Passing the Baton: Engaging Young People with Heritage

Our group undertook a project with the pupils of 4th class St. Senan's NS to explore our digital archive; Scattery Island: Our Island Story. The aim of this is to pass the baton of the Island's heritage on to the younger generation in digital format, opening the door to Scattery's Heritage in an accessible platform. We felt this was a valuable step to take to reduce the risk of Island Heritage being lost due to young people not being aware of the digital archive. We engaged with the teachers of the School and the OPW. We visited the classroom, explored the archive with the pupils, highlighting photographs, links to the Duchas Folklore collection related to Scattery Island and oral history on our archive. We accompanied the class on their annual field trip to Scattery exploring the Island's history with an OPW guided tour. We then designed a table quiz based on Scattery 's heritage and brought this to the classroom in collaboration with their teachers. The pupils learned a lot about the Island's Heritage through the quiz, which included true and false, dingbats and picture rounds!
Project partners learned the importance of combining digital and traditional learning methods. Currently the pupils and teachers are working on creating pieces of artwork we will upload to our archive. During Heritage Week we will exhibit the pupil's uploaded work, on an evening when Criostoir MacCarthaigh (former director Duchas folklore collection) delivers a talk on Heritage at Risk and the role of digital preservation.