ARRAN PROVIDES THE PERFECT BACKDROP TO A SERIES OF NEW OUTDOOR STORYTELLING FAERIE TRAILS 2022
Arran has become an outdoor storytelling theatre this Summer 2022 as locals and visitors are treated to a series of free traditional storytelling walks from June to September, delivered by professional storyteller and Arran-resident Marty Ross. They are receiving rave reviews!
‘My two granddaughters and I had a marvellous afternoon on Thursday’s Arran Faerie Trail walking and listening to Marty’s dramatic and enthralling story against the backdrop of the atmospheric Roots of Arran Community Woodland, a context which really brought the tale to life. The story was gripping from the outset, full of magic, adventure and romance with plenty of humour thrown in for good measure – one of the many highlights was Marty’s extremely credible impression of the characterful Scottish animal central to the story! (My youngest grandchild has talked about nothing else all evening!) Many thanks for a thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable experience.’
LM
‘Dear Martin,
I feel compelled to write and let you know how you enthralled us with your
story last Friday night. It was a super ending to our time on the island.
It will remain in our memories for a long time.
You put heart and soul into your rendition, it was a superb occasion.’
RC & WC
As part of Scotland’s Year of Stories and under the auspices of Roots of Arran – the community woodland above Brodick – local storyteller Ross leads four storytelling walks per week, a mix of light-hearted daytime fairy tales and more adult-oriented ‘eco-Gothic’ stories in the evenings. The mobile performances cover 3 miles. Audiences are invited to meet outside Brodick’s Old Post Office and walk to the upper reaches of the atmospherically landscaped woodland – one of the island’s secret treasures – before returning to the starting point in the middle of town.
Marty Ross has a well-established career as a writer of audio drama for the likes of BBC Radio and Audible, with productions including original work such as ‘Romeo And Jude’ and dramatizations of classics like ‘Treasure Island’ and ‘Moby Dick’. As an experienced performer of his own work, he has delivered acclaimed performances in both traditional theatre settings – at festivals including Edinburgh Fringe and London Horror Festival – and less conventional spaces. He is currently resident storyteller on the island’s radio station, ArranSound.
Marty Ross says, “There’s an opportunity here to put Arran on the map as one of Scotland’s centres for traditional storytelling, a place you come to enjoy this very particular kind of dramatic performance, as folk might go to Stratford-upon-Avon to see Shakespeare. But we need the support both of the local community and our seasonal visitors, for them to embrace this as part of their island’s cultural life – and to embrace the idea that storytelling isn’t solely for kids but can be as mature and complex a form of drama as the grittiest film or TV or conventional theatre.”
The performances help to introduce the Roots of Arran Community Woodland – an area of forestry clear-fell transformed by volunteers into a tranquil broadleaf woodland – to islanders and visitors. This special landscape, which is often overlooked even by locals, includes ancient ‘veteran’ beech trees dating back hundreds of years and a hidden tree maze and will form the perfect backdrop for this series of magical and mysterious tales.
Four storytelling walks run each week from 19th June to 9th September – afternoon fairy tales on Sundays and Thursdays, evening ghostly tales on Wednesdays and Fridays. Performances are free (though donations can be made on the day to Roots of Arran) and spaces must be booked in advance by phoning or emailing at least 3 hours in advance: 01770 700338 07989 746641 Marty.ross.writer@gmail.com
This event has been supported by the Year of Stories 2022 Community Stories Fund. This fund is being delivered in partnership between VisitScotland and Museums Galleries Scotland with support from National Lottery Heritage Fund thanks to National Lottery players.
FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
Marty Ross
01770 700338 / 07989 746641
Marty.ross.writer@gmail.com
Juliette Walsh, Roots of Arran Community Woodland Committee
arranlandj@gmail.com
01770 700508
The Lamlash Coop donates to Roots of Arran
Tree-planting in January 2018
The Arran Rotary Club kindly donated 25 native woodland trees (oak, silver birch and beech) to the woodland and we are planting them this January and February on the volunteer days.
September 2017 – Woodland learning in Shiskine and Pirnmill schools
Debra and Juliette have started facilitating ‘woodland learning’ in Shiskine and Pirnmill schools this term. The staff and children are using woodland adjacent to the schools to learn about the trees and wildlife, basic survival skills and take part in art, science and storytelling activities. The woodland sites will then be available to the schools for further year-round learning.
The Shiskine site which is just a walk through a couple of fields from the school 🙂
July 15th 2017 – AGM
Our AGM this year receded a successful Folk for Roots event at Altachorvie. The full minutes of the AGM can be found on the downloads page.
Roots of Arran Forest School Leaders are helping island primary schools develop outdoor learning areas…
…adjacent to school grounds and pass on outdoor learning skills to teachers as from May 2017. So far, Kilmory Primary School has developed a mini-pond, carried out a survey of British V Spanish bluebells in their adjacent woodland and learnt how to put up tarp shelters and make hot drinks using a kelly kettle. Other activities have included bug searches and journey sticks. Brodick Primary School explored their adjacent woodland and opened it up by removing a dense area of invasive rhododendron with loppers and saws. The children also tidied up a neglected gardening area at the back of the school and filled the many tubs with fresh compost kindly donated by the Coop for a variety of seeds including runner beans and sunflowers. This is just the start!
May 2017 – Wooden shelter nearly finished
We are pleased to announce that the wooden shelter is nearly finished! We have been working on it for the past year on volunteer days and the structure is nearly complete. We are just going to add wooden walls and windows.
