Primary School Visits
We will visit schools, usually for a full day, and recreate stories from the lives of the people who have made the Scotland we live in.
The visit names are based on the size of Viking ships – but please don’t be put off. School visits can also be provided for the Iron Age/Celt, Roman, Viking, and Medieval eras.
Small (Faering), Medium (Knarr) and Large (Drakkar)
As part of Wordsmith Crafts C.I.C. we are able to subsidise these visits to make them more affordable for smaller and rural schools.
We want to be able to find a balance between making what we offer available to small and rural schools, as well as larger central belt schools whilst maintaining the standards of visits, involving volunteers, and paying a living wage to professional historical interpreters. We are also developing a network across Scotland covering a broad range of time periods.
Even if you are unable to afford the full cost of a visit, please get in touch. If we are unable to source funding to make it possible this time, we can use the information to hopefully make it possible in the future.
Secondary School Visits
Primary school visits focus on being immersive experiences where the pupils become part of a story where they meet the past. In secondary schools we shift the focus, and concentrate on helping the pupils discover how they can find out information through making replicas, carrying out experiments, and combining imagination with rationality to create, explore, and test theories. This shift in emphasis respects their growing knowledge and skills, and encourages them to explore learning possibilities provided by disciplines like experimental archaeology, film and game technology and the arts in general.
Museums and Historical Venues
We can design a historical presentation to help the public involve themselves in your exhibition. With a mixture of acting and craft workshops we can accurately portray characters based on your artefacts, or help people get hands on and experience the processes involved in the making or use of the items in your collection.
We have arranged everything from small scale characters in costume to temporary shipbuilding communities that can cater for hundreds of visitors. We even turned a small town into a map of the Irish sea region for families to explore as ships crews of traders as part of the festival of Museums.
We can work with your community, teaching craft skills, helping them research, feasting … We ran a boat building art installation beside a loch in the summer of 2019. We started with a pile of sticks and by the end of the week we were rowing over the water. Lots of people from the local community dropped in to have a go at different crafts, and to tie some knots.
Although we often portray the past, we don’t live in it! We can draw on our heritage skills and knowledge to use modern technology to help people cross boundaries and explore their connections. For example, working with the “Our Norwegian Story” project we set up in the high street to use willow and tissue paper to give the public the opportunity to make mini curraghs. In the evening we used laptops and digital projectors to transform the wall of a cafe into a two way window looking in to the Karmoy Viking club. The distance vanished and once again Norwegians and Doonhamers were able to enjoy each others company for an evening of entertainment.