"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).
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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...

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... 

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/

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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... 

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