storiesunderstones
  • Home
    • contact claire
    • useful information >
      • links
      • useful reads
    • about claire simpson >
      • inspirations
  • photography
    • photographing and filming arts projects
    • photography: trees, woodland and forest
    • photographing landscapes
    • photography: wildife
    • photography: sea, shore and coast
    • photography: people
    • photography: objects, collections, still life
    • photography: plants
    • photography: buildings
  • projects
    • connections with nature
    • exhibitions, installations and work on show
    • forest school
    • Dunkirk Primary and Nursery Residency
    • collaborations
    • early years work
    • training and inset
    • work with schools
    • work for sale
    • installations
    • stories out of place
    • wildlife friendly gardens and outside spaces
  • Some Curious Finds
    • stories out of place
    • Scarthin Books >
      • Scarthin Books Art Room
    • S.H.Y
    • story spaces
    • crayfish
  • materials and techniques
    • altered books
    • hand made books
    • drawing, patterns, arrangements and images >
      • drawing and patterns
      • no glue and patterns
    • puppets
    • working with light >
      • shadows and light
      • lanterns and light
    • natural materials and the elements >
      • clay, mud and sand
      • water
      • Willow
      • winter
      • Spring
      • summer
      • autumn
    • textures, colours and patterns >
      • handmade paper
      • felt and fabrics
      • paint
      • print making
    • making dens and spaces
    • using words and poems
    • loose parts
    • journals and sketch books
  • Blog latest news

Do they have rainbows in Finland?

9/18/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
"Do they have rainbows in Finland?" was a question I was asked today during a really lovely Skype call with the wonderful Nethergate Academy, a special school in Nottingham where I'm resident forest school leader / creative practitioner.  Its such a good question and really poetic, it really struck me what a lovely thing that was to ask.   All the children at Nethergate asked such great questions, its very special having the technology to do a live link with them, it means a lot.   I've been sending lots of images back to them - including many of "mini Baxter" a cuddly toy version of the real Baxter - the school dog.   (see if you can spot him in the photos below!). 

Colours have been in my head a lot here, the colour palette in the landscape is so rich and I'm deeply drawn to the different colours around me.   The colours change all the time depending upon the sun and cloud cover, but there are so many beautiful gentle shades of grey-green-golden-browns with all these intense flecks of deep colours dotted about the forest with fungi, berries and leaves beginning to turn such deep autumnal shades.


You could walk endlessly here and notice something different every time, partly because the light changes so much, partly because the colours in the foliage are changing daily and partly because there are so many tiny details to notice...  The colours of the landscape are almost summed up by the tiny snippets of detail found on some of the amazing rocks here. I've been spending spent ages looking at lichen and moss, so many wonderful grey-greens with tiny dots of reds, russets and golden yellows... Its like the vast forests with little flecks of intense colour where fungi grow dotted about...   And I'm really drawn to the ways the fungi and the tiny parts of the moss are like little vessels holding dew.

The arts studio here in Koli is such an inspiring space - and its big, which was slightly daunting in some ways at first but now I feel settled in here I can see just how vital such a space is - it's letting me really spread out and make things, test ideas out and leave things in place so that I can keep tweaking and rearranging (and that all sets other trains of thought off too).
​
The forest is just outside the window and keeps calling out to me; I've begun to settle into a way of dividing my day between sessions with the school, walking in the forest and collecting and time making in the studio. This is my third week here and I'll be heading home at the end of the week, so it will be interesting to see what emerges during the next few days... I definitely feel this is just a beginning of exploring here...

I also find it so fascinating watching other people interact with the landscape here. I live close to the Peak District National Park and am out walking there a lot but there are so many differences here with the ways people are so calm and gentle and peaceful in the way they spend time in the land. You can walk for hours here and hardly see another human.  On Sunday I walked through the forest to the wonderful Nature Centre at the top of Ukko Koli (the hill top view point which is very well known here) and there were others out and about up there - but it was so peaceful.  People here are very careful to ensure they don't intrude with loud noises or behaviour that might cause problems for the land or for others. I've not seen any litter and no dog poo (and definitely no plastic bags of dog poo slung in trees) and people are walking dogs here. People at the hill top view points chat, but its calm - they do it in a way that allows others to enjoy the peaceful landscape and to watch the view without feeling encroached by the behaviour of others. There's fire pits here dotted all around and people just turn up, carefully make a fire, cook some food and then put the fire out and go on their way... Its all so much a part of how people spend their time that it feels so ingrained.

I think I must be part moomin really...
0 Comments

shadows, light and stories held within the forests

9/15/2018

0 Comments

 
I've been here in Koli exactly 2 weeks now and there's so many thoughts going round in my mind, so much to ponder...  Many things are emerging here in Koli - the landscape keeps revealing different layers of detail, there's a sense of inner discovery, some art work is emerging and the sessions with the lovely village school are revealing all sorts of treasures and ideas found by the pupils.    There are lots more photos below.

