Life in limestone seas!

Life in limestone seas

make your own prehistoric puppet!

 

Date: Tuesday February 18th

Times: 2 sessions: 10.30 - 12.30, 1.30 - 3.30 

some colourful finger-trilobites

This is a drop-in activity, no booking is needed and there is no charge for materials (although donations are always gratefully received!)

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

 

Inspired by the fossils of Peak District limestone, join the our artists and make your own finger-puppet trilobites or a rockpool full of ancient animals or some ferocious fossil fish model

This event will be held among the exhibits of the Museum's White Peak/Dark Peak exhibition where you can find out more about our local geology and see how our dramatic landscapes have inspired artists over the centuries

 

hand-held Dunklosteus (the originals were about 5m long!)

The tide is still in!

Buxton Museum and Art Gallery

our ancient seabed poses in a corner of the Gallery

The Ancient Landscape seabed is still cheerfully oozing (in a fluffy sort of way) in Buxton Museum and Art Gallery as part of the White Peak/Dark Peak exhibiton. if you are passing, please do drop in and stroke a seaweed

We have a public event on Tuesday 18th february: details will follow soon

you are advised to approach cautiously

a chair may offer good cover

...for a surreptitious approach

or you may loiter round a corner

the unsuspecting reef espied from behind a flipchart

triumph! a close encounter with with woolen wotsits! 

but please beware of the guardian seasquirts:
they have been known to swallow whole fingers

White Peak/Dark Peak runs until Saturday 22 February 2014
Buxton Museum and Art Gallery
Terrace Rd
Buxton
SK17 6DA

Opening hours during this period
Mondays: closed
Tuesday - Friday 9.30 - 5.30
Saturday: 9.30 - 5pm

Apple Day, 2013

the ammonite tree

A bit belated, but here are images from our Ancient Landscape activities at the Dove Valley Centre's delicious Apple Day but in October

We sent the AL artwork and artist) in as a reminder to visitors to look under their feet and to remember that the earth the fruit trees were growing in drew its form from the stony bones of the earth. And here those bones reflect the ancient seas of 300 million years ago….

preparing decorations 

a jellyfish is captured in wax crayon 

ready for action

Belemnite-streamers

the fossil streamer-tree

High tide again!

High Tide again

From December 14th to February 22nd 2014, our Ancient Landscape will be adding its own distinctive wooly touch to Buxton Museum and Art Gallery’s “White Peak, Dark Peak” exhibition

Celebrating the inspiration that the gritty Dark Peak and softer landscapes of the limestone White Peak have offered  artists over the centuries, the exhibition features prints, paintings, finds and poems from the Museum collection. It includes several new pieces added to the collection during the Enlightenment! initiative.

Quietly loitering on one wall, is a poem by one of our own Ancient Landscape artists. Gordon MacLellan’s “The Hills are Waiting” is included as an invitation to visitors to step out and go exploring these dramatic landscapes for themselves.

Public events: we are planning a public event on Tuesday 18th February 2014 - more details to follow. There might be a weekend event as well...

Useful links:

Gordon’s blog

The Museum’s Collections in the Landscape programme

who could resist paddling in this ancient sea?

Apple Day, 13th October

Apple Day

Sunday 13th October 

11.30 - 3.30

Dove Valley Centre

No, we're not fossilising apples nor pretending they are the first of the Carboniferous fruits! But thsi Apple Day falls from its tree deep in our ancient limestone landscape, just where muddy water shales meet the limestone of the lagoon floor

Add caption

So, our Ancient Landscape will be rippling itself around on this Apple Day to remind everyone of the geology under their orchard feet!

So come along and play with a trilobite or two!





And try some of the Apple Days activities as well:
apple tasting and identification
apple recipes
apple juicing
orchard wildlife walks
techniques for pruning your own trees
storytelling
and other fruitful delights!

Where: Dove Valley Centre, Under Whitle, nr Longnor, SK17 0PR (on the road between Longnor and Sheen)
Cost: free!

The Tide Stays In!

In tropical heat to-day, some 40 people called into the Green Man Gallery for some determined "Knitting of a new landscape"

It was great! There were needles knitting, crochets hooking and alarming needle-felt barbs avoiding people's fingers. Seaweed was knotted and jellyfish ribboned and wobbled. A lot of the new creations were placed in the window display by their makers

And the Gallery has asked for our Ancient Landscape to stay in the window for another week!

branching coral

seaweed might be knitted....

seaweed could also be knotted...

