Education Projects
Orkney Island Council Culture Service works closely with Schools and the Education Service on a variety of projects across arts and heritage. Arts Development seeks to foster relationships with external creative and heritage organisations and schools in Orkney to develop projects and opportunities for children and young people.
National Creative Learning Network - 2019-2023
Since 2012 there has been a strong relationship with the National Creative Learning Network, a national partnership initiative by Creative Scotland and Education Scotland. Orkney Islands Council is a member of the national network that meets monthly through term time. This meeting provides an opportunity to learn about best creative learning practice nationally and a platform to show case Orkney Schools own practice. This has included:
In 2020 pupils from North Walls Primary School, Hoy, running a Q&A session for the National Creative Learning Network Annual event based on a film they made about learning in their school called Believe to Achieve.
In 2023 pupils from Dounby Primary School ran two sessions on their project Be More Bob that explored the idea of belonging to a school community. This project has gone on to be show cased as part of the international education organisation HundrED - hundred.org/en/articles/hundred-is-looking-for-the-top-100-ideas-shaping-the-future-of-education - that seeks classroom practice to disseminate internationally.
Between 2019 -2022 Orkney Islands Council received Creative Learning Network funding to work with creative education consultants Hidden Giants and subsequently developed a Twinning and Mentoring programme in 2022-2023 (see Case Studies below)
In November 2023 Dounby School ran events for the National Creative Learning Network annual meeting in Aberdeen. This involved an online Q & A session with pupils focussing on their creative learning practices.
National Schools Theatre Touring - 2020-2024
Annually there is a National Schools Touring Theatre offer in partnership with Imaginate! During 2020 Orkney became the test bed for delivery of an online live streaming production of Potato Needs a Bath by performer/puppeteer Shone Reppe: youtube.com/watch?v=GCMea1y4slI
youtube.com/watch?v=DSJgVSffXZg
This was delivered to every school in Orkney and got a mention in the Scottish Parliament, something we are very proud of.
Since 2020 we have had performances by Curious Seed of their show about self and relationships, Chalk About: youtube.com/watch?v=0eCtey3U6sw
A dance/film installation by Barrowland Ballet which also included a dance workshop outdoors: barrowlandballet.co.uk/production/family-portrait/
Going For Gold, Me and Lynford Christie a show about dreaming big and where life can take you: theatreinschoolsscotland.co.uk/going-for-gold.html
and in 2024 One of Two, a show highlighting the lived experience of disability: boptheatre.co.uk/one-of-two/
Junior Curators - 2020-2024
There is a strong commitment to developing relationships with our Museums’ and Heritage offer. In 2019-2020 an opportunity arose to invite National Galleries Scotland to Orkney to run workshops in North Walls Primary School and Kirkwall Grammar School. Both the Culture Service and National Galleries were exploring how we make our heritage offer accessible to children and young people and decided the best people to as were the recipients. The workshops focussing on aspects of curation such as interpretation and label writing to make art/heritage accessible. If focused on what children and young people are drawn to and the language they would use to describe objects and art works.
The result of this workshop was the creation of the Junior Curators for Scapa Flow Museum in partnership with North Walls Primary to help us with the early development of the Museum and has continued ever since. This has now expanded to Junior Curators for Kirbuster Farm Museum with Dounby Primary School.
