Community cash to help launch Glenbervie pupils’ leaflet project

The Cutty Sark Museum Project, managed by Mearns Heritage Services, has received a £300 boost from a community cash event held in Drumlithie by Kincardineshire Development Partnership (KDP).

Supported by Aberdeenshire Council, KDP has staged a number of community cash events since the rural partnership launched the initiative last October. The community decides which project will take home the £300 micro-grant.

Pupils of Glenbervie School along with their class teacher, Lynsey Houston, have been working on the Cutty Sark project by researching and drawing together an integrated Mearns story, along with Bervie and Auchenblae schools.

The Glenbervie youngsters have brought together the links between Bervie-born Hercules Linton, designer of the Cutty Sark, the Burns poem Tam o’ Shanter which contains the famous line “Weel done cutty sark”, and William Burnes, father of the Bard, who was born at Clochnalhill in the parish of Dunnottar in 1721.

The pupils have produced the text and graphics for an interpretive panel, and also produced a leaflet guiding visitors around the key Mearns heritage locations.

Mearns Heritage Services project director Dave Ramsay said “This will enable us to purchase the services of a professional graphics artist, and pay for the cost of printing the tri-fold visitor information leaflet, which will be on display in various locations throughout the Mearns.”

The Glenbervie school contribution will also feed directly into the work being done by the newly-formed Our Mearns Tourist Association, a community-based effort to put the area on the map.

Glenbervie P5/6 pupils with the portrait of Burns and the original design diagram for the Cutty Sark. Murray Taylor holds the Father of the Bard trophy he won in the Burns and Scottish week competition this year.