May Festival Mayhem!

“Join the Mayhem!” was the call for schools and families to get involved in the University’s new May Festival which ran on campus last week. We were one of the venues involved and we ran a new schools workshop and had a Family Fun workshop on Saturday. It was a busy week!

Both the schools workshop and the Family Fun were based on the Amy Laws letters, which we’ve talked about before (see our posts on the SCA project with St Peter’s Primary School and the Arts Across Learning Festival). The Laws letters feature in the current Wanderlust exhibition in the gallery, so it seemed perfect timing for working with them further.

We had P6/7 from Woodside Primary School visit us for the schools workshop, which was developed from the schools sessions we did earlier this year.  The children used drama and creative writing to re-imagine the Laws family’s life on the mission station in Nyasaland (now Malawi), and to explore the emotions and feelings surrounding Amy’s being sent to live in Edinburgh with an aunt at the age of seven. The children were very interested in seeing the original letters and hearing some of them read aloud, and really got into the character of Amy when it came to writing a letter from Amy to her parents. There was also much hilarity when they enacted the long journey one of the Laws’ letters would have taken from Nyasaland to Edinburgh!

Our “African Animal Attack!” Family Fun session continued on the Laws theme, this time exploring the exciting accounts of wild animal attacks in the letters. The letters are full of them, as the mission station was surrounded by lions, leopards and hyenas. One of the surprising things, reading the letters, is that neither Robert nor Maggie Laws appears to soften the details about these stories for Amy, despite her young age. Their descriptions are sometimes very graphic! I suppose she had grown up in that environment and knew the reality of it, so reading about some of the injuries people incurred from the lion and leopard attacks would not distress her as it might some children.

At Family Fun the children made animal masks, using images of traditional animal masks from various African countries as inspiration. You can see more photos of the masks they made on our Flickr page.

Our next Family Fun is on Saturday June 15th, from 1-4pm, when we’ll be making fantasy maps. As usual it’s a free, drop-in session. Hope to see you there!

Posted by: Sarah

Night at the Museums

Night at the Museums is a big annual event at the University, when all the university museums are open and there’s a full programme of exciting activities for families. Last year there were more than 800 people through the door of the Zoology museum in the one evening!

This year the Special Collections Centre took part for the first time, offering fun activities linking in to the current exhibition Wanderlust. The theme of the entire programme was exploration, which couldn’t have been better from our point of view.

In the events space children dressed up as people and animals featured in the exhibition and made their own travel journals; in the exhibition there was a gallery quiz; and the cafe stayed open late and participants played table-top travel games over coffee and cake.

It was great to see so many new faces at The Sir Duncan Rice Library, and the buzz in the events space and the gallery made for a really fun atmosphere. The children really got into character when dressing up! You can see their photos on our Flickr page.

Posted by: Sarah

Life Lately

Life in Learning & Outreach lately has been a whirlwind of preparation for the forthcoming Night@Museums and the University’s May Festival. But we’ve also had a lot of classes in finding out about our records on Ancient Egypt …

Who has visited us:

• Insch Primary School P5
• Manor Park Primary School P3 (2 classes)
• Kinellar Primary School P2, P2/3 and P3
• Elrick Primary School P3/4
• Strathburn Primary School P3/4

Medieval Medicine

Yesterday was a day we had been looking forward to: our first “Medieval Medicine” primary schools workshop. We first started thinking about this schools workshop during the Pharmacopoeia exhibition. The exhibition showed some of the Special Collection Centre’s medieval herbals, which illustrate different plants and describe them physically and in terms of their medicinal properties. As well as containing beautiful illustrations of plants, some of the books show the different stages of plant production and give detailed instructions on how to prepare the plants for medicine. There are pictures of people planting, harvesting and even distilling plants, extracting their essence for use as medicine. One of our most exquisite books, the Hortus Sanititatis (Garden of Health), even shows scenes in a medieval hospital with doctors treating patients and analysing urine samples. These books are a gift for delving into the world of medieval medicine.

