Kevin Brown is a slide guitar player, who visited Scalloway JHS, Brae High, Baltasound JHS, Mid Yell JHS & Whiteness Primary as part of the Blues Festival in August. Kevin played songs, including playing a tin can recycled as an elec-tronic guitar, & delivered a pres-entation on the history of the Blues, which tied in to Blues as a topic in Music & touched on Slavery.

K E V I N B R O W N The Festival is a celebration of the guitar dedicated to the mem-ory of Shetland guitarist Peerie Willie Johnson. The line up fea-tured guitarists from around the world; Gypsy Jazz guitarist Lulo Reinhardt, Itamar Erez from Is-rael, Californian Brian Gore & the Havana Swing Band. Concerts were held in Lerwick, Unst, Busta & Bigton, with school workshops & educational events in Mid Yell, Lerwick, Sandwick & Aith.

G U I T A R F E S T I V A L

Y O U T H M U S I C I N I T I A T I V E - V I S I T I N G A R T I S T S Creative Links Team Schools Service

Education and Social Care Department Shetland Islands Council Hayfield House Hayfield Lane Lerwick ZE1 0QD

Noelle Henderson - Creative Links Officer 01595 744013 noelle.henderson@shetland.gov.uk

Frances Browne - Cultural Co-ordinator 01595 744086 frances.browne@shetland.gov.uk

Bruce Eunson - Dialect Co-ordinator 01595 744062 bruce.eunson@shetland.gov.uk

A N D F I N A L L Y , A H U G E T H A N K Y O U T O A L L T H E S C H O O L S T A F F W H O M A D E T H E S E P R O J E C T S S U C C E S S F U L A N D E N S U R E D P U P I L S G O T T H E B E S T F R O M T H E M !

K I R K W A L L G R A M M A R S C H O O L B I G B A N D & H A R R I S P L A Y F A I R

great time with both Harris & the Kirkwall Grammar School Big Band.

The Kirkwall Grammar School big band came up to play in Shetland all weekend in November. They performed in three schools, Sound, Bells Brae & Dunrossness. By great coinci-dence, Shetland Arts booked Harris Playfair to play in Shetland at the same time, so we had a “Jazz Weekender” & Harris vis-ited AHS & Sandwick on the Fri-day. On Saturday, Harris, the Kirkwall

Grammar School Big Band, Shetland Youth Jazz Band & Norman & the Folding Deckchairs, got together to practice for an evening concert at the Town Hall. They performed together & separately to a rapt audi-ence. On Sunday after-noon they played infor-mally, in true Jazz style at the Lounge and again on Sunday evening. The schools had a

S C O T T I S H O P E R A - F E V E R ! 21 schools participated in creat-ing Fever! with Scottish Opera in spring term. P4—7 pupils learned songs from FEVER! With their teachers. Schools had a practice session with Andy Ross, (opera singer based in Yell) as Scottish Opera’s repiteur Roger was unable to travel due to the ash cloud. Fortunately the opera singers leading the performance day were travelling by ferry! There were 5 performance days in Brae Gym, Bells Brae Gym,

Cunningsburgh Hall, Unst Leisure Centre and Tingwall Hall. Pupils practice in the morning with a performance to parents in the afternoon. Pupils & Parents trav-elled from all three North Isles for the Unst performance. Each day was brilliant & the pupils performed with gusto. This project demanded a lot of teachers and pupils, but the

experience and the results were fully worth the effort!

5th & 6th year pupils at AHS welcomed a visit from Scottish Opera in September. Scottish Opera led a workshop on Katya Kabanova, investigating charac-ters & the use of music in the opera. At the end they spoke individually to pupils about RSAMD and pursuing music as a career. The pupils found the session really useful. They also got free tickets to the show!

Whit an Onkerry

Whit an onkerry, whit a callishang

Whitiver can we do?

Aabody’s gone doo - lally

Doon on Burland Fairm

By Izzy Swanson & Philip Taylor First verse of “Whit an Onkerry” one of the songs in our very own musical Bobby an da Burland Pearls

Our previous newsletters are on www.shetland.gov.uk

S C O T T I S H O P E R A K A T Y A K A B A N O V A

B O B B Y A N D A B U R L A N D P E A R L S

Bobby will also be making an appearance at the Scottish Learning Festival Local Author-ity Stand this year!

