Who’s Involved – Public Sector: National Galleries

National Galleries of Scotland Curator to the webcam: Hello Lossiemouth and good afternoon! How are you all?

Principal Teacher of Art: One of the main problems that we have in Moray is that we don’t have a public art gallery and that was one of the reasons for going and developing this partnership with the National Galleries, is that because of our remote location we don’t get the opportunity of visiting the gallery as often as we’d like.

Moray Council Enterprise Support Officer: I’m Enterprise Support Officer with Moray Council, with responsibility mainly for business engagement. I really organised a 3-day placement for the Principal Teacher of Art here and myself, to work with the National Gallery Education Team. To begin to look at ways in which we could work together and ways in which the school could access the collection from the school.

We began to see that, possibly, the first stage might be videoconferencing. So, linking with the print room, we spend some time in the print room, looked at what was there, in fact, and then began to think about how we could work in the school, work with the print room and work with the staff of the National Galleries.

National Galleries of Scotland Representative on webcam: Today we are going to show you some more prints from the print room, on the theme of myths and legends again.

Tessa Asquith-Lamb: I think this is a very valuable and positive project, both for the liaison with the National Galleries of Scotland, for the school and for the pupils involved, because it’s bringing together all these different elements.

The pupils are seeing wonderful works of art which they wouldn’t, necessarily, have access to normally and they're seeing them via the webcam link, which is quite a new thing to be happening. And quite an exciting thing to be actually present when that’s happening.

So they're seeing wonderful things, like a Goya or a Leonardo Da Vinci drawing and they're seeing them right in their classroom and its very direct kind of inspiration for them. And it’s very positive that these things from the print room of the National Gallery are getting seen by a wider audience like that, and I think its something that would be brilliant if most schools could see them.

Pupil 2: I liked seeing the etchings and the art from the gallery because I know it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. And no-one got to see it, except for us!

Principal Teacher of Art to Curator on webcam: Could you, maybe, explain to the pupils as well, a little bit about your job and what a Curator does

National Galleries of Scotland Curator replies: A Curator looks after the collection; it comes from the Latin [word] meaning to care for. Part of my job is to look after 30,000 works on paper here and the works on paper belong to the nation. They belong to you and to everyone else; my job is just to care for them for you.

Tessa Asquith-Lamb : I think it’s also great that the pupils that are seeing that art is something that can be part of your life and can be a part of your career. And something very imaginative and fulfilling, like that, is possible as a career. It’s not necessarily something that you do I school and that’s the end; it’s something that you can go on and use and that you can feel great about in your later life.

National Galleries of Scotland Curator speaks to class via webcam: Hopefully we might see some of your coming down here and taking up art as career!

Principal Teacher of Art replies: Well, there's a few of them already that have suggested that it might be something that they're interested in doing.

National Galleries of Scotland Curator speaks to class via webcam: It’s a fantastic job, a fantastic career. Always being creative and looking at things … I’ll tell you something – you’ll never be bored!

Principal Teacher of Art: There is so much potential in this. It’s really exciting and it’s really refreshed my approach to my teaching and I can see benefits, not only for our art and design education, but there are benefits for other schools, other subjects to become involved with partnerships with other businesses where you can really call on the professionalism, you can really call on the expertise of a business and a working partnership to create something really exciting for the 21st Century for Scottish education.