Community Learning

This blog has great potential as a tool for community learning. As a community development worker, I have an interest in how learning on the theme of culture and history can be used as a tool to tackle literacy and employability. The literacy group at Kilbirnie Employability Hub, Kilbirnie Library, are ideally placed to engage in learning on this theme. Previous experience of work in this area has demonstrated that many learners are stimulated by history and culture. A recent project involved reading, writing about and researching exhibits in Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, and subsequently visiting Kelvingrove to view these exhibits in person.

Writing a blog entry for literacies learners will include many elements that are linked to enhancing their employability prospects. Writing a CV, job application form and cover letter are all crucial to the process of finding employment and include aspects such as:

using word-processing facilities for planning, drafting, composing, editing and proof-reading
choosing and using strategies for learning spellings and working out how to spell words
choosing and using appropriate punctuation, upper and lower case letters
using dictionaries, thesaurus and spellcheckers

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Beginnings

Beginnings, new starts, genesis. A new blog, but with an 'old' subject matter. Born out of a community meeting in the town of Dalry in the Garnock Valley, our group decided to use blogging as a method of bringing together and collating aspects of the culture and history of the area. As an experiment/pilot, we are asking group members to submit 200 words and two photographs of one aspect of the culture/history of the area that they have discovered, or that they have a particular interest in. These will then be collated and published in this blog for demonstration and review purposes, before deciding on whether this would be a way of taking the group forward and possibly applying for funding from Garnock Connections.

Bypass Art

We are a group called Bypass Art and our aim is to site a piece of public art, a landmark on the new Dalry Bypass. We would like to see Bessie Dunlop (Witch of Dalry) on the Bypass providing a historical gateway to this part of Ayrshire. Bessie Dunlop Bessie Dunlop was an ordinary woman living in the 16th century in the Lynn Glen area of Dalry. She was a skeelywife (midwife) with a knowledge of traditional remedies as well as charms and superstitions which she used to help those around her in times of sickness and disease.She also gained the reputation of being a spaewife and people began to seek her help in finding lost and stolen items, and that’s when things started to go terribly wrong for Bessie.She may have lived to a ripe old age had her apparent skills in locating missing items not interfered with the activities of corrupt officials. (case of stolen plough irons and a sheriff officer was bribed not to find them) Or being asked by Willia...

Inter-generational Project

Something that will compliment the Dalry Heritage Trail. We plan to go into both primary schools in the town in the future and do an intergenerational project with I pads. We will arrange visits for the children into the sheltered housing complexes so that they can interview the residents asking what it was like in Dalry when they were young we want memories in the form of "I REMEMBER" What was the town like, what was school like, what did they do for entertainment. We will supply a list of questions but also want the children to ask their own, with the answers they get taken back to the schools and being the basis for discussion with the rest of the class. Would the have liked to have grown up back then, would they have found it boring, how would they have managed without technology or indeed the latest in trainers. What we would like to do with the " I REMEMBER" is to find some way to display these memories maybe something similar to the sea w...

Garnock Valley Cultural Connections

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