As an accredited partner of the Green Legacy 2014 Commonwealth Games, we manage a project which aims to encourage children from primary and secondary schools in Scotland to engage with biodiversity and understand the importance of the bees in a creative and engaging manner. Schools participating in this project get an empty beehive to paint according to different themes relevant to the year the project was launched:
– 700th anniversary of Bannockburn
– 100th anniversary of WW1
– Commonwealth Games sport/country
– Scottish book/author
Braidhurst High Scool
Braidhurst High School in Motherwell are a Green Legacy participant who have really embraced both aspects of the environmental cause we support and their chosen theme. The school ran several events to commemorate the WW1 Centenary theme, including holding the Christmas Truce Memorial Match which we previously covered here
Designing their Hive
This year, the school will actively run a hive with its own colony of honeybees, but first, students learn the role of pollinating insects in our food chain and why it’s important to establish the hive – which will be done once it is painted. Teachers from the Social Subjects and Art and Design departments have been working with the students to encourage and develop designs for the school beehive. Art teachers Duncan Chisholm and Paul Clifford undertook a design unit with S2 and S3 students drawing inspiration from battlefield images from during and after the conflict. The completed artwork went on display and school staff voted for the images they would like to see painted onto the hive.
Five Winners
Five talented winners were chosen to transfer their designs on to the hive: Denisa Bednarova and Zafar Khan of S2 and Nicole Collumb, Emma Ewart and Zoe Oliphant of S3. Each pupil received an art kit including paints, pencils and a sketch book as an additional reward for their efforts along with a jar of delicious honey, courtesy of Plan Bee Ltd. We’d like to say a big thank you to project co-ordinator Kirsty Logan for driving the project forward, a well done to the winners and also our appreciation for Braidhurst pupils that might not have won, but are really getting involved and understanding the importance of bees and their chosen theme.
Four of the winners (L-R) – Denisa Bednarova, Zoe Oliphant, Kirsty Logan (Project Coordinator), Emma Ewart and Zafar Khan.