Raharney NS project explores identity and local heritage

Thomas Lyons

Where we come from is an important part of who we are. The pupils of St Mary’s NS, Raharney have completed a project that gives them an insight into their identity and they presented a public showing of their work.

Under the Creative Clusters programme, an initiative of the Department of Education in partnership with 21 full-time education support centres, they explored local history.

Creative Clusters focuses on giving young people opportunities to learn and develop collaboration, critical thinking, problem-solving, and innovation skills.

The programme facilitates collaboration between three and five schools on the design, implementation, evaluation and dissemination of an innovative creative learning project.

“Basically it’s a two-year project,” Annmarie Downes, principal of St Mary’s NS, told the Examiner. “It’s a voluntary programme to promote creativity and the arts.”

Billed as an opportunity for the students to explore learning through cultural and creative activities, Creative Clusters has a broad remit. Schools are given complete freedom to design and develop their own projects, with support from a local facilitator and their local education support centre.

“We’ve collaborated with Rathwire and Edmonton National Schools. We have meet-ups, but each school does their own project. Our project was called ID and it was to do with our identity,” Annmarie said.

Coordinating a project that accommodates pupils from all classes is a challenge: “We created a committee within the school – the Creative Clusters committee – it has representatives from junior infants right up to sixth class.

“They had meetings where they held conversations about the project, then we presented those ideas to the school pupils.”

The topic that excited the most interest focused on buildings around Raharney: “We had Martin Curley (of Heritage Ireland), who is a heritage in schools expert, visit us. He helped with research on the area. That research focused on the buildings and the people of Raharney. It was a cooperative effort within the school with all pupils and all teachers.

“From that, we developed the idea to present their work to the wider public. It has a variety of themes; the schools, the GAA, and Grange Moor House. They have memorabilia, a whole gallery of photographs of all past pupils of the school going right back to 1961.”

The students at St Mary’s NS embraced the remarkably diverse programme that Creative Clusters offered. Photographs and memorabilia are just some of the historic artefacts the project amassed.

“The research covered everything from local buildings to local celebrates. We discovered we had the George Clooney of Raharney, as we’re calling him,” Annmarie says of James Murry, a star of the silent era of film who was nominated from two Academy Awards in the early years of cinema.

“His father lived right next door to the school before emigrating to America. That’s a great example of how the project appealed to the students. It is very diverse.”

The goals of the project, creativity and wellbeing, took the Raharney pupils on a number of journeys: “It was pupil-led. They went down the route of looking at the 1901 census.

“That showed the children the work of local tradespeople and what jobs the people of the time had. We looked at the local shop, how it originated and developed.”

St Mary’s NS is not a big school, so this project demanded a full school effort: “Small but mighty, as we call ourselves,” the principal says, “We have 61 pupils. All class teachers and the two special ed teachers were part of this collaborative effort.”

Facilitating a project that engages children between four and 13 years old presents a significant challenge. This particular Creative Clusters programme tapped into their familiarity with local heritage.

“It’s about responding to how the children learn at particular ages. For the younger children, we would take them on a walk of the area. They took photographs of the local buildings with iPads,” Annmarie said.

“We used that as a visual scaffold for how we structured the project. That gave them a hook to anchor them straight away. In many instances the children pass by those buildings they were researching every day on their way to school.

“They saw them in a different light. They understood how they happened to be there and where they had come from.”

The process of sifting out a focus of the project was crucial to that engagement: “They started out with an idea, and we had to let it grow. We explored every avenue we could with the children to see what it was that they responded to. It challenged their creativity. There was a huge level of research work.”

The school also tapped into local knowledge: “We had a local man, Shay O’Callaghan, who came in for a morning and spoke to us. He’s a local historian. He spoke to the children, the senior classes, all about his experiences in Raharney and gave anecdotal stories about the area. We discovered there was a mill, and how the river was part and parcel of life for people in Raharney.”

Annmarie said the Identity project will have a profound impact on the St Mary’s students. She said everyone who participated made it successful: “I want to express our thanks to everybody who was involved, particularly Martin Curley. He provided us a great experience.

“Catherine Sheridan, the Creative Arts facilitator with Creative Clusters, was also brilliant. Catherine met us and helped to coordinating all the schools collaborating together. This is year one of the programme and we are looking forward what direction year two will bring us in.”

The St Mary’s NS project had public presentation last Thursday in the school. One of the pupils, Doireann O’Grady told the Examiner on the night of the launch: “I constructed the base of the project and made the time travelling car. It was nice to be a part of the project, but cutting the cardboard was hard on the hands.”

Student Ella Jordan described her input: “I researched cobblers. There is a famous cobbler called Tommy Farrelly who lives in Raharney, in Grange Moor. He used a tool called a last that was used to size the shoes.”