Andrew Millham
Singing Like Larks Nature Workshop for families

Connect with nature.

Join nature and folk history writer, Andrew Millham, to uncover the remarkable relationship between birds and traditional folk music. Try your hand at some Forest School skills and bug-hunting.

For families, all ages welcome. (All those aged under 12 must be accompanied by an adult)

Saturday 25 June, 12.45 – 1.45pm
Cressing Temple Barns, Witham Road, Braintree, Cressing, CM77 8PD
Tickets: £3 per child, accompanying adult free
Box Office: eventbrite.com

Part of Midsummer Madness – Our one day mini-festival for families and young people at Cressing Temple Barns. Storytelling, theatre, poetry, eco-crafts, comics, coding, and mud pies galore in our pop-up forest school, what’s not to like!

About the book

Singing Like Larks opens a rare window onto the ancient song traditions of the British Isles, interweaving mesmerising lyrics, folklore and colourful nature writing to uncover the remarkable relationship between birds and traditional folk music.

“A beautiful, informative and fascinating book” —from the foreword by Stephen Moss

Birds are beloved for their song and have featured in our own music for centuries. This charming new book by young nature writer and Forest School leader Andrew Millham takes us on a journey of discovery to explore why birds have appeared in so many folk songs.

Today, folk songs featuring our feathered friends are themselves becoming something of a threatened species: their melodies are fading with time, their verses often tucked away in archives. It is more important than ever that we promote awareness of these precious songs and continue to pass them down the generations. Lifetimes of wisdom are etched into the words and music, preserving the rhythms of nature and our connection to times past, when many more species were abundant in our skies than we are able to see today.

An important repository and treasury of bird-related folk songs, Singing Like Larks is also an account of one young nature writer’s journey into the world of folk music, and a joyous celebration of song, the seasons, and our love of birds.

About the Author

Andrew Millham is a nature and folk history writer whose work has been published in national publications including Bird Watching, BBC Wildlife, Coast and The Countryman.

He graduated with a first-class honours degree in environmental science, has received a Field Studies Council Young Darwin Scholarship and – after completing his training with Essex Wildlife Trust – is now a Forest School leader, teaching outdoor skills to primary school children.

Follow Andrew @andrewmillham on Instagram and twitter.

Midsummer Madness is kindly funded by the Essex County Council Arts and Cultural fund

The Essex County Council Arts and Cultural fund has been designed to help organisations and practitioners to deliver a broad and exciting range of work and activity to engage with and bring residents together.

The arts, cultural and creative projects supported by the Essex County Council Arts and Cultural Fund, will contribute to the Levelling UP Essex Strategy and play an integral part in enabling the objectives of Essex County Council’s wider objectives as set out in Everyone’s Essex.

#ArtsCulturalFund and #EssexArtsandCulture