, Author at The Devil's Porridge Museum

A poster advertising Gardening Club at The Devil's Porridge Museum. This club is ideal for children and teenagers up to sixteen years old. It starts on Saturday 27th April 2024 from 10am to 12pm. To book please email education@devilsporridge.org.uk

Garden Club ‘Dig for Victory’

By Events

Join us for an exciting journey into the world of gardening with our ‘Dig for Victory’ garden club at The Devil’s Porridge! Every Saturday from 10 am to 12 pm, starting April 27th, 2024, children and teenagers up to 16 years old can explore the wonders of nature and learn how to grow beautiful plants, fruits, and vegetables.

Our knowledgeable gardener Wendy will inspire young minds, guiding them on a path of discovery and creativity. With Wendy’s expert guidance, you’ll discover the joys of gardening and connect with nature in ways you never thought possible.

Don’t miss out on this amazing opportunity to cultivate your skills, grow your knowledge, and immerse yourself in the beauty of the natural world. Join us for ‘Dig for Victory’ and let’s make gardening an adventure!

This is a free activity, all resources will be provided.

To book contact: education@devilsporridge.org.uk

EASTER 2024

By Events

Join our Easter workshops!
All the workshops are free of charge, and all materials are provided.

Join an Egg Hunt at any time between 10 am – 3 pm in the museum with your admission. This is a drop in activity from Mon 25 March to 5 April).

Book on the Booking Button by the right side of this page.

A poster listing the October Holidays workshops that happened at The Devil's Porridge Museum in 2023. These events have all now gone by.

OCTOBER HOLIDAYS 2023

By Events

We have a wide range of activities for children during the October holidays 2023! Have a look to our program and book your children in this page!

Workshops and events are free and parents are welcome to join their children!

(Parents are welcome to join their children, but please, book only your child)

Places are limited, so book now! To book your place just click on the ‘BOOK NOW’ tab at the side of our webpage and select October Holidays 2023. You should be able to book in for any of the workshops which still have spaces available there!

Wednesday 18^th of October 2023. From 1 – 4pm

Upcycling workshop: Create a fish in danger of extinction:

Ideal for children aged 8 + with accompanying adults.

Come join us in the future as we embark on an exciting adventure to explore the depths of the ocean and uncover the fossil of an extinct fish. This mysterious creature has never been seen before, and we need your help to create a story about its life. We will also be crafting the ocean floor and a model of the fish using recycled materials. Let’s work together to bring this ancient creature to life!

The artist:

Gail McGregor is a passionate mixed media artist whose work ranges from textiles and handmade paper to weaving, painting and sculpture. Her artwork is inspired by the dramatic landscape of Skye, its seasonal changes, the flora and fauna and the objects she finds on coastal and woodland walks.

Places are limited and booking is essential. To book your place just click on the ‘BOOK NOW’ tab at the side of our webpage and select October Holidays 2023. You should be able to book in for any of the workshops which still have spaces available there!

Thursday 19th of October 2023.

Creative Writing workshop: Waste Stories

Suitable for: adults and young people with an interest in using their imagination to think differently about waste and marine litter. For more information, education@devilsporridge.org.uk

– Afternoon workshop: From 2:00-3:30pm

– Evening workshop: From 5:30 – 7pm

Do you worry about waste? Do you care about our coasts? Do you like making stuff up? If your answer to any of these is yes, then join us for a Waste Stories workshop. We’re running two of these creative story workshops to accompany the Solway Hoard exhibition.

Waste is one of our biggest challenges. The waste we produce – and the ways we dispose of it – pollutes our environment and gobbles up energy. A lot of the time we can ignore it, but a visit to some of Scotland’s western and southern shores can remind us how much of the rubbish we produce ends up in our seas, how far it can travel and how long it can last.

We know we need to do something, but people can often feel powerless. Stories can change that, by helping us to see things in new ways and from new angles. Our Solway Hoard Waste Stories workshops invite you to take a different look at objects that have washed up on our beaches from the perspective of alternative pasts and futures. It’s time we got creative, reduced our trash and turned it into treasure. So come along, look at some bits of rubbish and make some stuff up!

These workshops are part of the Waste Stories project, which is led by Anna Wilson, of the University of Glasgow’s School of Education. We are working with local communities, groups, Colleges and schools to encourage people to make up stuff about rubbish. We gratefully acknowledge financial, practical and creative support from the Levelhulme Trust and the Solway Firth Partnership.

Places are limited and booking is essential. To book your place just click on the ‘BOOK NOW’ tab at the side of our webpage and select October Holidays 2023. You should be able to book in for any of the workshops which still have spaces available there!

Monday 23^rd of October, from 11 – 12pm

Halloween Monsters Crafts Workshop

Ideal for age 6 – 11.

Places are limited and booking is essential. To book your place just click on the ‘BOOK NOW’ tab at the side of our webpage and select October Holidays 2023. You should be able to book in for any of the workshops which still have spaces available there!

Tuesday 24th of October, from 11 – 12pm

Create a Spooky Halloween Lantern

Ideal for age 6 – 11.

Places are limited and booking is essential. To book your place just click on the ‘BOOK NOW’ tab at the side of our webpage and select October Holidays 2023. You should be able to book in for any of the workshops which still have spaces available there!

Wednesday 25^th of October, from 11 – 12pm

Halloween Wreath Making Workshop

Ideal for age 6 – 11.

Places are limited and booking is essential. To book your place just click on the ‘BOOK NOW’ tab at the side of our webpage and select October Holidays 2023. You should be able to book in for any of the workshops which still have spaces available there!

Thursday 26^th, from 11 – 12pm

Pumpkin Painting Workshop

Ideal for age 6 – 11.

Places are limited and booking is essential. To book your place just click on the ‘BOOK NOW’ tab at the side of our webpage and select October Holidays 2023. You should be able to book in for any of the workshops which still have spaces available there!

Friday 27^th of October, from 6:30 – 8:30pm

Spooktacular Halloween Party 2023

Ideal for age 5 – 11.

Places are limited and booking is essential. To book your place just click on the ‘BOOK NOW’ tab at the side of our webpage and select October Holidays 2023. You should be able to book in for any of the workshops which still have spaces available there!

A person stood in the temporary exhibition area of The Devil's Porridge Museum.

Landscapes of War: reflections of a digital intern

By Collections blog

By Rosie Shackleton, Digital Intern for Industrial Museums Scotland, as part of the Second World War and Holocaust Partnership Programme

Landscapes of War is a project about how the Second World War impacted the landscape of Scotland and its people. It was part of the wider Second World War and Holocaust Partnership Programme funded by the Imperial War Museum and the National Lottery Heritage Fund. As part of this, we opened two exhibitions on this theme; one at The Devil’s Porridge Museum and the other at the Scottish Fisheries Museum. These two ‘sister’ exhibitions helped us tell a national history of WW2 in Scotland and its ubiquitous effect on the landscape, but also allowed us to celebrate the local stories related to this theme at each museum. While at the Fisheries Museum we focussed on how the seas were changed by the War using oral testimony of fishermen who were commandeered to Minesweeping vessels, at the Devil’s Porridge we used a Gretna cinema ticket to tell the story of Helen Graham who was killed during the Gretna bombing of April 1941. Ostensibly, these stories appear unrelated, but our theme of landscape allowed us to link these stories to a wider national narrative.

This project was also personally really valuable for me. Thanks to the team at both museums and at Industrial Museums Scotland, I was able to play an active role in each part of the process. I was able to research at both museum’s archives, select objects for the exhibitions, curate the spaces and run the social media to advertise them. All this means I gained fantastic experience at all levels of exhibition making. This will continue when we make the online version of both exhibitions which will go live on the Go Industrial website in the next months. In-person and practical exhibition-making means I now have useful tools when we begin uploading content and curating that online space. We’re really excited to show this exhibition on a new platform!

Lots of unexpected things have come out of this project as well, especially when we’ve been able to unite personal stories with objects on display. At the Fisheries Museum, we put the letters of James Gillies on display. He was a local man from Largo, Fife who served in both World Wars. Next to it, we planned on displaying a Christmas card from Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. The card was sent by a women called ‘Minnie’ but there is no more information on her in the archives. By chance, we saw that James references a ‘Minnie’ several times in his letters to his mother. Then we found a letter from Minnie to James in the archive! We had uncovered a friendship that had been hidden in the museum and were unite them by displaying them together. At the Devil’s Porridge, we displayed the cinema ticket from Gretna that I had mentioned before. At the bottom of the ticket are instructions on what to in an air raid alongside the film listings. While researching the Gretna bombing, we found a statement that said Helen Graham, the youngest victim of the raid, was at the cinema when she heard the sirens. She left the building to check on her family but was tragically killed by a bomb. In both of these cases, we were able to enhance a story through objects not previously on display at both museums.

As the Landscapes of War exhibition finishes at the Devil’s Porridge, it’s been great to reflect on the process of researching and installing. It’s been really valuable to find those previously hidden stories and give a fresh perspective on how the Second World War affected Scotland. Working across two museums has been extremely rewarding, not only for me personally, but also for Go Industrial as a partnership. We strengthened the relationship between the Devil’s Porridge and Scottish Fisheries Museum and created a coherent project celebrating regional nuances while representing a national story. I’m really proud of what we achieved as a team!

Landscapes of War is still open at the Fisheries Museum until December 12^th.

Language and Landscape an online talk about using British Sign Language that happened on 22nd Novemeber 2022 as part of the Disability: Past and Present Project.

Language & Landscape: Using British Sign Language in Historic Storytelling

By Disability events, Events

This talk presents a project that explores how the visual/spatial language of BSL can effectively be deployed to present visual and material culture. Having introduced events conducted in the Parthenon Galleries of the British Museum, the talk will focus on a new online site with BSL stories about Holyrood Park (a collaboration with Historic Environment Scotland). The innovative feature of this material is that linguistic notes accompany the presentations, to help people understand how grammar can be spatial and visual, and therefore a powerful mode of communication about art and archaeology.

This event will be held via Zoom and a joining link will be sent on the day.

Buy tickets here >

This event is happening as part of our Disability: Past and Present project.
Learn more about this and ‘The Health of the Munition Worker: A Disability History of the World Wars on the Solway Military Coast’ exhibition >

Q & A with Sophie Christiansen. A free online talk which took place on Tuesday 15th November 2022 as part of the Disability: Past and Present Project.

Question and Answer Session with Sophie Christiansen CBE

By Disability events, Events

Sophie Christiansen CBE is a British dressage rider who has competed in four successive Paralympic Games and is currently an eight-time Paralympic champion and has won multiple World and European titles. In 2016, following her success at the Rio Paralympics, she placed fifth in the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year the highest placed female and Para athlete.

Sophie was born two months prematurely with Cerebral Palsy and suffered from other health problems including jaundice, blood poisoning, a heart attack and a collapsed lung. Aged 6, she started riding for physiotherapy at the local Riding for the Disabled Association (RDA) group.

She first competed at the Paralympics aged 16 and was the youngest athlete for Great Britain at the Athens Paralympics in 2004, coming away with an unexpected bronze medal.

Not just an athlete, Sophie also graduated with a First Class Masters degree in mathematics from Royal Holloway, University of London in 2011 and now works as a software developer at investment bank, Goldman Sachs.

In this Q&A session, she will talk about how the Paralympic movement changed her life, what it takes to get (and stay) at the top, and how having a duel life gave her a unique platform to speak up about the realities of living with a disability in the UK.

Send in your questions for Sophie by emailing ellie@devilsporridge.org.uk

This event will be held via Zoom and a joining link will be sent on the day.

Book tickets here >

This event is happening as part of our Disability: Past and Present project.
Learn more about this and ‘The Health of the Munition Worker: A Disability History of the World Wars on the Solway Military Coast’ exhibition here >

‘On a par with able-bodied men’: Charity, Disability and Work, 1914-1929

By Disability events, Events

From 1914-1918, almost a million British soldiers were permanently disabled in the First World War. These formerly fit young men returned home to an uncertain future. Although the state provided medical care and pensions, disabled soldiers had to find ways to supplement their income and rebuild their identities as productive male breadwinners. Many were unable to return to their old jobs due to their impairments; some faced stigma from employers unwilling to hire a disabled man, and all ex-servicemen were forced to reckon with the difficulties of a wartime economy.

Concerned by reports of starving, unemployed and homeless heroes, generous patrons throughout the country established charities to retrain disabled soldiers in manual labour and find them permanent, meaningful work. At the Poppy Factories, men who had lost an arm or leg mass-produced millions of artificial flowers; amputees at the Lord Robert’s Memorial Workshops expertly fashioned furniture or assembled toys, and blind veterans at St Dunstan’s learned highly skilled, technical poultry farming ‘along business lines’.

This talk will trace the history of charity employment, to uncover the inspiration behind the various types of training offered to disabled veterans during and after the First World War. It will also consider the ways that these schemes portrayed disabled soldiers, how they shaped ideas about war-disability in Britain, and their lasting impact on notions of disablement and work.

Emily Bartlett is a historian specialising in disability, charity, and welfare in twentieth century Britain. She is currently employed as Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Kent, and is writing a book about charity for disabled ex-servicemen after the First World War, which will be published by Manchester University Press in 2024.

This event will be held via Zoom and a joining link will be sent on the day.

Book tickets here >

This event is happening as part of our Disability: Past and Present project.
Learn more about this and ‘The Health of the Munition Worker: A Disability History of the World Wars on the Solway Military Coast’ exhibition here >

Bonfire Bath Bombs

By Disability events, Events

Create your own bath bomb in this fun free workshop.

This activity is suitable for children aged 6 – 11 years old.

If you would like any allergen information for this activity please contact the museum prior to this event on: 01461 700021

Due to popularity we are limiting bookings to 3 tickets per person.

Book tickets here >

This activity is happening as part of our Disability: Past and Present project.
Learn more about this and ‘The Health of the Munition Worker: A Disability History of the World Wars on the Solway Military Coast’ exhibition here >

H. M. F. Gretna explosives factory undated block plan showing acid, guncotton and nitro-glycerine plants

Proposal to designate HM Factory Gretna site for its heritage significance

By News

We’re delighted to share that Historic Environment Scotland have just launched a public consultation to gather views on a proposal to schedule and list parts of the site of HM Factory Gretna. The aim of scheduling is to preserve our most significant sites and monuments as far as possible in the form in which they have been passed down to us today.

The proposal documents for the scheduled monument are here >

HES are also proposing to list the guardhouses and gate piers at the factory’s main entrance; these are amongst the few remaining original buildings on site. Listing protects historically important buildings from inappropriate future development.

The proposal documents for the listed building are here >

They encourage members of the public to send in their views and comments by completing a short questionnaire that takes 5-10 minutes to complete.

An overview of the proposal can be accessed here >

The consultation closes on 3rd November.