...but sooner or later, it always gets someone!

a sea slug takes shape

a half-grown sea slug

the adult slug sets off on adventures

crochetted and fossilised ammonites 

contributions from our friends at Silverdale Library

The Next High Tide

The Next High Tide

Sunday 7th - Sunday 14th July

The Green Man Gallery, Buxton

Window display: our ancient tide will wash into The Green Man Gallery again as part of the Buxton Festival Fringe. So pop into the Gallery and among the prints, paintings, photos and thrills on display, have a peaceful moment beside our prehistoric world, soothed by the gentle corals, graceful seaweeds and occasional nautiloids…..and if the Gallery is closed, you can always swim past the window and send us the photos of yourself....

and when you want to join in…..

Knitting A New Landscape

Sunday 14th July

Times: 11.00 - 16.00 (last new activities at 3.30)

Join us for a frivolous day in Carboniferous Derbyshire being adventurous and ambitious. We want to spin our Ancient Landscape out of the window and across the gallery with seaweeds waving from ceilings, tentacles from nameless seabeasts crawling across the floor, giant corals lumping in corners and fingerfish flashing through this ancient world…

We'll bring wool, crochet hooks, felting needles, card, glue, pencils, crayons and tape. Please bring your own knitting needles.

Finding the Gallery:

55 High Street

Buxton

SK17 6HB

Tel: 01298 77401

kelp taking shape

 Parking: there is no parking at the Gallery itself but there is some free parking in the streets round about and Pay and Display parking in the Market Place just a couple of minutes walk away. Some street spaces are P&D, as well, so check before you wander away from your vehicle!

Buses: we are just a couple of minutes from the Market Place bus-stop and even closer to stops on Dale and West Roads

Train station: about 15 minutes walk away

The Big Bird, Beast, Bug and Botany Hunt

The Big Bird, Beast, Bug and Botany Hunt

preparing for last year's event

When: Sunday June 9th, 11.00 - 16.00

Where: Dove Valley Centre

Under Whitle Farm

(between Sheen and Longnor)

SK17 0PR

www.dovevalleycentre.co.uk

Ancient Landscapes among the Birds, Beasts, Bugs and Boatnicals? We'll be there, with fossils to look at and draw, models to handle, people to talk to, a wall to stare at (just in case we can find anything!) and our usual exciting, messy, colourful and engaging creative activities

We'll be making fingertip coral, adding small animals to one of our smaller landscapes and hopefully working on a 2 metre tall stand of prehistoric kelp! Visitors will also be welcome to make their own ancient rockpool to take home!

Gordon the Toad (one of our familiar Ancient Artists will be at the event as well - helping mess people up with fingertip corals but also telling stories of the animals and plants that we might (or hopefully might not) find in the Valley around us!

The main event

From the Dove Valley Centre press release

This is a free event for the family that supports Staffordshire Wildlife Trust.

Do you like counting wild creatures and flowers and maybe learning more about them?

If so, come along to the annual biodiversity day at the Dove Valley Centre on naturalists will lead activities around the farm: these will include pond and river dipping, wildflower and bird walks, sweeping for bugs, art activities and story-telling and more…You will be able to get really close to moths that were caught the previous night. There will be information too on barn owls that have bred on the farm.

the Centre is a lovely place for explorations!

Plants can also be swapped, so bring along any spares.

Refreshments will be available throughout the day, but if you’re staying for some time you may need a picnic – and wellies!

Tel. Paul/ Elspeth on 01298 83282 or email: walker@dovevalleycentre.co.uk

We splashed around....

Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, Tuesday 28th May....
images from the event

We have also featured in the Buxton Advertiser - follow the link: Feature

resources and results: models, fossils and rockpools

it was good to see children playing with our main installation

careful adjustments are often necessary

a beautifully observed coelacanth

proud rummagers in ancient rockpools!

Next event:
Sunday June 9th, the Big Bird, Beast, Bug and Botany Hunt at the Dove Valley Centre

Paddling in an ancient sea!

Life in ancient seas

trilobite tickling is a rare and delicate art

Come and join us as we imagine paddling in an ancient sea and rockpooling in a time before the dinosaurs!

Date: Tuesday 28th May 2013

Venue: Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, Terrace Road, Buxton, SK17 6DA

Times: 10.30 - 12.30 and 1.30 - 3.30

Booking: no booking needed just drop by and join in

Cost: free: materials provided (donations welcomed)

Organisers and more information: our artist today is Gordon MacLellan from Creeping Toad (http://creepingtoad.blogspot.com/)

What's happening?

Explore life in the Carboniferous Seas of 300 million years ago that eventually gave us the limestone, shale and gritstones of the Peak District. We'll look at fossils to understand the animals of the times, draw those animals and the corals and seaweeds they lived in. Then visitors can make their own model rockpool as a piece of ancient seaside to take home and maybe their own fingertip corals to our growing Ancient Landscape