Secret Garden Party meets the FairyLand Trust!

Hello Fairy Followers!

First I must apologise for the lack of blog posts whilst the Fairy team have been at Secret Garden Party the weekend just past, we had technical problems with Wi-Fi and logging on to the blog. However I thought a retrospective collection of the three days the workshops were running would do nicely as a catch-up (quite a lot of update so sorry for the length of the blog post).

Friday: Fairy Blogger - Andrea Osborne

After leaving Latitude, the Fairy Fair crew headed across country to Cambridgeshire for the Secret Garden Party – a magical festival where ordinary life and beliefs have to be left at the gate. A perfect setting for Fairyland workshops.

The heavens opened Thursday night and the rains came – someone must have been rain dancing for hours! The next morning we ventured into the damp dark woods gathering greenery to decorate the Fairyland workshop area with lush green foliage. So much foliage was gathered that we have been able to create a wonderful green entrance to the workshop.

Friday's workshops were to make Fairy Crowns and we had a stream of children hoping to make perfect fairy festival headwear from willow, trails of ivy and leaves. Some children wanted real flowers but of course we make paper ones so the real ones remain for the fairies.

But one little girl said “I’m not sure I believe in fairies”. A chorus of children chimed up that even if you can’t see them, they still may exist”. One little boy went so far as to stand up and say: “But if you don’t believe in fairies, the tooth fairy won’t come”. And he should know, having lost 4 teeth in the last month!

Fairy helper Rachel writing on the board. 

The workshop all set up!

Pete on booking duty!

 

Saturday and Sunday: Fairy Blogger - Ben Reynolds

 

Saturday brought along sunshine and Magic Wands! The workshops kicked off with only a small group of Wand makers because of the Circus acts going on next door! Despite the size of our little group they all left with smiling faces and plans to cast spells on their brothers and sisters! One girl told us she was going to use her Willow wand (which is said to have healing abilities) “to cure mummy's aches and pains”

 

More Wand makers appeared in the afternoon ready to spin the season wheel and find out which type of tree their wand was going to be made of. Every season had a taker with winter being the most popular and one young girl was thrilled when she was given a birch leaf to tie onto her birch wand! The day finished as sunny as it started and the 6 Fairy Crew Gardeners ready for book making the next day!

The lovely weather on Saturday started to turn our green entrance crispy!

The 'wool tree' ready to add some colour to the Wands.

Many familiar faces appeared on Sunday, children who had already made crowns or wands (or both) were back to take home a little wildflower fairy book as well. With lots of colouring, glue and glitter this workshop is always a favourite, with boys and girls concentrating desperately to try and stay within the lines of their Musk Mallow or Red Clover outline.

Once we eventually got to sticking in the leaf samples, we were sticking in our Willow tree leaves when one bookmaker thought it was very important to announce his sister was called Willow too and so she wanted to stick her sister to the page instead. After we had pointed out that her sister would not fit on the page nor would this make the book practical to hang around her neck or carry in her pocket she decided it would be better to stick the leaf in instead.

We had an unusual bookmaker on Sunday too! Who was resting here whilst the last workshop was finishing.

 

After The rainy nights and Sunny days of the weekend, we had a cloudy day today, packing all the equipment away ready for more fairy fun and excitement at Camp Bestival! Off we go to spread more nature and magic to the little folk down south.