With our museum closed, our Learning and Engagement programme has been focused on outreach, and this continues to take our Learning and Engagement Officer all over the West Coast of Scotland. Through this, she has had the pleasure of visiting new places, creating partnerships and nurturing existing relationships. 2024 was a busy and fun year for her and continues to be in 2025 so far. We shared a version of this blog in Slatest News (a pamphlet that’s posted to Ballachulish addresses) but we decided to share it even wider through our website. Below is a list of some events and activities Parris has delivered out in the community but it is by no means exhaustive! Her and the whole team at GFM are very busy behind-the-scenes, but these are some great examples we wanted to share, when our hard work resulted in fun and memorable times out and about in the community.
We had two pub quizzes in the spring and autumn of 2024 at the legendary Boots Bar within Clachaig Inn! These were brilliant fun to deliver, fundraised vital funds for the Museum (we are an independent charity) and were a huge success thanks to Clachaig Inn allowing us to use them as a venue. It’s guaranteed to be a good vibe there and these quizzes were no exception! On both occasions we had passionate (read loud and intoxicated) teams participating, which was entertaining enough, but with Jimmy the Bush (our long-serving volunteer) on the mic, even more laughs were had!
Our three pop-up museums have been touring since April 2024. “The Mountains” one fit in perfectly at Glencoe Mountain Resort’s café which has spectacular views of Buachaille Etive Mòr and the rest of the Glen. We got lots of positive feedback, like a message from James and Stephanie from Texas in USA, who said they loved seeing the early equipment of pioneers in climbing! Our pretty “The Dances” pop-up provides a trip down memory lane of getting ready for a night out in the town (or in our case, the village) in the 60s era. We’ve partnered with several local businesses and organisations to be host venues for us which has meant we’ve had a bigger presence in other nearby villages, like Kinlochleven for instance, and been to new sites we’ve never been before. So far, the pop-ups have visited 11 venues, with more planned throughout 2025! You can learn where they are currently, listen to relevant oral history recordings, view additional archival photos and read more about the themes on the page dedicated to the pop-ups on our website.
At every school the “Childhood” pop-up museum has been displayed, Parris (our L&E Officer) has visited the classes to deliver themed workshops on the same subject. These have been lively and hands-on sessions with kids getting to explore the universal topic of childhood from their own perspective. We’ve played games, done object handling and chatted through the similarities and differences of going to school, growing up and playing over the last 100 years. In the sessions so far, a rise in excitement, laughter and horror always comes when the tawse and cane are presented to the group as we gawp at the fact teachers were allowed to use corporal punishment on children, not so long ago... 115 kids have taken part in these classroom workshops and we’re planning on visiting more very soon!
We started our own after-school club (they named themselves the “Wee Glenahoulians Club”) in June 2024 at Glencoe Primary School originally and then moved to Ballachulish due to school staffing. Our plan is to have them come to us when our new museum is open and well-prepped to have a bunch of brilliantly boisterous bairns onsite! We want to say a massive thank you to the staff for allowing us to deliver this project, particularly Mary Evans, the cluster’s Head Teacher. We’ve met 18 times now and got lots of exciting things planned. We’ve just recently had two authors come visit us for interactive workshops through funding we received from Scottish Book Trust’s Live Literature fund. These have been great opportunities for the club to meet professionals and be creative in new ways. Currently, there are still spaces for any local children 8+ years old at primary school who are interested in socialising and learning after school.
Parris visited Abbeyfield Care Home five times throughout 2024, taking a variety of objects in to stimulate discussions and reminiscence, these one-hour sessions have been a nice opportunity to slow down and marvel at the changes in society by handling objects up close. Unfortunately, our Museum isn’t accessible in its current state, so historically we haven’t engaged with this audience much, but we’re addressing this through our redevelopment project.