Many moons ago, (3 years in fact) Izzy, Noelle, Chris and Sheila watched Scottish Opera’s Big Hairy Hamish & thought, We can do this! So they did. Valerie Watt wrote Bobby an da Burland Pearls, a tale about a peerie boy’s magical visit to Burland Croft. Mary Fraser illustrated it beautifully & Izzy with help from Philip Taylor, Izzy Anderson & many more folk, turned it into a musical for pre-school pupils. All in dialect no less. A pack for schools including the book, 2

songs, topic plans & activities was sent out before the show. There were 13 schools performances and one public performance all at the Gulberwick Hall. 21 schools and part-ner provider nurseries attended, prepared with their wellies and all singing the songs splendidly. Everyone had a great time at the show. Most of the nurseries had also been to Burland Croft.

Bobby is published by The Shetland Times

Creat ive Links Team Schools Service

C R E AT I V E L I N K S

Chloe Garrick spent a year with the creative links team as part of the SIC’s 12 month Graduate Placment Scheme. We extend our thanks to Chloe for all her great work! Chloe led several workshops over this time including helping with the Scalloway S3 photography module, Skerries Photography Workshops, a graffitti project with Club XL - AHS, Baltasound primary art classes, parental involvement at Cunningsburgh, homeschool group and 3D paint-ings with Dunrossness P7. Chloe also worked on a couple of long term projects includ-ing:with artist, Niela Nell Kalra, designing and delivering an educational resource for Brae’s 4th year RME slavery module; drawing together a book of art-work completed by AHS & BHS higher and advanced higher

class both as a resource and a testiment to the exceptional work done by the students. In addition, Chloe was an artist for the Bonhoga Education Pro-gramme, which she will be continuing (see article overleaf). Chloe says that her highlights of the year have been ”Being asked

to open the Shetland Schools Art exhibition in 09 & meeting visiting artists & joining in with the workshops they provide” Chloe has created a website that includes some of her pro-ject photos and ideas. It can be found at: http://sites.google.com/site/

C H L O E G A R R I C K - G R A D UA T E P L AC E M E N T

Issue 6

September 2010

Statistics for 09 - 10

• 32 projects

• 4019 pupils participated

• £250,000 raised to spend on art projects in Shetland Schools

I N S I D E T H I S I S S U E :

Bonhoga Education Programme 2

National Schools Film Week 2

Martin Robinson 2

Choman Hardi 2

Keith Charters 2

Dance Ihayami 2

Deirdre Nelson—G Man 3

Wordplay Artists 3

Canvas & Glow 3

RME Brae 3

Imaginate, Whalsay... 3

Crofts and Robots 3

Belly Bairns 3

Creative Links Opportunities 3

Bobby an da Burland Pearls 4

KGS Big Band & Harris Playfair 4

Scottish Opera - Fever! 4

Guitar Festival 4

Blues Festival - Kevin Brown 4

Scottish Opera - Katya Kabanova 4

O L N A F I R T H P R I M A R Y : C R E A T E P L A Y C O N T E M P L A T E Olnafirth Primary created sculp-tures in their playground with artist in residence Kay Aplin. The project grew out of pupils’ desire to improve the play-ground. The school, with help from us, successfully applied for Awards for All funding. Kay has experience of delivering public art projects internation-ally. Kay was here for two weeks each in March, May and June and has worked on design-ing and creating the sculptures with pupils, parents and mem-

bers of the commu-nity. The launch was a great success with over 70 folk attend-ing. Everyone has worked really hard, and are all very ex-cited about the result. And the pupils love playing on the sculp-tures!

Kay kept a blog at: http://www.a-n.co.uk/link/KayAplin/Shetland

N E W D I A L E C T Creative Links is happy to an-nounce a new member of staff. Bruce Eunson has been ap-pointed as Dialect Co-ordinator. A partnership between Shetland ForWirds, Shetland Islands Council, Shetland Amenity Trust & Shetland Arts have success-fully applied to Leader + (a Euro-pean funding initiative) for a three year dialect post. The pur-pose of the post is to develop & promote dialect among young people.Bruce will develop dialect resources for upper primary &

secondary, building on the suc-cess of Da Ditty Box (early years) & Da Gaer Box (P1—3). The previous packs have been successful because of the unique partnership of passionate writers, teachers & artists, who have all ensured the packs contain rele-vant & exciting learning materi-als. Bruce started by evaluating Da Gaer Box with schools before summer. There are two dialect dates for your diary, a meeting

