Behind the scenes

 We’re obsessed with all things Scottish at the moment with 2009 being the year of Homecoming. I was at Knox Academy a few weeks ago doing sessions with their S1 pupils as they are creating their own exhibition for Homecoming. The pupils struggled to come up with famous Scottish people they actually wanted to research straight away. Many shook their head at David Tennant and pulled a face when Lorraine Kelly was mentioned! The queen of breakfast tv indeed!

 So the topic opened up to include a more general Scottish theme. What they came up with was interesting insight into how we view ourselves as a nation - Irn Bru, Haggis, Whisky, Tam O’Shanter, Sir Henry Raeburn, Andy Murray, William Wallace, and so the list goes on…I’m going tomorrow night to view the finished versions so I’ll report back (and hopefully add some photos to our Flickr site too).

John Muir’s Birthplace is also going Homecoming crazy this year with their programme of events. Their exhibition on at present is about John Muir’s links with Robert Burns. You should make a little trip along to see it, and if you’re lucky and can shove the children off it, you might get a chance to re-enact Tam O’Shanter on a stage. 

Wow, that’s twice I’ve managed to mention Tam O’Shanter during this post. But no one does Scottish better than the Americans so here’s my favourite version of the poem on YouTube. I like the fact Tam is wearing a baseball cap and that it got them extra credit in English lit.

Other museum news….Sheila’s been off to the Brunton to find all our paintings hanging about there, Ken is now working on a brand new loan box on fishing, the John Gray Centre plans roll on, and we’re about to recruit new seasonal Museum Assistants. Exciting times! If there’s any news in particular you’d like to hear about, let me know!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Education, Exhibitions, John Muir. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.