On 2nd and 3rd May 2015 we held a green woodworking weekend at Arran Outdoor Education Centre with Bob Fleet from Wooplaw Community Woodland and Tim Stobart from Bute bringing their expertise. One day one we progressed with making shave horses and on day two with pole lathes. The event was funded by Foundation Scotland and we are hoping to run a follow-up workshop this year in order to work on our green woodworking skills.
8/3/15 Hugely informative apple tree pruning workshop with Kathy Sayer. We learnt so many things about apple tree care and went down to Roots of Arran orchard, replaced two dead trees with a ‘Katy’ and a ‘George Cave’, pruned the rest of the trees and put well-rotted manure around their bases – here’s hoping they all flourish with our t.l.c.
We hosted a visit to the site on 24th May 2014 by about 20 lawyers and friends of ‘Wild Lawyers’ a group interested in environmental law – they came to learn about the community woodland and lent a hand removing sitka and rhododendron. Here is a photo of the group kindly taken by Sir Crispin Agnew.
Community Copse Tree-planting Day on Sunday 9th March 2014 – 18 volunteers turn up to lend a hand and then have lunch in the gathering circle.
Small Grants Success for Roots of Arran Community Woodland – 16/01/13
The Roots of Arran Community Woodland was established 10 years ago on a forestry commission-owned site of recent clearfell. The group has worked hard over the last decade to plant it up with a variety of native trees, establish a network of walkers’ paths, an orchard and a pond to benefit wildlife. These efforts have been supported by Arran Trust grants over the last three years. School groups have used the site over the last three years to achieve their John Muir Award and have taken part in tree-planting, art activities, pond dipping and removal of invasive species. The group has just received confirmation of a grant from the Ernest Cook Trust to continue offering ForestSchool sessions to local primary schools run by two qualified ForestSchool leaders this year. In addition to this, the group just attracted another grant from Foundation Scotland to purchase much-needed tools for keeping invasive species at bay. ‘So far, we have largely managed to stop rhododendron gaining a foothold in the woodland’ says volunteer and resident artist Mike Bailey, ‘but we needed to purchase new giant loppers and pruning saws for our volunteer workforce to remove it more effectively’. The group hopes to start up a mid-week group this spring as not all volunteers can commit to the Sunday volunteer day. ‘So all-in-all things are continuing to shape up here in our island community woodland,’ thanks mainly to the efforts of our committee and volunteers and the small grants which we are sometimes managing to secure,’ says chairperson Juliette Walsh.
there is a volunteer in there really putting some welly into clearing out the rhoddy (Jan 14)
Our obsession with tarp shelters continues! (October 2013)
New sign carved on a slab of oak by our fab Mike Bailey! (August 2013)
New spiral ‘signs’ to guide visitors to main spiral, (June 2013)
Children’s watercolours of plants on site (June 2013)
Mike mixing earth pigments for paintings in his woodland den. (June 2013)
Here is a way of using them! (June 2013)
Creating hard edge to pond for pond-dipping groups (April 2013)
Mike’s spiral planted up with 100 silver birch (April 2013)
We have been given a grant from the Voluntary Action Fund for producing a leaflet which includes a map, for visitors to the woodland and for hoodies with logos. (January 2013)
Mike’s chairs made from birch and willow (November 2012)
Mike’s Spiral November 18th 2012
Planting 450 trees is all in a morning’s work with Scout Power! November 18th 2012
With the help of the island’s two Scout packs, light work was made of planting 450 trees last Sunday along the newly constructed paths on Roots of Arran Community Woodland site, Brodick. Fiona Kerr, Scout Leader of Shiskine Scouts and Roots of Arran Committee member applied for the trees earlier in the year from the Woodland Trust and the varieties sent included hazel, blackthorn, crab apple, elder, dog rose, hawthorn, holly, dogwood and two oak saplings from one of the Queen’s estates to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee. Each tree is protected with a plastic tree-guard and cane to hold it in place which will hopefully enable the trees to take root successfully. This was part of a push to plant 6 million trees across the UK to help preserve the environment. Roots of Arran Community Woodland was, seven years ago, a site of forestry clear fell with no trees. Over the years thousands have been planted and the woodland is beginning to transform from an area of ugly dereliction with little wildlife value to a thriving landscape rich in flora and fauna. Roots of Arran committee would like to thank the 40 plus volunteers who took part, Andy Walker of the Forestry Commission who transported the trees to the site and resident artist Mike Bailey, who lugged equipment down to the site in his trusty wheelbarrow.
Mike Bailey’s art-in-the-woods is progressing well – see photos! (September 2012)
Trying out the lay-out for the spiral, September 2012
Whiting Bay Primary School P3/4/5 class are participating this autumn in 1 full day a week Forest School sessions planned and delivered by two Forest School Leaders with parent and teacher support (September 2012)
North Ayrshire Council has given us a grant from the Community Benefit Fund for pond-dipping equipment.(Sept 12) This will really be useful next spring and summer with visiting groups.
The second path is now underway! (September 2012) We are thinking of adding a sculpture feature to it…watch this space…
£150 was raised from the Folk Festival Ceilidh (June 12)which will go towards running costs.
We have managed to secure a second grant for path work from the Arran Trust. (www.arrantrust.com)
We are working on a map of the site so that visitors can pick this up from the car park in order to navigate their way around.
You can walk down to the site from the Cnoc Na Dail car park as well now – just follow the path which starts to the right of the picnic bench and heads into the plantation!
The committee has welcomed a proposal from retiring Art Teacher Mike Bailey, to create artwork in the woodland throughout the coming year (2012-13) using greenwood. As ‘artist-in-residence’ he will spend time working on these structures which promise to be both thought-provoking and meditative.