You may have read about our collaborative school activity at Killermont Primary School, in Bearsden? This 6 metre long frieze is the result of P6’s hard work & creative flair.
After thinking about the work of Willie Rodger, individual figures were printed by each pupil. These silhouettes represent Bearsden commuters, dashing to and from the railway station. Next, the class cut up pictures of local housing built following the arrival of the railway in 1863 – bringing businessmen & prosperity to New Kilpatrick. Finally, the local buildings & commuters were collaged together.
The class proved to be highly successful art detectives too – at home they researched the artist Willie Rodger using Scran. They shared their findings in class the following day. Astute observations were made & we discovered plenty of visual clues hidden in the imagery.
Following a group vote, with 6 votes each from of a class total of 32, the two most popular Willie Rodger artworks were The Chess Players & Honeymoon.
There was a frantic afternoon of printmaking with P6 yesterday, who worked really hard. Today we are going to consider the detail & visual clues within the work of Scottish artist, Willie Rodger. In particular this example, “Day Out, Ferrara”, from 1998. The class have a selection of questions to investigate and will use Scran to become art detectives, using their visual literacy skills to discover what’s going on in the picture.
Our printed figures & silhouetted people, the Bearsden commuters, have been drying on the rack overnight. Next, we will incorporate them into our collaged frieze alongside local landmarks & architecture. We are looking forward to seeing the outcome.
© Willie Rodger via Bridgeman Art Library. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk.
Our hard-working colleagues in the Scots Language department of Education Scotland have just unveiled their new “hub”, offering links to Scots language resources, guides to how to use Scots within the English language and literacy curriculum, and a history of the Scots language among other goodies. You can find the hub here. The team also run the Scots language “Blether” on Glow, and you can see this at http://bit.ly/scotsblether
The Scran image shown here, incidentally, is of Mairi Robinson. Under Mairi’s editorship the Scottish National Dictionary and the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue were updated and combined to form the Concise Scots Dictionary. It was first published in 1985 by Aberdeen University Press. In 1987, a revised edition of 820 pages was published. The dictionary contains words used from the twelfth century to the present, with meanings, pronunciations and origins included.
Image: ©National Museums Scotland. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk.
Scran will be working closely with the P5 class at Law Primary School in North Berwick throughout next week. Together we will be examining lots of local content and weaving what we find into our learning journeys. 
As well as being digital, weather permitting, we’ll be taking to the skies with our camera & K.A.P. kit. So please, fingers crossed for fair weather over East Lothian.
Many of the resources we will use in class come from East Lothian Museums Service who are contributors to the collections on Scran. For example, this rather quaint souvenir is leather bound and originally contained 15 black & white photographs with tinted skies. It was published by Valentine of Dundee around 1895, so it gives us a clue as to how long people have been visiting the beautiful seaside at North Berwick.
What more will our Primary 5 digital detectives be able to discover about where they live? We’ll be looking at lots of aerial imagery, considering how the town has changed and expanded over time. We’ll think about traits & trades which may have remained the same and finally, when we reach the end of our collaborative investigations, we will share our findings – so tenterhooks until then.
Image © East Lothian Museums Service. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk
Whether you simply enjoy looking at art, perusing design classics, studying the visual arts at school or university – or you just need a picture of an elephant for a project – Scran can be of assistance. Intended to whet your appetite, the above gallery post is a just a tiny sample of the fabulous Art & Design content we have available.
Remember if you are using imagery or information you find on Scran for school work, portfolio preparation or even SQA coursework, it is vital that you attribute the usage correctly. You can get advice on our © is for Copyright page and we are happy to answer any questions if you want to contact us. We are here to help and appreciate it can be a tricky subject.
For any Blogging Bootcamp schools out there working on a Glow Blog, which is public, it is best to follow the example set in this post. When using Scran content in this manner, it is permitted to insert the thumbnail sized images, then hyper link them back to Scran & of course, attribute the copyright holder – see below. Meanwhile happy blogging!
Images © Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Lothian Health Services Archive, Tain & District Museum Trust, The Sangsters, Zhao Xie and The British Museum. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk
Scran is limbering up for Blogging Bootcamp #2 on Glow this afternoon. 
We’ve even got our favourite sturdy pair of Doctor Martens from 1994 ready for the occasion. The Scran staff hope to learn a bit more about blogging – as well as sharing information about Scran, copyright, digital assets and our schools outreach work.
If you are taken by our lovely green Docs and fancy more fashionable footwear, why not browse through historical and contemporary shoe designs here.
Image © Victoria & Albert Museum, Pair of Dr Martens boots. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk
