Archie and Callum spent the afternoon producing fabulous sketches of the school from the outside for the school page. As P2s their brief was to give us an idea of what the school looks like. Their angular drawings certainly give a great idea of the mid-70s architecture!
Today the pupils of Kilmodan are going to have a session with Charles Dixon-Spain on picture research and expanding the information on the website. We’ll be defining what pictures we want and what copy is needed. Hopefully the website will be even more colourful when we finish.
Date: Wednesday 21st of August 2013
Location: Kilmodan Primary School
Workshop: New Term, New Website: Hunting and Gathering for Content!
Walking Youth Theatre Team: Sadie Dixon-Spain and Alana Mathers
Our Project
The Glen of the Red River project is part of the All Our Stories scheme, and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. To recap on our project, visit our All Our Stories page on our website.
Over the Summer, our website for the project was created, and the work the pupils of Kilmodan Primary created in the previous school year was given an online home! With their fantastic logo, timeline, and artwork, our website is up and running – now all we need is content!
Sadie and Alana headed down from TWTC HQ this afternoon to host our first new term workshop, to begin gathering the content for the website.
Where do we start?! At the very beginning, of course!
Today’s workshop focused on the Mesolithic and Neolithic time periods, and we learnt all about what life would have been like for our hunter gatherer and early farmer ancestors! The pupils came up with some great stories about life as Mesolithic and Neolithic clans, and created artwork and dramatic pieces of life in the Glen over 8000 years ago!
The pupils also created a soundscape, exploring life in the Glen in Mesolithic times – the story included howling wolves, hunting wild boars, fishing in the river, and running through the foliage back to base camp away from predators!
The research gathered and work created today will be put on the website, to share with the whole world what Glendaruel would have been like at the very beginning of time!
We have just published Margaret Burnley Campbell’s interview of Daniel McEwen in January 1909. Daniel was born in 1820 and as a native of Glendaruel this is a priceless insight into life in the Glen in the 19th Century. Thanks to John MacNaughton for allowing us access to the papers to scan – to see the interview click here.
Announcing that the Glen of the Red River website is in development!
The pupils at Kilmodan have been interviewing two knowledgeable residents of the Glen gleaning lots of information about the history of our place. We’ve recorded it all, and in the near future we will be placing it on our timeline pages for everyone to listen to.
Date: Tuesday 11th of June 2013
Location: Kilmodan Primary School
Workshop: Interviews: Putting Skills Into Action!
Walking Youth Theatre Team: Sadie Dixon-Spain and Alana Mathers
Guests: Mr. McNaughton and Mrs. McKay
The afternoon was split into two sessions. The first focused on recapping from last weeks workshop, and discussing the interviewing skills the pupils had identified and practiced. The class was then split into two groups, one to work with Sadie, and one to work with Alana. The groups were told they were each going to be interviewing a member of the community later in the afternoon, and had the session to prepare for the interview. Sadie’s group were going to interview Mr. John McNaughton, a Glendaruel farmer, who grew up in the Glen. Alana’s group would be interviewing Mrs. McKay, who has lived in the Colintraive and Glendaruel area her whole life, and has many memories to share with the pupils.
In their groups, the pupils made a mind map of questions they would like to ask their interviewee, and the topics they would like to cover in the interview. With Mr. McNaughton, the pupils were interested to find out about farming in the Glen, and what makes Glendaruel an ideal location for farming. They were also interested in hearing about Mr. McNaughton’s childhood, as he too grew up in the Glen.
The group interviewing Mrs. McKay were interested in hearing about Glendaruel’s past, especially how the school has changed from when Mrs. McKay was their age. The pupils were also keen to hear about how the Glen has changed over the years, and what jobs have been available in the area over time.
The pupils also gained experience is using the recording equipment, and had time to practice recording themselves speaking, to ensure they used their strongest, clearest voices to interview.
As the second half of the session approached, the pupils were excited to meet with Mr. McNaughton and Mrs. McKay, and to put their interviewing and recording skills into action. The pupils did a fabulous job interviewing our guests, and both interviewees and interviewers had a great time engaging with Glendaruel’s past.
The interviews can be found on our website. Many thanks to Mr. McNaughton and Mrs. McKay for taking the time to come along to Kilmodan Primary School to work on the Glen of the Red River project.
Date: Wednesday 5th of June 2013
Location: Kilmodan Primary School
Workshop: Interviews and Recording Information
Walking Youth Theatre Team: Sadie Dixon-Spain and Alana Mathers
The second half of the session focused on interviews, encouraging the pupils to develop their communication, interviewing, research, and media recording skills, as well as discovering who the pupils would like to interview as part of the All Our Stories project, and identify individuals who may be iconic in the pupil’s Glendaruel research.
Firstly, as a group, we discussed what makes a good interview, and what an interviewer must do when conducting a recorded interview. The pupils gave us some great suggestions on questions that they would like to ask fellow Glendaruel residents, and were all very keen to interview the older residents of the Glen, who have lived here for many years. The pupils were enthralled in finding out more about what life was like for their grandparents generation when they were at Primary School – what facilities they had in the Glen, which school they went to, how did they travel to one another’s houses, what games did they play in the wide open spaces, and what they liked about growing up in such a beautiful, but rural, area. Many of the pupils began thinking about their family members who live in the area, and began taking notes on questions they would like to ask them on living in Glendaruel. It was a great exercise to also find out what the pupils already knew about the history of the Glen, particularly through discovering which Clans they descended from, and which family groups have become joined through the years by marriage.
The next part of the session saw the pupils putting their interviewing skills into action, by taking turns in interviewing one another in groups. Following some practice of identifying topics, constructing questions, how to begin and end an interview, and working on producing strong, clear vocals, the class reconvened, and the pupils would conduct their interviews in-front of the class. The interviews were recorded, and then played back to the group, who then identified the good aspects of what they had listened to, and those that had to be worked on. This was a great exercise that really gave the pupils confidence in conducting interviews, and it was encouraging to hear how keen they were to interview members of the community for the project.
With our graphic designer Charles Dixon-Spain the pupils of Kilmodan have been developing ideas for a logo. Charles used sketches made by the children to create a quartered design which contains many of the important qualities of the glen – we even managed to include Archie’s sheep! We think the logo tells an important story all by itself. During this session the children also chose their main fonts, “Papyrus” and “Georgia” and discussed the merits of each.
Here’s a picture of one of the colourways the children developed:
Date: Thursday 25th of April 2013
Location: Kilmodan Primary School, Glendaruel
Workshop: Creating Visuals
Walking Youth Theatre Team: Rebecca Bloom and Alana Mathers
Today’s workshop focused on creating visuals for the website, to showcase the Kilmodan Primary Pupils artistic talents.
To start, we spoke about families and Clans, identifying family groups that currently reside in the Glen that the pupils are a part of, or aware of, and discussing iconic families and Clans from the Glen’s past – particularly the Campbells and the Lamonts. We then moved on to creating Family Shields – each pupil began creating a shield for their family group in the Glen. A variety of shields were created – some including representations of the houses, family members, work and employment, tartan, and of course, the Red River.
We then moved back to the timeline, and spoke about the way the people would have dressed throughout the years. The pupils had some great ideas on what fashion would have been like throughout the different time periods, thinking greatly about what resources, fabrics, and techniques would have been available at each point. From this, the pupils were then each given a period from the timeline, and set the task to create a character as an icon of their specific point in history. From Mesolithic Hunter Gatherers in animal skins, to kilted Jacobites, mysterious looking Monks, to trendy Victorian gents, the pupils captured the timeline characters perfectly! Look out for the characters on the website, and on the timeline!