All of our Year 6 and 7 pupils will participate in this exciting project which will commence on Tuesday 16th October with a visit to Tirkane Sweathouse. There will be no charge for this trip. Some background to the project can be found below. The Children's Writing Fellow for Northern Ireland, Myra Zepf will work with R6/7 in Irish on Tuesday 16th Oct. and then with P6/ P7 in English on Thursday 18th October.
Heartland Background
The Mid Ulster District Council Tourism Strategy recognises the rich and diverse range of heritage sites in Mid Ulster. However, the section of the strategy entitled “Archaeology, History and Heritage” states: “The archaeology, history and heritage theme suffers from issues of lack of visibility, limited understanding by residents and visitors alike of the significance of these assets…results in a barrier to visiting.”
In an attempt to address the issue of understanding, the Education Officers at Hill of The O’Neill & Ranfurly House and Seamus Heaney HomePlace are undertaking an education project which will enable primary school children from across Mid Ulster to comprehend the significance of local heritage sites, and which will draw on the strengths of the education programmes at each of the centres, namely heritage and literacy. This project is called “Heartland”.
The “Heartland” project is focusing attention on five heritage sites within the Mid Ulster District Council area. The heritage sites are:
Bellaghy Bawn; Knockmany Passage Tomb, Clogher; Lissan House, Cookstown; The Grant Ancestral Homestead, Dungannon; Tirkane Sweathouse, near Maghera.
In this project, an archaeologist/historian/expert will meet classes from the relevant schools at the heritage site and will explain the historic significance of the site to the pupils.
The Children’s Writing Fellow for Northern Ireland, Myra Zepf, will accompany the pupils on each of the site visits. She will then return to each school with the class where she will hold a writing workshop with the children as they begin to write about what they have
experienced. This phase of the project will take place during September and October 2018.
The children’s writing from each of the schools will then be collated and edited by the Education Officers. It will be published in a book entitled “Heartland”. This will be launched at the end of March 2019 at a ceremony for all of the participating pupils at a central Mid Ulster location. This book will be made available to all of the young writers, and to their schools, and will also be free to members of the public at Council Visitor Information Centres across Mid Ulster.
