Category: Walks

further explorations with eco printing

6/29/2018

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

8/20/2017

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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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a sense of autumn...

11/11/2014

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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...