for da Gaer Box on Sept 14 & for the upper primary resource on Sept 15. Bruce says “Please contact us if you would like more info or to get involved in creating new dialect materials.” Shetland ForWirds has done fantastically well with the teaching materials it has cre-ated thus far. They can also boast their new website;

www.shetlanddialect.org.uk

Pupils working on the project and finished Sculptures

Skerries Pupils artwork, from Camera and Torch workshops

2009—2010 was the second year of the Bonhoga Education Programme. Schools have been to see Noel, Absent Voices, Northern Traces, Sun Town Moon Street and Portage: Cross-ing Points. There have also been 4 CPD sessions, Art Plus: Inter-pretation, Art Plus: Sound, Art Plus: Environment and Art Plus: Geography. Great fun was had at all of these. These sessions are active and relatively informal, so often bring up new ideas for school projects. There is a Bonhoga Page on Glow, so you can catch up on what is happening.

Currently schools book to visit the Bonhoga Gallery, and can use the resource pack, (which can be emailed, or is available on Shetland Arts Website or Glow) Then the school receives a free 2 hour workshop related to the exhibition from an artist. (worth around £100). In the last term, and continuing this year transport to the gallery will be free. Response from participants to both the education programme and the CPD has been over-whelmingly positive. We would like to encourage more schools to use this programme.

“A child sings before it speaks, dances before it walks. Music is with

us from the beginning.”

Pamela Brown

Dance Ihayami are a Scotland Based Classical Indian Company, this March they were in Shetland for a week, visiting 9 primary schools and working with 319 pupils. The sessions were en-joyed by pupils, who learned about the avatars of Vishnu, as well as the dance movements!

Author of the Lee books, Keith delivered spirited presentations to Skeld, Happyhansel, Sand-ness, North Roe, Urafirth, Ham-navoe and Sandwick schools. schools were asked to choose between funny and ever so slightly disgusting readings, and

Deirdre was lead Artist for Shet-land Arts project G Man (The Gunnister Man). She visited Urafirth & North Roe Primaries to deliver workshops, investigat-ing how we identify ourselves through our clothing. We had a blast. The workshops tied in well with the workshops led by the museum .

Page 2

B O N H O G A E D U C A T I O N P R O G R A M M E

D A N C E I H A Y A M I K E I T H C H A R T E R S D E I R D R E N E L S O N - G M A N

Issue 6

All the projects in this page are delivered in

partnership with Shetland Arts.

We give them many thanks!

Choreographer Martin Robinson was here choreographing a piece on G Man for Shetland Arts with Bridges students and young people. The final piece was performed at the Shetland Museum. Martin also worked with Izzy Swanson to provide dance workshops for S1 Sand-wick and S3 Anderson High School Drama Modules.

This year in partnership with Shetland Arts and Shetland Film club two films were shown, The Boy in Striped Pyjamas for Secon-dary and Kirikou and the Sorcer-ess for Primary. Pupils really enjoyed both experiences. “

Choman is a Khurdish poet & researcher. She visited 4 schools as part of a month resi-dency, working with 4 secon-dary English & RME classes. The workshops were well re-ceived & pupils were tasked with creating at least two po-ems in the workshops. Cho-man’s poetry often recounts her experience of being a refugee.

N A T I O N A L S C H O O L S F I L M W E E K

M A R T I N R O B I N S O N

C H O M A N H A R D I

crime scenes scientifically & as a starting point for a novel. Every-one loved the cross curricular format. Ann & Helen loved the schools! Mairi Hedderwick vis-ited Brae & Mid Yell with the Ka-tie Morag books & was adored by pupils and teachers alike! Steven Appleby worked with S3 in Scallo-way on cartoons. Puppet State Theatre aided by Izzy, brought The man who planted trees to Brae, Sandwick & Scalloway. Schools requested artists which is great, please keep asking!!

