A school in Edinburgh, Scotland, has developed an innovative alternative to the rigmarole of loading kids onto a bus for a visit to the museum bringing the museum to the kids. Developed with 10,000 from the Big Lottery Fund, the Living Links Museum at South Queensferrys Echline Primary School will represent the only in-school museum of its kind in Scotland, and feature displays relating to the Vikings and the ancient Egyptians and Africans.
The museum will be housed in an old library. Exhibits will come from an extensive collection built up by the school over the past few years, via donations from parents, museums and local history groups and through links with other schools in such far-flung locations as Kenya, Austria and Switzerland. The museums zoo lab will receive regular visits from real live animals including birds of prey, snakes and creepy crawlies, and therell be a dress-up area filled with costumes from all over the world. Other schools and local community groups will be invited to make use of the unique, hands-on resource.
Over the years we have built up a collection of costumes and artefacts that have just been stored away, Echline Primary School business manager Patricia Stefanovic told the Edinburgh Evening News. We thought it would be great having a learning museum which brought together all of these things. We got in touch with local museums and historical societies and they have given us things on loan to add to the collection.
Children love it and it’s really popular, Stefanovic added. Whatever we are doing curriculum-wise ties in with Living Links. If the children are studying Egyptians then the area is set up for them to use. The museum will be officially launched on September 24 by Hermione Cockburn from the BBC TV programme Coast.
It comes as another pioneering new approach to education is introduced to Scottish schools Canvas, a virtual gallery, allowing pupils to exhibit their artwork in a safe and secure real time online environment. It seems that virtual reconstructions such as Heritage Key’s Virtual King Tut have a strong role to play in school-age education, making far-flung heritage sites available to all.
National Museum of Scotland picture by Chris Malcolm. All rights reserved.