Young dancers put on a great performance for 200 family and friends at the East Ayrshire Dance Festival in Kilmarnock Academy last week. Y Dance, in partnership with the Council’s Active Schools and Creative Minds teams, organised the show starring budding dancers from schools and community groups across East Ayrshire. The youngsters dazzled the audience with lively hip hop, jazz and contemporary dance routines.

http://www.east-ayrshire.gov.uk/corpres/news/showNews.asp?p=4809

South Lanarkshire Council reports that as part of Strathclyde University’s Annual Scottish Space School, NASA astronaut Alvin Drew and rocket scientist Amber Gell visited Uddingston Grammar. They treated 5th year pupils to an in-depth presentation about their work at NASA and gave hints and tips about how to become a scientist, engineer or astronaut.

Alvin, who has just returned from the last ever Discovery Shuttle trip to space, showed footage from on board and gave a detailed account of his extraordinary time on the Space Station. The session was followed by question and answers before Alvin and Amber had a more informal discussion with a small number of pupils from Uddingston Grammar and Holy Cross High.

An exciting competition will give primary school children the chance to set the scene for a new adventure by award-winning Scottish children’s author Lari Don. The Edinburgh-based author will launch the competition on Thursday 23 June, alongside the third book in her popular First Aid for Fairies fantasy series, Storm Singing and Other Tangled Tasks. Children are invited to suggest the perfect real-life Scottish location to be used in the fourth, and final book of the First Aid for Fairies series. The winner’s setting will be incorporated into the thrilling series finale, where it could be visited by one of the fabled beast stars of the adventures (including a centaur, a selkie, a fairy and a dragon).  Pupils from James Gillespie’s Primary will celebrate the joint book and competition launch by creating artwork depicting some of their favourite scenes from the first two books First Aid for Fairies series.

Entrants are asked to come up with a location and describe why it is special in no more than 250 words. As well as having their location used in the final book, the winner will also get signed copies of all the books in the series and a special author visit to their class. The deadline for entry is Friday 23 September.

More information about the First Aid for Fairies series and Set the Scene Competition can be found on www.discoverkelpies.co.uk <http://www.discoverkelpies.co.uk> from Thursday 23 June.