Environmentally-aware youngsters cook up a storm in a specially designed outdoor kitchen thanks to an £8,000 grant from Bags of Help. The project gives youngsters a flavour of what shieling life was like and emphasises that Highland culture and heritage can be used to develop life skills today.

Youngsters find out more about living in a shieling - a shelter built on high or remote ground, used by people who work the land and tend to animals. Educationalists also explore the cultural heritage of Highland shieling life and learn Gaelic. The project works with around 300 children in a year – from P1 right through to S5/6.

A big focus of The Sheiling Project is food production – and the project used the Tesco grant to set up outdoor kitchen facilities so that youngsters get the chance to learn how they can prepare meals using food sourced from the land.

“Learning about the environment and sustainability feeds into so many other life skills for young people… it gives youngsters an insight into what life was like in the Highlands decades and centuries ago and helps them to understand today’s concepts. Finding out about food production is a big part of our activities and a natural extension of this is to help youngsters learn about how to cook healthy meals using natural produce. The outdoor kitchen is a fantastic resource for us and something else that the young people got involved in as they helped with building the structure itself.”

▬Sam Harrison, Executive Director

The young people helped to source materials, put up the marquee, weave willow walls, build a cob oven and found recycled equipment which was used in the kitchen.

Key facts
Location: Glen Strathfarrar, by Beauly
Project type: Outdoor Activities / Education
Bags of Help Funding: £8,000
Grantee: The Sheiling Project
Facebook: @theshielingproject

View the printable pdf  The Shieling Project Outdoor Kitchen

See all Tesco Bags of Help Case Studies

Up to £2000 is available from Tesco Bags of Help to support a wide range of projects that benefit your local community. Tesco Bags of Help is administered by Groundwork working with greenspace scotland to support applicants and successful projects in Scotland. 
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