Koli National Park really is a very special place, it has touched me deeply;  there's so much to explore that I want to be outside looking and discovering as much as possible. My urge to collect and my love of light is being explored through taking lots of photos and some film footage as well as gathering up little twigs and bits of lichen and looking at ways of layering and holding these... I've been writing lots and collecting words and thoughts connected to my own responses to walks in the forest - and I'm looking at ways of using those...

With the school we've been looking at the little treasures around us and collecting things in tiny containers and then unpacking these and seeing what we've each found and what we've been drawn to. Lab 13 have given us some wonderful microscopes to use whilst here too so we've been really loving looking at things up in such close detail. And I find it fascinating seeing what pulls the pupils in.


Some really lovely sun here over the past 2 weeks and the children at the school and I have been outside so much -  discovering natural treasures, looking at grains, finding different grasses and exploring shadows; they spent ages trying to grind their own flour too and were really interested in that. I will put a further blog post together soon about my work with the school here, there's so much to say - things that happen as a matter of course here are so different to the UK and it really does leave you deep in thought.

I was incredibly touched yesterday also to get a skype call through to a wonderful school I work with in Nottingham, I've been sending lots of images back to them and its so lovely having contact going back and forth with the UK. It really feels like a proper exchange of ideas and discoveries.

With the school here in Koli and in my own work there's lots of explorations of light and shadow happening.  There are lots of wonderful ideas from the children in the school as they test out different shadows created by themselves and natural objects around them. And in my studio space I've been setting up different natural objects that I've collected and things that I've started making and assembling - and exploring ways those catch both the natural sunlight that floods in here but also lights and shadows I'm projecting. I'm trying to look at ways of layering up my thoughts and observations from my long walks in the forest here and to combine those with collected objects. These are all starting points and more exploring is to follow.

The artists residency programme here is organised by the Koli Cultural Committee who have such a fantastic programme of work happening - and they've been doing so for very many years.  They have been looking after me wonderfully here and made me very welcome indeed.   The residency is based at Kolin Ryynanen which is a hub of culture; its a lovely restaurant café bar with exhibition space and a programme of live music, in the centre of the tiny village of Koli.  The entire upstairs floor is the artists residency space - with a huge studio area that has windows on 3 sides and then a living apartment and balcony looking out to the forest.  There's access to the sauna and fire pit outside (there's a converted barn with b and b accommodation too).  And there's also a wonderful little museum of village life in the grounds here.   

And wonderful today also to welcome a group of delegates from Etela-Konnevesi National Park who have been visiting to find out more about how the artists residency programme works here. It was great to talk with them and talk about how time with nature gives such depth of feeling and generates creativity.


It's so rare to have time to dedicate to creative exploration like this.   Partly because in the UK so much else occupies time - be it the ins and outs of work admin, pressures from juggling so many projects, domestic chores and other things that need attention daily.  So much of my work in the UK is with schools, which I love and am deeply committed to, but it also consumes a lot of energy and time (as well as the physical journey of driving in busy traffic) and the context with schools in the UK is so very different to here.  

I think having the space here is proving to be deeply significant for me - the physical space of a light, big studio with lovely views; but also the emotional space, space to walk and explore and to discover, space to look and listen and think...   And for me, at the moment, space to think and ponder is deeply crucial.  

I'm finding the landscape here is affecting me deeply and bringing about some very intense emotions which, in turn, link to other things and do feed creative explorations.   More ponderings to follow... 


0 Comments

further explorations with eco printing

6/29/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
I've been continuing to explore ways of creating eco prints over the past few months and am rather addicted to the processes involved!   Its such a wonderful way to explore a natural space by investigating the colours hidden within the plants there...  I've been using an on-going combination of plants I grow in my own garden, plants from the community garden in Nottingham and a few leaves I collect when out on woodland walks.   Different colours and patterns appear at different times of the year, so you never know exactly how things will emerge - which just adds to the wonder.

Its something I'm really keen to investigate much further, there's so much to be discovered and so many ways different colours and patterns can be revealed...    Its a little bit of alchemy!    I've run a few workshops with groups as an introduction to eco printing and its so wonderful seeing people excited by the process and wondering around collecting leaves and gathering materials to use.   I think its one of those techniques where the gathering of the resources to use (in this case leaves and petals) becomes such a crucial part of the entire process that you are deeply caught up in the act of collecting - and thereby you become absorbed (and wonderfully lost) in the looking and gathering and wondering ("will this leaf do anything?").  

Some of these images were taken last weekend at Arkwright Meadows Community Garden in Nottingham where I ran an introduction to eco printing and natural dyes workshop with a great group of participants.   We wondered around the rich resources of plants there, gathering leaves and fallen petals to see what might happen...  It was great that people went home to carry on their experiments and then over subsequent days people have been sharing their results on the AMC Gardens facebook page, its so lovely to see things that people have gone on to make.  https://www.facebook.com/AMC-Gardens-Arkwright-Meadows-Community-Gardens-121448337881840/

​   
0 Comments

explorations in the local landscape, connections with the past and ponderings over textures in stones

8/20/2017

0 Comments

 
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... 

​
0 Comments

a sense of autumn...

