Do you look upside down education resource

Try a new way of looking at the green spaces around you

Filed under Outdoor Learning & Wild Play

Use this step by step guide to create your own way of looking at the details around you and getting a totally different perspective on your garden, local woodland and parks.

Make Your Way worked with schools in Carluke, Glassford, Lanark, Larkhall and Stonehouse over six months to find creative. engaging ways of walking and exploring in the Clyde and Avon Valley. Inspired by den building and aiming to get closer to nature, pupils nestled under clear plastic tarps to look up at the world in a whole new way and examine the details of leaves, mosses, plants, and twigs in a natural gallery gathered close at hand.

Try your hand at looking at nature through the tarp by following this guide. Print and download your own copy by clicking under 'Other Resouces'.

Skills involved:

Focus
Imagination
Construction
Drawing
Teamwork

DENS, DETAILS AND ‘DESIRE LINES’

In Edgelands*, poets; Paul Farley and Michael Roberts, look at things a little differently from how most people do. They start to appreciate the details of the small green and outdoor spaces all around them. What do you love about playing and exploring outside? Maybe one of these things:

DENS - Treehouse or lair or den. Whether it’s making forts with pillows and blankets inside, or grabbing tarpaulin, wood and pallets for outside - there is no limit to what you can make and imagine.

PATHS - Some roads, paths, tracks, show the ways people have walked for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Keep your eyes peeled for ‘desire lines’, which are rough tracks beaten down in the grass.

WATER - Pond, stream, inlet, river, tributary, pool ... many names and many games: skipping stones, floating sticks and boats, hopping over puddles, and of course water fights on a sunny day.

WOODLANDS - Woods make stories, mystery and magic come to life. Harry Potter’s ‘Forbidden Forest’, Robin Hood’s Sherwood Forest or Winnie the Pooh’s ‘Hundred Acre Wood’. Explore the woods and imagine new worlds!

*Information from Farley, P. and Roberts, M. (2011) Edgelands. Random House: London.

ALL ABOUT PERSPECTIVE

“On a summer night I like to go out and lie on the patch of grass in our back garden... this hard ground presses my flesh against my bones and makes me agreeably concious of my body. In bed I can sleep, here I can rest awake.” - Jacquetta Hawkes, A Land.*

Look around. What do you see?

How you see things, the details of the world about you, depends on where you are. Are you in a house? On a mountain? In a den?

In a den, laying close to the ground, you can feel closer to the creatures and elements all around you. You can feel small in the huge space of a forest, a field, or even the sky... like a creature burrowed in the ground, poking a nose out at the trees, feeling the vibrations of a world buzzing with activity: rustle of leaves, prowl of a fox, twitter of birds, tumble of rocks.

Laying on the ground with a clear tarp above you: think about what you can see, hear, feel? What is YOUR EXPERIENCE nature? What is DIFFERENT, what is SPECIAL?

*Information from Hawkes, J. (1951) A Land. Crescent Press.

What Will You Need?

Four to five clear PVC Tarpaulins at approx 2m x 2m
Large sheets of Tarpaulin
Brass Eyelets
Four Bungee Cords per Tarpaulin
Rope
Children’s Books
Pillows and soft toys
Chalk Coloured Pens
Lettering Stencils

Step 1. Find the right space to set up

In order to string up - or bungee up - your clear tarps, it is best to find a group of sturdy, skinny trees such as birch trees. Large hedges can also be used, just ensure the branches are strong enough to hold the tension, keeping the tarp fully taut.

Step 2. Set up the clear tarps

Using the eyelets in the clear PVC Tarpaulins, attach bungee cords and loop them around tree trunks or branches to rejoin at the eyelets. NOTE: You may need to attach additional eyelets, these can be purchased seperately and inserted into the tarp edges.

Keep the individual tarps as horizontal as possible and with enough tension in the ropes/bungees to keep them taut without ripping the material. In addition, take care over how tight the bungees are so that they do not snap back.

Step 3. Make a playful space

Lay down waterproof tarps to lie on and think about how to make the space comfortable and cosy. In Edgelands, the authors point out that “the den is a secret place, built outside the confines of the adult world... a place of retreat, but also a place of togetherness, a social space.” How can this friendly, playful space be created - what games can be played or stories imagined? Get comfortable (and keeping the rain in mind), try rolling out blankets and popping some pillows underneath your clear tarps to create a nice place to lay down and look up at the sky and the nature around you. Although don’t get too relaxed and fall asleep! This is about noticing the details remember: the patterns, sounds, colours - the overall make up of the natural landscape.

But what active ways can you do this?

Step 4. Time to gather

Using the clear tarps, you can observe the world from a whole new angle - you can look upside down. Try gathering whatever you can find: moss, twigs, leaves, flowers, maybe some woodlice or other insects, to look at them crawling and wriggling right over your head.

Maybe get into teams and gather materials at your tarp - creating stations of materials to later build mini-dens: moss, leaves, twigs... swap the teams around so each can look at the materials they didn’t collect

Step 5. Focus on the details

Looking at things in a new way can reveal a lot: patterns in bark or the shape of a leaf, things you might not have noticed fully before. Get a chalk pen and trace around these objects from below - maybe label them with your stencil letters. Create a colourful tarp of drawings and scribbles, a record of how you see nature and what it all looks like from below.

Step 6. Make Mini-Dens

Having used the clear tarps as an opportunity to explore everyday natural materials, you could then think about creating some mini-dens: a mouse’s house? An insect palace? Run through the main things a house or den would need and how that fits with the materials you have gathered. What would you use for the roof, the floor, the walls? How would you decorate this little den?

In children’s stories, animals often have their own little underground homes, looking at things in a very different way from humans:

“THE MOLE had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home... Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing... Something up above was calling him imperiously... So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged... working busily with his little paws... till at last, pop! His snout came out into the sunlight and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow.” - Grahame, K. (1908). The Wind in the Willows. Methuen: London.

What stories can you create with the possible characters that inhabit your mini-dens?

OTHER WAYS OF LOOKING

Make Your Way tried a number of ways of looking, exploring and discovering the beautiful landscape in the Clyde and Avon Valley - focusing on detail, framing views, and throwing a fresh take on everyday green spaces. This included the Make Your Way periscopes. Periscopes - find out more about how to make your own here: http://www.webinnate.co.uk/science/week8.htm, or contact the Clyde and Avon Valley Landscape Partnership to borrow the Make Your Way periscopes.

STAY SOCIAL

Keep up to date with further projects and share your ideas online using #MakeYourWay

Facebook: www.facebook.com/ClydeandAvonValley/

Twitter: www.twitter.com/ClydeAvonValley

Instagram: www.instagram.com/clydeavonvalley/

Make Your Way is an arts, heritage and active travel campaign, focusing on the communities of Carluke, Glassford, Lanark, Larkhall and Stonehouse, in 2016 – 17. It was delivered by icecream architecture and SYSTRA, with support from Smarter Choices, Smarter Places grant and is part of the Heritage Lottery Fund supported Clyde and Avon Valley Landscape Partnership scheme.