Leave Nothing But Footsteps, Take Nothing But Memories Blog

Taddington Tales: the film!

The Taddington Tales

It has taken a while but we’ve just posted the wild and wonderful film that arose out of work with Taddington Primary School

Make some popcorn, sit back with a long cold drink and drop into YouTube for a viewing!

Taddington Tales

Project work makes for interesting reading....

Footsteps in Time

Footsteps in time

exploring the history of Dovedale through drama, photography and fun!

we've never found a live one yet, but we keep hoping....

When: Wednesday 27^th April 2011 , 11am –  4pm

Where? Dovedale, upstream from the Stepping Stones in the Dovedale Valley. Ordnance Survey grid reference 119:SK151514

How much? activities are FREE, car parking charges apply

How long? activities take 30 minutes – 1 hour. Drop-in during the day: no need to book

What is happening? using old pictures to look at how have people used Dove Dale over the centuries? Visitors will be able to with costume and compose their own historical photos, send postcards through time, make up stories, reconstruct ancient coral reef scenes from when Dove Dale’s limestone was being formed

The Taddington Tales

after workshops in school back in October, Taddington priumary School came, en masse, to Buxton Museum and Art Gallery in February for a day of activity and performance.

Here, for the first time, we saw the animations children had created editted into a film and shown on a big screen.

Here, we met the glamorously clad inhabitants of period Buxton.

Here, we encountered the animals of modern Taddington that share the dales with us humans.

Here, we saw the history of the dales unfold in a timeline reaching from ancent seas and trilobites right up to the present day and rivers wearing the limestone away and carryng it back to the sea again…..

First photos are posted here…more will follow…and

moments of fame and glory!

an article from the Buxton Advertiser

Project work makes for interesting reading....

timeline: early mammals

timeline technicians in action

planning the timeline

period elegance in peg dolls!

Spring words!

Lively words for the coming of spring

Every month we have been trying to psot a piece of writing from earlier visitors to the peaks, inviting 21^st century readers to taste earlier experiences of these craggy hills and deep dales. Our latest challenge offers two pieces – that hopefully catch something fo the promise of spring…

Have a read, and send us what you think about these words, thoughts and images: you don’t need to write a poem! A sentence will do, or a paragraph or scrawl a postcard on-line….and I know the image isn’t of anemones! but this is from a spring morning in the dales just last week

from “The Tables Turned, an evening on the same subject”

UP! up! my Friend, and quit your books;

Or surely you’ll grow double:

UP! up! my Friend, and clear thy looks;

Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun above the mountain’s head,

A freshening lustre mellow

Through all the long green fields has spread,

His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! ‘tis a dull and endless strife:

Come, hear the woodland linnet,

How sweet his music on my life

There’s more of wisdom in it

William Wordsworth 1798

from “The Botanic Garden”

All wan and shivering in the leafless glade

The sad ANEMONE reclined her head;

Grief on her cheeks had paled the roseate hue,

And her sweet eyelids dropp’d with pearly dew.

“See, from bright regions, borne on odorous gales

The Swallow, herald of summer sails

Erasmus Darwin 1791

a burst of March sunshine

Pure publicity!

Catch the article about the Nothing but Footsteps project in the latest edition (Spring 2011) of Pure Buxton!

www.purebuxton.co.uk

Pop-up Theatre workshops

Pop-up Theatres: miniature marvels: thrills, chills and daredevil adventures!

Thursday 24^th February 2011

using old prints of the Peak District join artists from the Footsteps make your own Victorian–style pop-up theatre complete with scenery, heroes, villains, animals and monsters!

tell adventures from the hills and dales that no-one has ever heard before!

Ages: suitable for anyone from 8 years of age. Younger children are welcome but must bring an adult to help them

2 sessions

Sessions are free but space isl limited and places must be booked. Call the Museum on 01298 24658

Session 1:10am – 12 pm:

Session 2: 1pm – 3pm

Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, Terrace Rd, Buxton, SK17  6DA

unlikely adventures on the Banks of the Wye?