11/11/2014

0 Comments

 
Autumn (if you are out experiencing it) is such an evocative time of the year and becomes closely bound in experiences and memories.   It fills the senses with sounds, textures, colours, smells, tastes and sensations such as walking through scrunchy leaves or early misty morning journeys to work.  I feel very lucky that a vast amount of my time at work is spent outside, much of it in wooded areas.  Wondering a woodland in autumn is filled with precious things and can be a real sensory delight as the smells, sounds, textures and colours seep into you - the woods may be warm or chilly, there might be mist rising, or an early morning frost, the moon might be bright in the sky as dusk draws in, there might be low bright sun sending patterns of light through the trees...

Autumn is a time of gathering food and preparing for winter, its a time of sharing found hedgerow treasures, its a time when we want to add light to darker days and nights, the leaves are filled with the most wonderful array of colours before they fall - and it always feels vital to me to get out and experience that before the branches are bare.    Its also a time when wildlife is busy gathering food and preparing for winter - so it can bring incredibly rewarding encounters if you get out there.

For me, autumn also brings strong memories of previous years and of various projects that I've been involved in, its a good reminder of just how much the changing seasons can stir powerful emotions and memories (for all of us), and thereby another reason why working outside with children is so important.
A connection with the changing seasons and the turning of the year is vital to me - and I think crucial for us as humans in so many ways.  I've been involved in many different projects over the years that are so closely linked to a strong sense of autumn for me - mostly these are projects outside, but also there have been projects where the journey to and from an inside space has stayed with me because of it being autumn, or because an inside space had a really strong connection with the outside (maybe through large windows, or through natural objects being present, or through food being cooked).

Many years ago in November, I was part of a team of people working on an international youth theatre project in Germany, although we were mostly working inside in a community space, we stayed in a youth hostel in the woods and there was such a strong presence of autumn as we explored the trees outside, as we walked through the woodland and into the nearby village (past houses with wonderful arrangements of pumpkins outside their front doors) and as we visited other youth arts projects with very inspirational outdoor spaces.

I've taken part in several study visits abroad, with the international Reggio Emilia network, amongst others, and many of these have been during the autumn.    I had a wonderfully inspirational time in Denmark a few years ago where we visited a number of different schools, all exploring the Reggio ethos and all working outside (some with no inside space at all).    In a different autumn I went on another amazing study visit to Sweden with their Reggio inspired schools - where Stockholm was filled with such a strong sense of the season.    All the schools I've been to in Scandinavia (and I'm presently working with a school in Espoo, in Finland through my role at Dunkirk Primary) have a strong link with the natural world in their indoor spaces - and its something we've lost in many schools in the UK. 
Autumn brings a bounty of natural materials to work with - and the foraging and gathering of these is as much a crucial part of the season as making things with them.    When I'm working with children I see such in depth observations in them as they search and hunt for natural treasures - and a huge part of sessions outside are connected with this because as children search they also find a host of unexpected things - and the descriptions and observations that arise are really powerful.

Autumn is also a time of gathering light around you - something that connects us deeply with our ancestors.   I've worked on many lantern projects, at all times of the year, but autumn and linking lanterns with fireworks and bonfire celebrations has featured a lot (as has linking lanterns with "Christmas light switch-ons" which seem to happen in November often...). 

Wildlife watching and photography opportunities are rich in the autumn - flocks of geese flying over Norfolk, red deer rutting in the Scottish Highlands, jays gathering acorns in woods and hedgerows, badgers foraging outside their setts, nuthatches gathering food in dense woodland... there's so much to drink in...
0 Comments

    Claire Simpson

    Archives

    September 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    September 2017
    August 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    October 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014

    Categories

    All
    Altered Books
    Arkwright Meadows Community Gardens
    Arts Festivals
    Autumn
    Beach Finds
    Belper
    Birds
    Books
    Children's Writng
    Clay
    Coast
    Collaborations
    Contemplations
    Cooking Outside
    Derbyshire
    Design Work
    Drama
    Driftwood
    Dunkirk Residency
    Eco Printing
    Exhibitions
    Film
    Finland
    Fire
    Flow State
    Forests
    Forest School
    Gathering Ideas
    Hedgerows
    Ideas Gathering
    Insects
    Installations
    International Work
    Koli Arts Residency
    Land Art
    Landscape
    Leaves
    Little Treasures
    Loose Parts
    Moon
    Moorland
    Mud
    Music
    Musings
    Natural Finds
    Norfolk
    Northumberland
    Objects
    Old Books
    Paper
    Patchwork
    Patterns
    Photography
    Ponds
    Prints
    Project Documentation
    Protest Art
    Pupil Voice
    Reflections
    Retreats
    Scarthin Books
    School Projects
    Schools Outside Work
    Schools Work
    Sea
    Shadows
    Sherwood Art Week
    Sherwood Printmakers
    Sign Posts
    Snow
    Some Curious Finds
    Spring
    Stones
    Stories
    Story Spaces
    Summer
    Sunlight
    Textiles
    Trees
    Urban Wildlife
    Wales
    Walking
    Walks
    Wildlife
    Wildlife Gardening
    Winter
    Wonderings
    Woodland
    Words
    Writing
    Yoga

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.