3 Foot People Festival, Chelmsford, 24th - 26th June 2014

The Fairyland Trust attended the wonderful 3 Foot Festival at Hylands Park, Chelmsford in June.  The crew loaded up the vans and headed down to Essex on the 23rd, ready for three days of crown-making drop in sessions with pre-school children and their families.  The drive offered up some apocalyptic thunderstorms and even a broken fan belt, but the crew and kit arrived safely.  After some shower-dodging, the tents were up and ready to be decorated with native tree leaves and the Fairyland Trust information and photos to help teach families about magical times of the year, wildflower species and trees.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were beautifully sunny and were a blur of meeting and greeting excited children, measuring heads for willow withie crown bases and ushering families into the medieval tents ready to create crowns.  Once seated in the first tent, children and their well-behaved adults were introduced to the Fairy Calendar and given some leaves to add to their crown base.  With each leaf, the Crown Makers explained the folklore associated with the native tree and a little about the wildlife that inhabited the trees.  A few tree species later, the children were pointed through the secret tunnel to the adjoining tent.

The second tent was filled with photos of Midsummer wildflowers, and another of the Crown Makers showed the families how to create pretend flowers (we left the real ones to the bees and butterflies!) out of brightly coloured tissue.  Each flower also had associated folklore and some information about the creatures, magical and non-magical, that visited them for food.  Crowns were admired in the fairy mirror and met with giant grins from their reflections.  Some children were lucky enough to have wildflowers in their garden or near to where they lived so already knew a few species, others learnt a lot and wore their crowns with pride as they left the tent, knowing a more plant species and which creatures favoured them.


We sold Wildflower Seed Wands, recruited bakers and fundraisers for the Fairy Meadow Fund (http://www.fairylandtrust.org/fairy-meadow-fund.html for more info) and chatted to a lot of lovely folk about the work the Fairyland Trust does as a conservation charity for little people.  We also met a couple of friends, a Pygmy Shrew that got under our feet and a Puss Moth caterpillar that munched away on our willow leaves whilst we made crowns!  All in all, a pretty fantastic festival!


                       

Wands workshop at Holt Community Primary School

On Wednesday 7th May, one of the Fairyland Trust's medieval tents, complete with bunting, magically appeared in the beautiful nature area of Holt Community Primary School.  Reception class, Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3 all joined the Wand Makers, Caitlin and Vicky, for wand making workshops throughout the day.  The classes each learned about the story of the first Wand Maker and created some beautiful wands from native tree species to take home.

The children learned about folklore of native tree species and also heard about how these species are important for all sorts of animals, from creepy crawlies to birds and mammals - the Wand Makers were impressed with how much the children took on board.  After the final wand making session was complete, Year 2 and 3 joined the Wand Makers for a nature walk and to search for some of the tree species from their workshops.  The children searched for familiar plants (daisies, grass, bluebells, ivy) and learned folk lore and nature facts about not-so-familiar ones (rowan, cowslips, ragwort).  The Wand Makers were again impressed, the children had really listened to the story and information in the workshops earlier and were able to appreciate that the sticks of their wands came from trees that they often walked past without noticing.

The nature walk finished next to a huge hawthorn coming into bloom as it is the Fairy Queen's favourite tree and everyone sent some fairy spirits (dandelion seeds) off into the sky to spread some magic with their wishes.

Wand Workshops with Maldon Primary School

Wednesday saw the first Fairyland Trust school sessions of the year.  One of the medieval tents was awoken from its winter slumber the day before and loaded into the van with other Very Important Things such as pipe cleaners, coloured wool, feathers, eight different species of stick and a sprinkling of green fairy dust.  Emma and Vicky squeezed in too and set off to find Maldon Primary School in Essex.  The tent was erected on the school field in the late afternoon sun (and rather chilly wind) with the help of some eager teaching staff.  The staff were allowed home for their tea and us Wand Makers worked some magic to decorate the tent like a small piece of Fairyland.  The children arriving at school the following day were amazed; they had no idea how the tent had suddenly appeared on their field, although some may have suspected fairies had been at work.

The school had been studying fairy tales and folk lore over the week and everyone came in fairy tale costumes for the day, including the teaching staff.  Pirates rubbed shoulders with fairies and princesses, a musketeer chatted to Puss in Boots, and Shrek even made an appearance!  Four wand making sessions ran over the day with groups from Year 1 & 2, teaching the children about wand folk lore and the powers of our native trees.  Each group was asked about trees; it was decided that they were “good for lots of things”, but no one knew about the story of Flint, the first Wand Maker.  Flint’s story was read to engrossed listeners who learned about the different species of tress and their folk lore.  Once the wands had chosen their owners (a truly magical experience) the children added feathers and wool to decorate them.

Each of the eight tree species was discussed and its power revealed – hazel, favoured by wizards as the tree of wisdom and hawthorn, the Fairy Queen’s favourite and the tree of happiness, etc – and the children began to think about how their wands could power some wishes to help others in their class and families (“My Nanny lives far away, I’ll send her love with my apple wand”; “I have elder, I can protect the class from things, like… um, fire!”).  The children were gifted some ivy to prolong the wand’s life, learning that ivy gives life to wildlife through winter with its long-lasting berries, and finished off their creations with a good dusting of glittery fairy magic.  As the session ended, wands were given a test drive to make sure feathers sent wishes through the air properly, then the group returned to their class.

At the end of the day around 80 fairy tale characters gathered back on the school field together for a nature walk and, despite the cold and the spitting rain, everyone was keen to explore.  We found most of the species that had been talked about in the workshop, including a huge weeping willow wrapped in ivy, a small hazel (“can we look for nuts to be clever?”), fresh green leaves on a hawthorn (invoking another chorus of Pharrell’s ‘Happy’!), a huge sleeping ash (“that’s good for your brain, that one”), and even a tiny magic elder growing its way out of the top of an old, dead tree.

Each child was ready to head home and share their magic wand with their families; the wand label holding an identification photo, some interesting information and their species’ name for the others to read.  Teaching staff reflected on how impressed they were with the knowledge the children had picked up and how much everyone had enjoyed their day (one child adding, loudly, “Fairyland day has been the best of all the fairy days”).  With thanks echoed from each class, the Wand Makers waved the fairy tale characters off as they returned to their classes.  Using their last bit of magic, the Wand Makers packed the up van and disappeared back to Norfolk in a cloud of fairy dust.