On Thursday 23rd September, five of our senior students were invited by Scotland’s Justice Minister, Mr Kenny MacAskill, to attend the Filmhouse Festival ‘Take One Action’. Take One Action is the UK’s first film festival dedicated to active global citizenship offering young people a variety of opportunities to explore Responsible Citizenship, a whole school component of Curriculum of Excellence.

The five students, Ashleigh Shephard, Stephanie MacDonald, Jamie Clunie, Jordan Bradford and Natasha Meechan were met at the Filmhouse by Mr MacAskill before the screening of ‘Bread and Roses’, a film which told the story of immigrant janitors in Los Angeles struggling to improve their working conditions by forming a union. The students were introduced to the films famous screenwriter, Paul Laverty, who is a personal friend of Mr MacAskill. The evening concluded with a question and answer session with Paul and Elaine Carswell, a union activist.

The students were excellent ambassadors for the school and, although the timing of the question and answer session was too late in the evening for them to ask any questions, they were all impressed by the film and the talk Paul and Elaine gave at the end of the screening.

“The film has made us think about immigration and poverty. It gave us a view of what it was really like for immigrants in the USA and made us consider what it is like for immigrants here”, Stephanie said.

Jamie added, “It also made us realize that it should be the right of everyone to have good working conditions”.

Mr MacAskill received a photograph of the evening from the students to thank him for giving this opportunity to the school and has mentioned that he will keep in touch regarding any future events that might be of interest to our students’ education citizenship.