Once upon a time there was a girl...living in a hard, fear encrusted world, then she found a place that felt familiar inside...a dear green place where the rough met the smooth, where spirals led to stories and she could emerge transformed from the old to the new.
She travelled in time, space and dreams, up hidden stairways leaving behind the unseemly to flourish using words, now with a daughter, they explored the places hidden within the broadly seen, discovering stories that would lead to a new set of adventures....this is where our tale of places begins....
A dome in a botanical world brought us here and a dome over a celluloid one draws us away, the last thing we look up at in our ten year home. Is the signpost that the credits have run but the next production will be fantastical.
Once upon a time there was a girl...living in a hard, fear encrusted world, then she found a place that felt familiar inside...a dear green place where the rough met the smooth, where spirals led to stories and she could emerge transformed from the old to the new.
Hidden Spaces in a Dear Green Place.
Amanda Edmiston moved to Glasgow the ‘Dear Green Place’ (the meaning of Glaschu its Gaelic name) ten years ago to study herbal medicine and began storytelling when she found herself an unemployed single mum after the birth of her eldest daughter, Allannah...
"My own mother is a storyteller and it seemed natural for me to take the stories of the plants I loved and create a career for myself taking those stories to others, whatsmore I could take my daughter with me, work became a magical journey, an adventure. After many years in a dark place, the move to Glasgow was the catalyst for change for me, a world of plants and their stories, hidden spaces, seen from alternative angles that offered a creative fantastical world into which my daughter and I grew. Now having grown myself a world I love and having found a man I want to share it with, Allannah and I prepare to move on to a new chapter of our story, we have photographed some of our favourite places and written hints of the tales that we found there to say goodbye as we prepare to leave the city, transformation complete."
Amanda Edmiston was born just beyond the garden and just inland from the shore in a granite graced town to the north. Her grandmother planted and baked in a dark world of dreams and her mother told the stories, her grandfather carved stone and her father made toys from the trees. Having laboured with the rights and wrongs of the world and found that all her efforts left her adrift, Amanda took to watching plants and finding their myths and to writing new stories for her own daughters to grow in and to share with anyone who would care to listen.
Amanda Edmiston is a professional storyteller, writer and artist, based in Scotland,
Allannah Edmiston is eight and loves dancing, stories, forests and making things.
Amanda has created and told stories for all sorts of exciting people but you can read more about that on her website,
Allannah has just finished making a hyena from tissue paper and eating pancakes for breakfast but you’ll have to wait a bit longer to hear more about her story.