Our Medieval Medicine workshop gives pupils a chance to see some of these amazing rare books first hand, and turns them into medieval doctors themselves, with patients to heal. Our doctors yesterday were P5 from Insch Primary School in Aberdeenshire. After learning about the system of the Four Humours (the medieval theory of how the human body worked), the children were given patient case notes and “urine” samples, and they got to work diagnosing and curing their patients using a urine and disease charts and a herbal. We had some good discussions going when it came to giving the patients lifestyle advice. One of the patients was a prisoner in a castle dungeon and although the doctors had plenty of good advice for him they weren’t sure he would be able to carry it out. One set of doctors said they would speak to the castle gaolers about improving the living conditions in the prison.

If you’d like to bring your class to the Special Collections Centre for our Medieval Medicine workshop, email us at scc.learning@abdn.ac.uk or phone (01224) 273047 or (01224) 273048.

Easter Family Fun with Waterlines

It’s been a busy two weeks with Easter holiday Family Fun. As usual in the school holidays, we ran our Family Fun sessions on Wednesdays instead of Saturdays and that always means more participants!

Our two Family Fun sessions continued on the Waterlines exhibition theme. First up was “Float Your Boat”. Inspired by the Thermopylae ship element in the Waterlines sculpture, participants designed and created their own boats and tested whether they would float or sink. They also made origami boats and tried their hand at tying sailors knots.

This last Wednesday the theme was Pictish stones. After seeing the Pictish “Fairy Green” carved stone in the exhibition, the children made their own mysterious Pictish symbol tokens to take away. And one family brought in a photograph of the children’s great-grandfather standing by the famous Pictish “Maiden Stone” in Aberdeenshire.

The new comfy corner was also very well used and appreciated by mothers and very little ones. We had some great feedback, both on the new quiet space and also on the events as a whole. It’s always good to be reminded of why we do what we do, and important for us to know if it’s working! Here are a few of our favourite comments :

• “loved the quiet area with sensory boxes”
• “It’s great for children to be welcome into the University”
• “we had a great time – imaginations were running wild!”

Next Family Fun will be on Saturday 11th May, when we will be making African-style animal masks as part of the University’s Mary Festival celebrations. Drop in any time between 1pm and 4pm – hope to see you there!

Life Lately

Life in learning & outreach lately has been very busy with school visits, events and Family Fun. This post gives you a little taster of what’s been going on: 

 
  
   

Who has visited us:

• lots of artists, facilitators and museum/gallery professionals visited us for the Participation, Photography and the Politics of Space Symposium which was developed in collaboration with NEPAN and engage.
• Portlethen Primary School P4/5 – Jacobites: The Rout of Moy workshop
• Fernielea Primary School P5 - Jacobites: The Rout of Moy workshop
• Loriston Primary School P2/3 - Discovering Ancient Egypt
• Culter Primary School P4 - Discovering Ancient Egypt
• Meiklemill Primary School P3 - Discovering Ancient Egypt
• Walker Road Primary School P3A and P3B - Discovering Ancient Egypt
• Buchanhaven Primary School P4A and P4B - Discovering Ancient Egypt
• Charleston School School P3 - Discovering Ancient Egypt

Posted by: Lynsey & Sarah

My Dear Amy…

Last week we had the pleasure of taking part in Aberdeen City Council’s Arts Across Learning (AAL) Festival. The festival encourages venues like us to work with artists (drama, visual art, music and more) to create workshops for Aberdeen schools. This is a fantastic opportunity for us to learn from a specialist and develop our skills for future workshops. This year we worked with drama practitioner Fi Milligan Rennie to bring letters from our archive to life. The letters are from two missionaries, Robert and Maggie Laws, living in Nyasaland (now Malawi) in the late 19th century. After losing several children in Africa they decided to send their sole surviving child, Amy, to live in Scotland for safety. The letters we have are the ones they wrote to her as she grew up far away from them with an aunt in Edinburgh.

