Musselburgh Grammar Art & Design Blog

Recently, all S2 pupils have been taking part in our fantastic ‘Magic Memories’ project.

Pupils have been exploring Homecoming Scotland themes of what Musselburgh and Scotland means to them and their families, and what their Magic Memories are, and turning them into artwork and prose.

The project, which fits in well with a A Curriculum for Excellence, is the fruit of a lot of hard work by pupils, staff and the community. In English, pupils were asked to interview either members of their families or members of the community. In Art & Design, pupils worked with two great textile artists, Saskia Gavin and Alison Mountain. Working with the artists, pupils learnt how to work with felt and they each created a piece based on what Musselburgh mean to them.

With help from both Homecoming Scotland and the Community Council, work from this project has led to an exhibition for the Musselburgh on the Fringes Festival.  The Magic Memories exhibition is free and runs from 29 June to 28 August and the work is displayed in business windows around Musselburgh. The route starts in North High Street and takes in Musselburgh High Street and Newbigging.

For further information and photos (of course!), check out our Magic Memories page under A Curriculum for Excellence.

As part of A Curriculum for Excellence, the Art & Design, RME and English Departments worked together on an Anti-Sectarianism project.

It was a fantastic, innovative project that really brought Departments together and allowed pupils to use their experiences and knowledge across the curriculum. In Art & Design, pupils from 2CA designed Anti-Sectarianism posters, with Hayley Johnston taking first prize. Hayley’s ‘Cut Sectarianism Out of Your Life’ design can now be seen displayed in every classroom in the school. In RME, pupils composed Acrostic poems and in English, puils read ‘Across the Barricades’ and wrote a book report.

A large number of pupils involved then took part in a trip to Ibrox and Parkhead where they had a tour of the grounds and took part in workshops where they found out how both Rangers and Celtic dealt with the issue of Sectarianism.

To end the project, on June 3rd, Kenny Miller the Scotland International football player and former Musselburgh Grammar School pupil, returned to his old school to present awards to the prize-winners. Kenny is only one of three players to ever play for both Rangers, his current club, and Celtic making him an ideal choice to be able to reflect on Sectarian issues in Scotland.

It was a great project to be involved in and one in which we all learned a lot. Thanks to all those who participated, pupils, staff, guests and designer! A list of all the prize winners and photographs can be see on our Competitions and A curriculum for Excellence pages. Large Display boards showing images of the project can be viewed throughout the school.

This year saw MGS launch the Musselburgh Grammar School Savings Union.

Class 1CD took part in the competition to design the winning mascot logo. Some brilliant designs were created and in the end, there had to be joint winners!

Well done to Claire Hyndman and Jason Gray for their winning designs. Their prize was to open the first two accounts at the Savings Union - a slice of history!

See both winning designs on our Competitions page…

It’s been a busy year for competitions!

In April, a number of pupils entered the Annual Rotary Young Photographer Competition for 2009. The pressure was on after one of our S6 pupils last year went on to win not only the district award but also the Photographer of the Year award.

As usual, our fantastic photographers didn’t let us down and the quality of the entries was high.

Well done to all pupils who took part, but particularly to the winners:

Juta Reine (S6) who won the 16-18yrs category

Dean Ballantyne (S1) who won 1st Prize in the 12-15 yrs category

Ross Baillie S(1) who won 2nd Prize in the 12-15 yrs category

Nicole Souter (S1) who won 3rd Prize in the 12-15 yrs category

Michael Morrison (S1), Catriona Morton (S3) and Rebecca Paterson (S3) who were all Highly Commended in the 12-15 yrs category.

A presentation and buffet was held at the Quay in Musselburgh during the Easter holidays. Check out the Competitions page to see the photographs!

Work by last years Advanced Higher pupils is now available to view. Exemplar work will continue to be updated, so keep checking our Advanced Higher page!

2008 exemplar Intermediate 2 and Higher work will also be available to view soon..

If you missed the recent annual SQA exhibition of last years Higher Art & Design candidates at the Scottish Parliament, don’t worry. There are another 2 exhibitions still to come… an exhibition of mixed levels to be held in Glasgow, and the first Advanced Higher exhibition to be held in Edinburgh early next year.

Well worth a visit, so go along and be amazed at the stunning work of young artists and designers emerging from Scotland.

The People’s Palace, Glasgow

1 December 2008 — 16 January 2009

This exhibition will feature a selection of Higher works from the Scottish Parliament exhibition together with the best works from Standard Grade, Intermediate 1, and Intermediate 2. Over 100 pieces will be displayed.

The National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

22 January — 19 March 2009

This is the first ever major exhibition of Advanced Higher artwork. A must see for all those who are interested in Art & Design.

Click here to go to the SQA website and see photos of work in the exhibitions.

The new Comic Book/Graphic Novel club has started!

Held on a Tuesday Lunchtime, the pupils have high hopes of producing great comic book/graphic novel characters… everyone has different interests from manga to traditional cartoons, so it’ll be fun to see what everyone comes up with.  Watch this space!!!

Membership to the club is currently full. However, if you were interested in joining this club, but weren’t able to make it the first week, see Mrs Walker in D11 to see if there have been any changes to membership.

We hope to use Comic Life to produce any comic strips. Keep checking the ‘Comic Book’ page to see characters as they develop!

Our Advanced Higher pupils were lucky enough to take part in a woodcut workshop held in the Art & Design Department last week.

Visiting artist Denise Walker led the workshop, taking pupils through the process from initial drawings to two colour print. The morning was hard work but well work the effort, experience and outcome.

Thanks to Denise for all her hard preparation work which benefited both staff and pupils!

It may have taken a while to find the photos, but finally here they are!

To set the tone for the new S3 course, the Art & Design Department decided to break with tradition and try something different for the last few weeks of the session! Out went our traditional course and taking ‘A Curriculum for Excellence’ forward, we decided to link with other Departments and put on ‘Mussie Makeover’, a fashion show aimed at highlighting environmental issues.

The theme was to recycle and reinvent - something our new S3 did brilliantly. The purpose was to build skills, build relationships and confidence as well as enjoy putting on a show!

Art & Design, Citizenship, English and Maths all worked together to produce this successful event. Well done everybody - a great day and a fun day!

Thanks to all who contributed - the designers, the models, the photographers, the staff and of course the hostess with the mostest - Mr ‘Mac’Bray (yep, the most ’stylish’ of them all).

Check out the ‘A Curriculm for Excellence’ or ‘S3′ pages for more photos!

Our Rotary Young Photographer of 2008 was presented with her trophy at a ceremony on Monday night at the Quay. Well done again, Morag!

All you budding photographers - look out for next years competition!