Stories from St Machar’s

Thomas Baldwin reports on an innovative project capturing the history and stories of Aberdeen’s cathedral church.

THE Cathedral Church of St Machar, Aberdeen, hosted the premiere of the film ‘Stories from St Machar’s’ starring the Primary 6/7 class of Kittybrewster Primary School recently.

In the film, recorded last autumn following visits to the Cathedral and drama activities, the children act out six stories associated with the cathedral, beginning with the legend of St Machar being sent by Columba to cross Scotland and found a church by the sea.

The project began with a proposal in the Activity Plan, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund as part of a £1.8m conservation scheme at the cathedral, for a junior tour guide project.

Education officer Katherine Williams approached Karen McKenzie of Illuminate UK, a heritage and arts education company which has worked on similar projects around Scotland, who were keen to get involved, and then reached out to nearby primary schools. The headteacher of Kittybrewster School Ross Watson, was very enthusiastic.

Because of Covid-19 restrictions, starting dates for the project kept being pushed back. However, by spring 2021 a drama director Callan MacCormick from Illuminate UK was in place to start in the new academic year in August 2021. The headteacher was very keen that both Primary 7 classes should be involved and so after discussions it was agreed that two projects would run lasting a week each.

One class would put on a Live Tour at the end of a week’s rehearsals and the other class would film their tour.

An introduction day for the two classes was arranged in June 2021 and Katherine gave the two classes a tour of the cathedral, emphasising stories from the cathedral’s past and Callan engaged them afterwards with drama activities and assessing which stories had caught their imagination. Over the summer holidays Callan developed a script, and at the start of the 2021-22 academic year the roles were cast, lines learned, and costumes created by local costume designer, Heather Munro.

The Live Tour group started first and Callan ran whole class drama workshops in Dunbar Hall and smaller rehearsal groups spread around the cathedral. Each child had a role in one of the six stories to play. For those not confident to take on a character role there was the chance to become an ‘expert’ and research cathedral artefacts from the past and find out about the recent conservation work. Sadly, parents were not allowed to come to the performance but the show went on and lucky visitors and congregational members were very appreciative.

The next week Ania Urbanowska from Media Education joined the project to film the Primary 6/7 class. The script was revised by Callan to suit filming, and costumes altered to fit a different set of children by Heather. This week followed a different pattern, with only the children involved in the scene being filmed in the cathedral each day, except for the last day when the whole class came together to film crowd scenes.

After the film had been watched on a large screen, there was huge applause for the children. Many thanks were expressed for the help and support from staff at Kittybrewster and staff and volunteers from the cathedral.

Education officer Katherine Williams said: “We hope that this is just the start of the project and that the Primary 7s will be able to take children on tours of the cathedral later this year, and then train up younger children to make the tours sustainable for years to come.” 

To watch the film, search for ‘Stories from St Machar’s Cathedral’ on YouTube.