As the long nights set in and shortly after spooky season, we held a Murder Mystery Night at Ballachulish Village Hall, to raise funds and have fun while we were at it! Don’t worry, no one was harmed in the process of raising funds. 😉 This was our first one; organised and led by our fantastic Fundraising Officer, Katie, and it was a great night! We had four incredible volunteers who made it such a fabulously fun night – huge thank you to Finnan, Karl, Charlotte and Sairah!
As the year was ending, Parris had one final project to complete… She visited four local schools to share the legends of Corrag the Witch with pupils and created an art competition. You can read about the project in detail here: https://www.westcoasttoday.co.uk/leisure/corrag-the-witch-art-competition
However, in summary, we are delighted with the winning artwork and can’t wait to use it as our official graphic of Corrag in the redeveloped museum exhibitions. All entries will be displayed in a temporary exhibition on Corrag in our Community Gallery room. With 48 in total, we’ll have lots of colourful, creative and unique art to show off to our visitors.
For the months of January and February in 2025, Parris was a busy bee developing, delivering and evaluating a new resource… We understand that schools face barriers to visit us as we’re in a rural location and travel expenses are high, so we created a digital workshop on the infamous Glencoe Massacre, aimed at P5-7 aged children. This is a terrible and tragic event but a nationally significant one, and we believe it’s an important event to learn about when delving into Scotland’s history (it especially compliments topics like the Jacobites and Highland Clearances). Through the power of technology (when it works, Teams is not our friend!), we can break-down barriers and connect with schools, regardless of their location. Parris was fortunate enough to meet with schools across the country – from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeenshire, Argyllshire, Fife, the Isle of Skye, Inverness and the rest of the northern Highlands.
We gathered feedback from both teachers and pupils to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the delivery, content and relevance. We learned a lot through this which we put to good use. One teacher said “Just to say many thanks for such a great input! An example of what other establishments could be involved in to increase children's awareness of historical events and life in the past in Scotland", whilst another said "Pupils thoroughly enjoyed the whole workshop experience, each section capturing their interest. Parris had a great manner with children." So far we've gathered 112 pupils feedback and some highlights were "I most enjoyed the tableau, It was really fun being the characters- even for just a frozen scene" and "I really enjoyed the fact that it wasn’t just telling us what happened, and that it was all in detail and we were told about why and how this happened, and we also got to know more about when it happened and what life was like living in Glencoe at the time."
We are working on creating more digital workshops that tell unique but important local stories through our collection. Watch this space to see what we get up to next… spoiler: it’s going to be an escape into the extraordinary.
We recently had two online talks with authors on their novels which were excellent evenings; ‘Witch Light’ with Susan Fletcher and ‘A Rattle of Bones’ with Douglas Skelton. 'Witch Light' follows Corrag and the Glencoe Massacre, blending folklore and history beautifully through lyrical storytelling and descriptions of the area. Skelton's crime novel 'A Rattle of Bones' infuses modern day Highlands with the events of the Appin Murder in 1752. This is a great read, with unexpected twists, cultural references and strong but fun characters. If you missed these but are interested in watching them, you can request recordings by emailing learning@glencoemuseum.com
Parris recently reflected on her work: “I’ve been at GFM and living locally for over 3 years now and 2024 was the best year for me in terms of my work. Lots of projects started and took off, and I’ve never been so busy and active. My diary is full and varied, and I’m continuing to work with a range of people, no matter their age, interest, or indeed location! I’m really proud to share what a great year it’s been for the Learning and Engagement programme and it continues to go from strength to strength!”
If you’d like to work with Parris, email her at learning@glencoemuseum.com
This is but a glimpse into what we’ve been up to but as a small, independent, rural museum (with only 3 full-time staff members may I add), we’ve worked around our current situation of being museum-less by grasping every opportunity to connect with new people and travel to new places. Which admittedly isn’t that much of a hardship when you’ve got views like this on your commute…
This work is possible thanks to the generosity of public donations as well as our funders, inc. National Lottery Heritage Fund, Scottish Power, Museums Galleries Scotland, Hugh Fraser Foundation, Scottish Building Society, William Syson Foundation and Mickel Fund.
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