W O R D P L A Y A R T I S T S A B I G S U C C E S S

Pupils making work at Sandwick Nursery

As part of Wordplay in September four artists visited schools. The Wordplay writer was poet Gerry Cambridge, who has a strong interest in wildlife and plays har-monica! Gerry delivered 2 work-shops each for Dunrossness, Cun-ningsburgh, Cullivoe, Aith & Olnafirth, investigating bed bugs & other wildlife! Gerry also spent two days on Fair Isle working with remote isles pupils. Ann Cleeves and Helen Pepper delivered 2 workshops to Sand-wick & Mid Yell investigating

Belly Bairns - Unst

Creat ive Links

Creative Links have decided to become technology friendly, & set up a Glow page. We are keeping it up to date, so you can always see what we are up to. We would be keen to use the discussions page for evalua-tions. Most of our opportunities reach more than one school, so you can find out how they worked elsewhere, & make useful suggestions for the fu-ture! We also worked with Fiona Burr Bloomer, chair of the art panel, Bob Sim, QIO & Davy Cum-mings, International Education Assistant to take forward CAN-VAS for the local Authority. CANVAS is a virtual world that houses art galleries for each authority. Each art gallery is

filled with pupils’ artwork, and a video explaining each piece. We venture into the world using a character called an avatar. Fiona, Davy and Frances at-tended national training on CAN-VAS in April which led to a CAN-VAS training day in Shetland, to let art teachers explore CANVAS & discuss how to use CANVAS in Shetland. Unfortunately on the day, the technology misbehaved, but the art teachers made the most of the day & we have a rough plan to take forward. We hope to have Shetland’s gallery ready soon. You can learn about CANVAS at: http://consolarium.blip.tv/file/2515066/ http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/video/e/

The pipers trail initiative was continued in 2009, with a visit in October. They performed in Cunningsburgh, Skeld and Brae Primaries and Brae High. The workshops contained both Piping and drumming. Brae High were very excited as they are working towards a pipe

P I P E R S T R A I L 2 0 0 9

C R E A T I V E L I N K S P R O J E C T S Aug/Sep 2010 Workshops with Blues Festival Sep 2010 Wordplay residency with Chrissie Gittins Sep 2010 Workshops with Wordplay writer Janis Mackay Sep 2010 Red Kite Animation Workshops tbc 14 Sep 2010 Meeting re Gaer Box 15 Sep 2010 Meeting re Dialect resources for upper primary Nov 2010 National Schools Film Week, 1 day with two screenings Nov 2010 Love Music, fantastic musicians from around the world perform for schools Nov 2010 Piano Masterclass with Charles Matthews 14 - 17/18 March 2011 The Shetland Schools Music Festival

The Boy in Striped Pyjamas

Rocio Bolanos is a belly dancer from Spain currently living in Shetland. Rocio developed ‘Belly Bairns’ which she has been taking to schools. Rocio has been in Dunrossness Primary for a taster day and Baltasound JHS and Uyeasound Primary for six weeks in November and December. All the pupils in Unst from Nursery to P7 took part and loved it. with even the older primary boys were enthusiastic! PE teacher Caroline Massie said, “This was a great experience and the whole primary loved it.“ Whiteness Primary, with Shetland Arts help, ran a family class for belly dancing after school very successfully.

Chloe and Frances delivered 6 workshops with Baltasound Primary during Art Teacher Caroline Nelson’s maternity leave. P1-3 created Robots and P4 - 7 created croft houses.

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Artist Visits in Pictures

B A L T A S O U N D J H S R O B O T S & C R O F T S

CA N VA S & GL OW

B E L L Y B A I R N S

Niela Nell Kalra was contracted by Creative Links to lead an arts project with graduate Chloe Garrick for Brae High school’s RME Core Class looking at themes of contemporary child slavery. Niela worked with the S4 class on practical sessions to make pages for a conceptual ‘Book of Children’. The workshops included paper making, creative writing & design work covering moral & emotional issues of the subject. Unfortunately, with lots of snow closures, not all the workshops were completed. To counter this Niela & Chloe further developed the project by using work made in the class for a teachers resource pack which is due to be completed & will be available online soon. Watch this space!

B R A E & R M E

Dance Ihayami - Sound

Bernard - Bobby an da...

Mairi Heddirwick - Brae

Kirakou and the Sorceress

The lanes project - AHS

Bonhoga Education Programme

Olnafirth - Artist’s impression

I M A G I N A T E , W H A L S A Y J H S & P O N D L I F E M C G U R K Imaginate promotes performing arts for children & young people in Scotland. They received fund-ing from the Scottish Arts Council to create a resource on Glow to help evaluate shows. They worked closely with three Scot-tish schools, including Whalsay Junior High’s Esther Stevenson & her P5 class. To evaluate a play you must see one, so Imaginate brought The Ballad of Pondlife McGurk to Shetland. Esther & pupils generously agreed to travel to the Mainland for the show to allow other schools to see it too. It was a great show, so a big thank you to Whalsay JHS! Also many thanks to Bells Brae who hosted a public performance.