Friends of Gracemount Mansion and the Balmwell Festival 2024

Eco-stories at Gracemount Mansion 2023 

Eco stories at the mansion July 2023

Balmwell Festival 2022

Returning to the Well 2019

Thanks to support from the Andy Hunter creative bursary I was able to offer a series of storytelling sessions for schoolchildren focusing on myths and legends connected to water.

P4 pupils at St Catherine’s Primary learned about the legend of their local healing well, the Balmwell and imagined a festival of water celebrating this ancient and important part of their local heritage. The class also enjoyed hearing legends from all over the world which celebrated the value of water and reflected the cultural diversity of their classroom.

Changing Views Stories of the Braid Hills 2017-2018

At the highest point on the Braid Hills you will see a viewfinder created by the map maker John Bartholomew in his retirement. It offers a 360 degree view of the surrounding landscape, identifies key landmarks and gives an interesting geological explanation.

The story below, the beginning of which features on a waymarker post nearby, is a myth created by local school children with support from storyteller Jane Mather. The children learned from Angus Miller about the volcanic history of Edinburgh and how our landscape was shaped by the ice-age, but had a lot of fun coming up with a very different story of how the seven Hills of Edinburgh came to be…

the three brothers and Arthur the terrible six headed giant

                     

Stories in stone Summer 2017, Rosslyn Chapel.

A mini-summer residency of eco-storytelling workshops with the chapel’s education department for an international audience of visitors. Sessions explored nature themes reflected in the many fascinating carvings covering the chapel’s stonework, I also learned that at one time Rosslyn was known as the green chapel.  After the reformation, it stood empty, its windows smashed as the chapel grew damp algae and moss flourished on the walls turning them green.

Also, during the chapel’s recent refurbishment, restoration workers discovered a medieval beehive. Honey was never collected from this hive as it had only one tiny hole for the bee’s to come in and go out in peace as they pleased.

Beehives were often a feature of medieval chapels as bees were thought to be tiny wing’d messengers from God who carried the dreams and prayers of the congregation up to the heavens.

  

Woodland Stories 2016

An 18 week project running over two seasons, Autumn and Spring – funded by the Big Lottery and run in partnership with Buckstone Primary School Parent Council.

Autumn Woodland Stories

Woodland Stories Report

Spring Woodland Stories Midsummer Celebration:

Toasting marshmallows in the woods