chat, time too for table tennis and football.   I lit a fire (in my favourite spot over looking the reservoir) and we all sat around: we cooked, we sang and we shared thoughts.   Event the night when the midges were at their most active we still sat out (if briefly) with midge hoods on – rather a strange sight!  
 
There was yoga each evening before bed (as well as each morning) led by drama / yoga practitioner Parmjit Sagoo, its such a powerful and wonderful way of the children finding calm, gathering thoughts and winding their energies into either a place ready for work or a place ready for sleep.  
 
A huge driver in the work I do is about finding places for stillness and contemplation in nature – and thereby ways of igniting curiosity.  This is crucial for my own practice but I think its vital too for children and adults who often are pushed in a fast paced education system full of intensity.   Its often incredibly hard to find places where you can sit and think and observe – and in most school days this is very rare indeed, yet learning and imbedding of knowledge come through times to consolidate and through tactile connection with the world. It’s a kind of mindfulness that is central to well-being. 

Lockerbrook is a place that provides so much wonderful space to spread out and find gentle nurturing spaces for observing the world around you (and thereby your inner world too).  When making dens or clay creations etc, its all the subtle other things that can be just as (if not more) important – the finding of intriguing leaves and sticks, the gathering of resources, the sitting under a tree and listening to natural sounds, the feel of the breeze, the realisation that moss is soft to sit on…   All this takes time and it needs adults who can facilitate a space where this is valued. 
 
On our first day whilst making dens, two of the boys discovered fallen fresh pine needles – they were totally fascinated “look at these claire, what are they?   They are like little hedgehogs, they’re bright green and they smell good and they bend and they are all a bit different – and here’s another and another… look… more of them…”   Their den making turned into a wonderful exploration to hunt and gather fallen pine needles and we had a great discussion about why it had to be the fallen ones they collected and not those still growing on the trees.   Because we were there all week they were able to keep revisiting this, they carried a selection of the pine needles around with them all week, they kept finding new ones and thereby making all sorts of amazing observations about trees and soil types – and from high up on the hill tops where they could look down onto the woodland they were making some great discoveries about the trees in the wood, how the land was managed and why…   it went on all week with more and more observations and questions.    By the last morning they were still picking up fallen pine needles and comparing them – it’s an utter delight to be on a journey of discovery like this with children.    I think as adults it can be all too easy to dismiss the small details that fascinate children – and if you don’t stop to look and question you miss SO much.    But if children are surrounded by adults who DO stop, look, value the tiny details and share the wonder, then they receive a message that their curiosity, interest, ideas and questions are valued. 
 
Another example of this was the reeds growing in many places around the centre.   Again, on the first day, when a child had found one I showed them how you could carefully peel away the outer green coating to reveal the wonderful white inner spongy world of the reed – and we talked about how people had used these as candle wicks.   The challenge to peel them caught the interests of several children but then also they discovered so many sculptural qualities of the reeds and spent ages looking at different ways they could link together.   This was still going on by the last day with more and more new discoveries being made.
 
One of the class teachers who came along made the observation about how you see such different qualities in the children on a project like this.   That it’s often the children who might struggle to sit behind a table all day and focus on desk-bound tasks (and thereby be seen as struggling in a classroom) who totally shine out as enthusiastic learners and who are completely focused on the world around them.   I feel very privileged that over the years I’ve been able to work on creative projects which enable this side of children to shine out. 

The opportunities for exciting interactions with all kinds of wildlife were everywhere at Lockerbrook.   I’m quite “nerdy” about flora and fauna and get excited by the huge variety of things surrounding us…    I don’t feel its always vital that accurate names are placed alongside each bird and plant, more that its crucial to be aware of just how many different species are around us, how they connect up and how they are part of a rich ecosystem.   We were surrounded by singing skylarks, by calling curlews (one of my favourite sounds), by buzzards mewing, by swallows swooping and chattering, by so many other birds…    There were hares grazing right outside the centre early in the morning – and this in itself held huge fascination; the children called me over early one morning from inside the building where they were looking out of the window “look Claire at that rabbit” they said – and they were utterly intrigued when I said it was a hare, they had never heard of one before…  “what is a hare?   What does it do?”   
 
There was a cuckoo calling early in the morning near the centre too, a sound so familiar from my own childhood but now a rare sound - and for very many children it isn’t a common feature of their childhood. 
 
At dusk bats were flying around and a woodcock roding too… and as darkness fell tawny owls called loudly (the children were asleep by then!).
 
All sorts of tiny and intriguing insects were around and I was delighted to find an elephant hawkmoth drying itself out on the grass on the last morning.  A couple of the children caught sight of a lizard out on one of our walks and they were totally fascinated by this and desperately trying to find more.    We could have spent the entire week searching for creatures and only scratched at the surface of what was around us.
  
I’ve been resident artist / forest school leader at Dunkirk for 9 years, which has involved many different projects and partnerships and for the past few years has involved being at the school 3 days a week working with many classes on a number of initiatives.   It means I know the children and staff well and we have developed an incredibly strong working relationship and it has meant that creative projects like this can be cross referenced with all so many other strands of work at the school.  My time at the school is now changing but hopefully there will still be opportunities to work in this way with the children and staff.  Its been an incredibly special journey and I’m endlessly inspired by the ways the children are fascinated by the world and by the questions they ask.