Fighting words and fish

For our next poetry challenge (see “Grab your words and fight back” from back in November), we’ve picked up on one of the peak’s most abiding recreational pursuits, offering you two different perspectives on the noble art of fishing……

precarious pastimes in Monsal Dale

The aim of these “challenges” is to give you something to think about and invite you to send in your responses: as poems, as prose, as pictures….as a few words scribbled over a cup oft ea or a considered composition that kept you up half the night…..And “responses”? You may agree with the poems presented – or disagree – or think it’s all rubbish and we should just build motorways – or be deeply indifferent to the appeal of thigh-length waders and lots of cold water.

1. Enjoy thy streame, O harmless fish;

And when an angler, for his dish,

Through a gluttony’s vile sin,

Attempts, a wretch, to pull thee out,

God give thee strength, O gentel trout,

To pull the raskall in!

John Wolcot, 1801

2. Oh my beloved nymph! Fair Dove;

Princess of rivers, how I love

Upon thy flowery banks to lie;

And view thy silver stream,

When gilded by a summer’s beam,

And in it all thy wanton fry

Playing at liberty,

And with my angle upon them

The all of treachery

I ever learnt, industriously to try.

Charles Cotton, 1630-1687

Exploring a sense of place

Back in September, i was working up in Inverness telling stories and leading storymaking workshops in schools across the region. I spent one session with some old friends at the Glachbeg Croft Centre in North Kessock where we talked about the Footsteps project. The group were taken with the idea of people visiting places and valuing places very much as we do today over the centuries. Out of that discussion came two collective pieces of work that, while they aren’t about the peaks, are about that sense of valuing place and that adventures come from how people see and respond to a place and to each other rather than anything hugely shocking taking place.  ”The Expedition” and “Glachbeg” follow. there is an image sequence to go with Glachbeg that will go onto our YouTube site just as soon as I work out how to do it!

The Expedition

Out on the waves, looking for dolphins,

Out on the waves, in a bumpy boat,

Out on the waves, racing along,

Out on the waves, hanging on tight,

Out on the waves.

Giggling girls holding on for dear life,

Navy blue lifejackets, blue and black wetsuits,

Hoping for giraffes, for crocodiles, for penguins, for sharks.

Out on the waves, under the water,

Dolphins and seals are gliding.

Out on the waves, over the water,

Seagulls, herons, cormorants and shags are sailing

Out on the waves where the guillemots spit

Out on the waves where we see no whales,

No seals, no dolphins, no nothing but waves

Back from the waves, back from the water, back to Glachbeg

Singing all the way, back to home and back to bed!

The Wednesday in-It Together Club, Glachbeg Croft Centre, 15^th September 2010

ENJOYING GLACHBEG

The day the diggers came,

moving mountains of earth,

Glachbeg grew out of mud and wood

and a sunset glowed over the hills

Cleaning out chickens

Collecting eggs

Feeding excited cows

Hoping for horses but not here, not yet,

And in the autumn, the cows will steal the apples

Lambs in the field, jumping around, both lambs and us

Escaping to Spain

Summer holidays and heat

Relaxing in the sand with jacuzzis  under the stars

Under the sun

A hot sun

A bright sun

A roasting sun, while palm trees wait by a clear blue sea

But Glachbeg brings us back to black sheep and brown sheep and

Lambs still running across the fields

And here is our room

And time with friends

The band is playing – drums, guitar and a strong voice

Joining in, singing, dancing, or watching

The Wednesday In It Together club is best!

Cleaning out chickens

Collecting eggs

Feeding excited cows

Hoping for horses but not here, not yet,

And in the autumn, the cows will steal the apples

The Wednesday In-It-Together Club,

Glachbeg Croft Centre, 15^th September 2010

turbulent seas and a sense of some discomfort....

Winter Walks Challenge

search for the locations of 18th and 19th Century prints in the Derbyshire dales this winter

Lost Scene – found!

Three images follow….did picture 1 become picture 2 and with picture 3 have the Keirl family pinned the scene down?

one of our Lost Scenes

original caption reads " A View on the River Wie in Monsal Dale, two miles north of Bakewell"

add a couple of hundred years and a weir level or two....