By Sarah Robinson

Published at 11:06, Thursday, 15 March 2012

BRINGING history to life was the aim of an exciting day of activities at St Begh’s School.

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Youngsters got to grips with Roman history by taking part in a march, as well as dressing up in costumes, looking at artifacts and trying their hand at creative writing.

They were joined by Alan Gillon, senior learning officer at The Beacon, who showed them that history can be looked at creatively, both inside and outside the classroom.

Throughout the day, children and staff were also filmed taking part in the exciting activities. This footage will be used to make a promotional DVD and web clip for The Beacon. The aim is for the short film to promote what the museum provides for school groups and how the learning team can support teaching staff across the curriculum.

The event is part of a wider project aimed at bringing learning to life by engaging children using various resources.

Craig Sharkey, teacher at St Begh’s School, said: “It was absolutely fantastic. Alan was great. He got into character as a reserved Roman soldier.

“The children were so engaged, which is the most important thing.

“It’s reassuring to know that we have this fantastic resource on our doorstep. I know that I can ring The Beacon and ask to borrow an artifact for the day to show the kids.”

Mr Gillon said: “The children at St Begh’s were fantastic, it was great to work with them on this project. Overall The Beacon is taking its collection out of the building to try to support life-long learning. We want to try and inspire children and enable them to be more creative.”

The funding for the project has come from Renaissance, which is now Arts Council England, via Tullie House supporting Cultural Learning Networks in Cumbria. The funding for the film project is to support innovative creative ways of engaging with collections and to inspire learning.

The Film Project is part of a Cumbria-wide cultural learning networks project involving The Beacon and The Senhouse Roman Museum from Cumbria Coast Learning Network (CCLN) and both CONNECT and LMEN Networks working with filmmaker, Peter Rali.

Published by http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk