‘Our People, Heartbeat of the Highlands’

Our future lochardil by ewenw

Lochardil Primary School pupils proudly showed off their poster titled ‘Our People, Heartbeat of the Highlands’ to elected members and staff at Headquarters today.

The piece of artwork encompasses the children’s contributions to the Council’s Our Future Highland programme after being asked what they thought Highland could look like by 2027.

Education Chair, Cllr John Finlayson said: “Children and young people are our biggest asset and play a vital role in change going forward. We wanted to make sure that the next generation had an opportunity to express their values, views, and ideas for what they thought could be the future of Highland. Today when speaking to pupils from Lochardil, I was very impressed by their vision and strong opinions regarding what they feel is needed in Highland in the future.

“The response we received from so many schools was wonderful and it was great to see that all schools had taken a different approach to the task, either by communicating their views in words or pictures.”

Lochardil Primary School decided to design a poster which was inspired by artist & pop star Jason Donovan, who later shared the poster on his Instagram page.

At the centre of the poster, there is a drawing of a world map with the Highlands enlarged alongside a big love heart which was created by pupils from the school’s youngest classes. To capture everyone’s ideas, every school class held a discussion and uploaded all of their messages onto an online padlet. It was then the task of the school’s UNIKids (Rights Respecting Schools focus group) to transfer all of the comments by hand onto the paper.

Head Teacher at Lochardil Primary School, Audrey Kellacher said: “Our staff and pupils loved the challenge and it certainly created important conversations about ‘Our Highland’. Our pupils were delighted to visit the Highland Council Headquarters today. The printed poster looks very impressive and is an excellent testament to how switched on and engaged our pupils are throughout the whole school.”

All of the completed posters were placed on display outside the Council Chamber today.

8 Dec 2022