LATEST EVENTS - Acorns in Lakeside - Magic By The M25, August 2006
Acorns in Lakeside - Magic By The M25, August 2006
We've run Fairy Fairs on ancient pastures in the midst of Thetford Forest and in the grounds of stately homes, but this was the first time we'd tried to take nature and magic into 'High Street Britain', so we didn't know quite what to expect.
From August 14th to 20th the Trust's Great Yurt was settled between shops like Primark and Marks and Spencers under the air-conditioned dome in Lakeside Lakeside Shopping Centre at Thurrock, Essex. Among shops offering every conceivable form of consumer goods from MP3 players to lingerie, our crew unloaded twigs, withies, nuts, berries, feathers and paper to make Fairy Crowns, Magic Wands, Lanterns , Wizard Shields and Flower Fairies and waited for opening time. The shops were clothed in corporate plastic. We had canvas, hessian and ash. The shops had sales assistants. We had an elf.
Outside the yurt an elf did his sales pitch. "We've got stuff in here you can't buy anywhere in Lakeside ..." and it worked. MWe were delighted to get a terrific response from shoppers. Around 160 children a day took a full part in the workshops. Some people were a bit taken aback to come across the organic and home-made looking Yurt amidst the steel and glass but were soon delighted to discover "something different" for their children to do, which didn't just involve "buying stuff".
Many children were entranced by 'simple' things like acorns. Our crew spent a long time simply talking about seeds, and how they worked. This is what the Trust tries to do: start from where people are at, and take them one step further in understanding and appreciating nature.
By the end of their visit to the Fairy Queen children went away with small bags containing a sloe berry and a hawthorn berry, an ear of corn - treating it like "special treasure" after hearing stories about the ecology and folklore of each one.
The Shields workshop featured 'familiar' animals such as deer and badgers. Many hadn't heard of hares at all, and our crew spent a long time explaining the difference and why hares have long been regarded as magical creatures.
Making lanterns involves decorating them with nocturnal animals. We found many children had no idea what moths were. This may sound amazing until you consider that, thanks to pesticides in farms and gardens along with climate change, moths are becoming a rare sight in many parts of the country. Discovering moths helped many young people break into a whole new magical world of Night - many children took their lanterns home, declaring that they would hang them in a tree and look for things that happened in the evening.
By the end of the experience parents as well as children were finding their own uses for what they had discovered. For making Fairy Crowns we had picked a lot of big, rusty brown dock leaves. Some parents couldn't believe it was dock at first but they began to think they could use them as decorations at home - something they could get from hedgerows rather than florists - a reconnection with nature.
Being in a shopping centre meant we reached an audience who would probably never be found at conservation education centres. For instance, several girls aged about 12-14 in fashionable clothes came in to make a wand. At first they had no idea what the 'foliage' of a tree was but got really interested in all the leaves and stories around different trees. When they left they had decided they would go to make wands in woods with their friends.
Our presence definitely drew people to the site - something maybe of interest to the venue but also showing the latent demand for encounters with nature and magic. We had repeat visitors, some coming three days in a row. We had families who had been to the Fairy Fair and other events who made the trip to Thurrock in order to do more workshops.
We learnt a number of things, one being that shopping centres are very noisy if you are trying to tell magical stories ! What struck us most though was that the parents are, if anything, even more 'converted' at our events than the children they are accompanying. The more they stay, they more they learn, and this is important because it's most likely the parents who will decide whether a family will go out for a walk in the woods, or stay in to watch TV or play on the computer. The stories are all just anecdotes but they give some idea of why we need to work in places like Lakeside, and not simply 'preach to the converted'.
Our Thurrock workshops crew were constantly bombarded with request for the Trust to attend parties, provide information packs or visit schools. While this illustrates the appeal of magic as a doorway to nature, we simply can't begin to meet the demand without an office, staff and most of all, a permanent base. So if you want to help - to see more of us out and about running workshops and to visit magical nature events - please support our appeal for a permanent Fairyland, and make a donation, become a Fairy Queen or best of all, become a Founder (visit the website at www.fairylandtrust.org )
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