We’ve been exploring these letters a lot recently, using them in a project with St Peter’s Primary School, and Fi brought some new ideas for interpreting them through drama. The aim of the workshop was to explore the separation of the Laws family and how the only way they could communicate with each other across continents was by writing letters. What would it have been like to be separated from your parents, not knowing how many years would pass before you could see them again? What would you feel if you couldn’t tell them anything face to face and you knew that even the letters you wrote would take a couple of months to reach them? How would it feel not to be able to hug them when things got bad?

A letter from Robert Laws shows how difficult it was for the parents, as well as Amy:

“Kondowi, January 12^th 1895

My dear Amy,

Do you know I would very much like to take you on my knee this after-noon, and give you a kiss, and have a long talk with you. Both mother and I miss the sight of you very much, but we know that you are cared for by kind loving Aunt Mary and Grandma.”

We tried various methods of interpreting the letters with the four schools who visited us. These methods included:

• Physically separating the class into two sections, Africa and Edinburgh
• Immersive drama to become the characters in the letters
• Building frozen pictures of Amy and her parents’ lives
• Following the journey of a letter from Africa to Edinburgh through drama
• Exploring the thoughts and feelings of Amy and her parents as they wrote and received letters.
• Looking at and listening to the letters themselves

Four classes came to take part in our “My Dear Amy” workshop:

• Kingswells Primary P6/7
• Kingswells Primary P7
• Cornhill Primary P4/5
• St Joseph’s RC School P5

All the classes really entered into the spirit of the workshop and created some amazing pieces of drama.

At the end of their workshop each class wrote letters. The first two classes adopted characters from Africa and Edinburgh and wrote their letters as them. The second day’s classes wrote their letters from Amy to her parents. These letters were then put in envelopes and each pupil will receive a letter from one of their classmates in the post. Here are some examples of the children’s letters. You can see how well they got into character!

1895, Mayfield, Edinburgh
Dear my lovely father! thank you for all your kindness and help. I miss you so very much I wish I was their with you To sit on your Lap and give you a hug and a kiss I wish you could come to Edinburgh to see me but you can’t it’s good when you send me letters I like that but most of all I love you so much I wish we could go to a place and spend time Together we always spent time to gether in malone [Malawi]. And you always so me thats what I liked about malone but know I am in Edinburgh I can’t see you I see you in my dreams but thats all we are spending time in all the dreams I have I wish you could be here with me PS frome your lovely Daghter Amy [letter from Amy Laws to her father Robert]

Dearest Amy, I have missed you. I am so glad that I finally have time to write to you. How are you? With Mary, well that can be an adventure. I hope you were ok at going to school around where Mary lives. I really miss you. My hand has started to shack  [handwriting shaky at this point] as I am not sure of when next I will return. I hope your Aunty mary treats you like the princess you are. You are going to be okay with your Aunty and treat her nicely. I have learnt a lot, as well as teach things, here that I hope to teach you. I miss you lots. Love from Your mummy Margret. Xox [letter from Maggie Laws to her daughter Amy]

We are at our final steps of recovery and I on the other hand am not. I am writing to say Im at my final days as I was bitten by leopard and am now infected. Now don’t worry as my fading soul will go to peace. In your final days please remember me as the man who raised you you furthermore cherish my soul. If you wish to learn more about me ask Narootie a fellow tribesman. Sinsearly, Your brother [letter from a tribesman at the mission station in Nyasaland]

Dear Family, I have prayed for your health and safety every morning and evening! We have got into tragic trouble as a leopard has made some violent attacks – however with the power of the Lord we were able to save 1 man’s life! We are thankfull to those who have came to our Sunday School nevertheless I still miss you dearly! But, I am safe in Gods arms and will always be in his heart, with you. Love you lots, Sister Margey [letter from a missionary in Nyasaland to her family in Scotland]

We are going to develop the workshop further for our workshops for the University’s May Festival. If you are interested in bringing your class to work with the Amy Laws letters, keep a look out for the May Festival brochure which will be available soon.

Posted by: Lynsey and Sarah