The Hands on Harps Team

Creag and Morwenna met while travelling in Australia and share a passion for travel and music. This has lead them, including other places, up Mt Kilimanjaro, all around Europe in a van for 2 years, busking, along the Camino de Santiago with their instruments, volunteering in Kenya, India and the Philippines and now to Stroud, a town in South Gloucestershire where they have settled down and now have 2 young boys.

Morwenna has played the harp since the age of 12, after seeing a harpist at a school May Festival and convincing her parents that she wanted to learn it. They made a deal with her-they bought her a small table harp and said that if she persisted with it for a year then they would pay for harp lessons.

She did, so they bought her some lessons with a local teacher. She enjoyed playing the harp and has gone on to play weddings, funerals, restaurant gigs as well as various art exhibitions, open days and festivals.

Creag grew up in a business environment-his parents ran Swallow Systems, a company that made educational robots for schools. With his dad and best mate Steve he made racing robots to compete in Mircromouse, which gave him an appearance on Blue Peter at the age of 12.

He started playing the guitar aged 18 while at university in Nottingham. He has never had a face to face lesson, learning all of his songs and techniques from videos online-this is part of the inspiration for this course. He first made a harp in 2012 for Morwenna’s Christmas present, and is passionate about working with wood to make beautiful things-he has also made a bed, various signs, a model of his Dad’s workshop and wine racks.

Matt came to luthiery after completing a guitar building course in Totnes. He brings with him a wealth of woodworking and musical knowledge. Matt is a graduate of the University of Wales College of Medicine where he studied Radiography and Diagnostic Imaging. Once qualified, Matt went into pub management and ran several pubs before ending up in Monmouth for 5 years. Whilst at Monmouth he ran a successful music venue that was frequented by amongst others the Pixies, Kasabian and Robert Plant.

He now lives in Dursley with his fiancée Madeleine and his dog Lupa.

Helen joined the Hands on Harps team officially in April 2021, having always been an unofficial sounding board for Creag as his big sister. Her main job is to keep things running smoothly, especially (but not exclusively) regarding admin and bookkeeping.

Having worked in hospitality & recruitment for all her career, Helen is a problem solver by nature & is slowly de-cluttering Creag’s brain into some kind of order.

Helen lives in High Wycombe next door to her and Creag’s parents with her husband Martin, children Richard & Timmy, Wesley the dog & Gizmo the cat.

Harper joined the team in April 2023. She specialises in harp percussion, using her tail, but her main job is as a well-being consultant, which she does fantastically.

She is also a customer greeter and chaser of balls.

Our Philosophy

Our stated aim is to make learning the harp affordable and accessible, but we are proud to make sure that we do that in a way that doesn’t compromise our values.

We source our wood only from FSC certificated suppliers. FSC® is an independent, non-governmental, not for profit organization established to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests.

We are Carbon Neutral. To us this means reducing our carbon emissions as much as we possibly can, and then triple offsetting the rest. Check out our blog to see how we’re getting on.

We endeavor to make learning the harp affordable. Our aim is not to make gilded, overly ornate lever harps that cost the same as a family car. We want people to be able to afford to get their hands on a harp and have fun with it.

We are passionate about the craft of harp making, and always strive to continually improve the harps that we make. We don’t sit on our laurels, and are always looking for ways to make our harps better. Being affordable and environmentally friendly doesn’t have to mean a compromise on quality.

We believe that harps shouldn’t be seen as fragile items that people are afraid to touch. Danish oiled wood is quite well protected, and it’s also quite easy to repair if a harp comes back with a few scratches on it. Don’t be afraid to share your music around a campfire!

We believe that anyone can learn the harp, and that it should be fun. There is a place for classical training, but it’s not for us-we prefer the folk tradition of training people to be intuitive musicians with a connection to their instrument, rather than automatons who can churn out a piece of sheet music if it’s put in front of them. To this end we have created the Rainbow Harp, a proper Celtic Harp with rainbow-coloured strings as a learning aid.

Have a look at this page to see some of Hands on Harps’ friends