Junior Curators Case Study: Kirbuster Farm Museum & Dounby Primary School

Dounby Primary School enjoyed their trip to Scapa Flow Museum and working with the Junior Curators so much that they wanted to become Junior Curators too.  In 2024 the P3 Class worked with staff at Kirbuster Museum and the Arts Officer to become Kirbuster Farm Museum Story Guides.

First, they visited the Museum to both gather stories about it and also think about the spaces that they could tell their stories in within the Museum and its grounds.  They then worked in their classroom to decide which stories they wanted to tell and where they would be best placed and decided on:

The Creepy Doll (Ella, Lillie and Nicole) – a ghost story that would be performed in the small bedroom.  The main character would hide in the bed and jump out and scare people!  It was a new story made by the team based on the small doll that lies in the cot in that room.  It was so scary that it made one audience member scream, which made all the storytellers scream too!

The Cracked Floor (Ayla and Ivy) – a story of an old man who dances so fast and hard that he cracks the stone floor.  This was performed in the main house using the Orkney chairs and indeed the floor stone is cracked in there, so perhaps this story is true?

The Devil and the Wedding (Emma, Eva and Maci) – another chilling tale based on the true fact that the lintel stone to the main door of the house is carved with the owners’ names and put in upside down to fool the devil so he can’t get into the house!

The Family Pig (Emme, Fraser and Oren) – not surprisingly this story is based in the pig sty and it has a sad ending!

The Trowies and the Clock (Lexie, Mia, Ronnie and Ryan) – a local folk tale of the Trowies that stole time, ate the sheep and nearly got turned into stone at daybreak!

The Upset Byre (Jayden, Kyle and Orla) – an everyday tale of woe on the farm (everything turned out alright in the end!)

Over a number of weeks the Junior Curators became Story Guides by creating the stories, rehearsing them, choosing costume, rehearsing the stories at school and then at the Museum, filming the stories on site (to become interpretation at the Museum) and finally performing the stories to their peers from Evie Primary School.  This allowed the Junior Curators the chance to see if they had got the stories across to an audience and they had understood them.  It was a very lively and successful day (and the rain held off!).