Craft, land work and folk song workshop

Part of Derby Folk Festival 2025

Join us for a free practical workshop exploring the connection between craft, landwork and folk song from 2.30-5pm Sunday October 12th.

This is a short introductory workshop based on our popular series ‘Finding Roots in People and Place’ which took place at Heartwood CIC at High Leas Farm in Matlock.

Our workshops bring together practical landwork, traditional crafting skills using natural local materials and ideas and information from ecology and history. These are combined with listening to songs relating to the land and seasons and learning and singing songs which relate to craft, landwork, place and the natural world.

Whether you’re familiar with folk singing or not we invite you come along and give it a try.

During this 2.5 hour introductory workshop we’ll be getting to know the heritage grains which grow at High Leas Farm in Matlock including april bearded wheat and pillcorn, a long forgotten naked oat.

The session will include:

• An introduction to our workshops at High Leas Farm.
• A short talk by ecologist Miriam McDonald about the importance of heritage grains and how they can support people and wild species as well as restoring lost foodscapes. Plus a chance to try extracting grain grown at High Leas farm by hand.
• A hands-on craft workshop, with basket weaver Karina Thornton. Using straw from the heritage grains, create corn dollies or 'harvest tokens' and find out about their role in harvest customs.
• Learn and sing folk songs on the subject of grains, harvest and autumn with folk singer/songwriter Sarah Hinds.

At the end of the workshop Sarah will create an improvised song based on your thoughts and experiences of the grains you’ve worked with.

No singing, crafting or landwork experience necessary.

Allergen Note:

Please be aware that in the workshop we’ll be handling wheat stalks and grain.

This workshop is free and is supported and funded by Sheffield University Access Folk project.

To find out more about the facilitators:

Karina Thornton – Basket Weaver and bushcraft facilitator

https://whittleandweave.co.uk/

Miriam McDonald - Ecologist

https://www.heartwoodsfc.com/

Sarah Hinds – Singer/songwriter

https://sarahhinds.wordpress.com/

To find out ore about Access Folk

https://accessfolk.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/home

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