Undercurrents: Session 7: Gawthorpe Hall, Flicker and Frogs!

Another lovely day out today. We travelled to Padiham to visit the gorgeous historical home of the Kay-Shuttleworth family at Gawthorpe Hall.

It was the first time for all of us so it was great to experience the Hall and the grounds together. We looked around the Hall first and enjoyed Mid Pennine Arts' Flicker exhibition by artist Catherine Bertola. The textile collection was particularly wonderful and gave the group lots of ideas for how they could create their own embroidery inspired work.
Here's a (sneaky) picture of the group at the bottom of the grand staircase...

After a quick snack break in the cafe we spent the rest of our day exploring the garden and surrounding grounds of Gawthorpe. Inspired by Flicker, I set the group the task of taking photographs that could be layered on top of one another, so encouraging them to think about foreground, middle ground and background, contrasting colours and shapes, focussed detail versus blurred suggestion. I like this picture that Shannon took, the blurry boy with yellow T Shirt looks like he's running out of the yellow flowers..

While wandering around trying to find the best spot to get down to the river bank, we suddenly realised that the grass beneath our feet was moving...it was covered in teeny tiny baby frogs! After some initial trepidation by some (very proud of you Shona!) we couldn't help but gently pick up the cute little hoppers and capture some close up shots. This photo was captured by Danielle...

And this rather grumpy frog captured by Shona-Mae...

We didn't quite find the perfect spot to walk along the river as the bank was quite steep and overgrown but we managed to capture some great shots of the riverside wildlife. These shots were taken by Caitlin...