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Funny and Wonderful Memories at The Green Man Gallery
After 10 years of being a home for Funny Wonders, The Green Man Gallery has closed. We thought we would take a look back at our time there through a number of photographs.
Our co-founder, Doug Agnew, was one of the founders of The Green Man Gallery, when it first started in November 2012, in the corner unit at Five Ways, the junction which inspired its name.
There, we held a series of workshops in 2013 to make our POPPIT puppets to promote the Buxton Puppet Festival – POPPIT standing for ‘Puppets on Posts, Puppets in Trees’, a hint as to where we put them!
In the summer of 2013, which marked a year since the passing of our other co-founder, Chris Agnew, we prepared a window display at the gallery, showing some of her work and puppets. You can read more about Chris here.
When the Gallery moved to Hardwick Hall (now Hardwick Studios) off Hardwick Square South, in the summer of 2014, we found ourselves in need of a kit store (as our previous studio closed). The gallery artists were kind enough to grant us a storage space in the old ladies toilets, later referred to us as ‘The Cupboard’, in which to keep our workshop kit and, in 2015, we began holding some puppet-making workshops in the gallery’s workshop room.
Our old friend, Ben Brassington, created for our The Silk Road production in 2008, spent the summer sitting by the fireplace at the gallery.
We also helped Buxton Drama League create some puppets for one of their productions. Some of them joined us to help with the papier-macheing and body-building. Since, the puppets have been hired out to other groups.
They were always handed over at the gallery and the visitors were always interested to see the creative community space.
In 2016, we started helping with the Buxton Town Team’s ‘Best Flowerpot Person’ competition, part of Buxton in Bloom. We added our ‘flowerpot man band’ to the gallery’s garden entry – the competition’s theme was ‘music’ (pictured).
We started running community making workshops at the gallery.
We always loved the flowerpot flowers which the gallery artists created!
In this photo from 2016, we’re in the yard, practising our ‘routine’ for the human rollercoaster, which we paraded in the Buxton Carnival, created during workshops at the gallery (pictured above).
Surprisingly, the boxes survived the day and are still in the building! If anyone would like them, or would like to join us in parading them one last time, please get in touch!
In March 2017, following the passing of Doug, Chris and Doug’s family held a retrospective exhibition of both of their work at the gallery.
On the launch night of the exhibition, we attempted to create a piece of shadow theatre using their puppets, but with the plot, script and music created on the night. A number of brave attendees volunteered to each create a scene which we wove into a story called ‘The Long Home’ with an introduction by Ben Brassington, one of Doug’s puppets. Read about it here.
Our Changing Faces project began in 2017, running most school terms (save for 2020-2021 due to the pandemic lockdowns), with after-school creative workshops for young people.
In 2018, the Changing Faces group created a spray-paint mural for outside the gallery, reflecting all the things which went on in the building.
We also created a Halloween stained-glass-effect window of things they’re scared of (and decorated the other window panes with spooky things.
In 2019, we started running the Buxton Flowerpot Trail.
The Gallery very kindly sold the trail maps for us and we always made a creation for the boiler house roof/garden. Here are a few of them – YMCA, ‘Go Wild’ snake and The Gondoliers celebrating the G&S Festival. The gallery also acted as a drop-off depot for flowerpot donations, of which, we have just taken the last.
When participating in the Buxton Carnival parade, the gallery was always our meeting spot, where we prepared for the day. Here’s a photo of us practising performing our gigante flowerpot man in 2019.
Watch a video of us practising on YouTube here.
In 2021, after creating it at the Rotary Club’s Autumn Fair, we installed our “rubbish waterfall” in the gallery, for more people to add their environmental pledges to the goddess Arnemetia.
See some of the pledges here. Did you make one? Have you kept it?
In 2022, we displayed our ‘PANDEMIC Reflections’ exhibition on the walls of the workshop room, inviting those looking around the gallery to contribute towards it.
And finally, we can’t forget to mention our annual PAT testing session at the gallery!
We held our last workshop at the gallery on Tuesday 17 December 2024, one of our Changing Faces workshops where we finished filming a shadow puppetry film – watch the film on YouTube here.
What was built-up at the gallery over the years, as a community arts hub, providing a home to many local groups, was quite remarkable and we’re very sad to see it go. It was a most creative, welcoming and dynamic home for us. We say a huge thank you to all the artists and volunteers over the years, for their contributions to the gallery, and wish them all the best for the future.
The Funny Wonders team.
