A TWTC team has returned from Neilston Primary’s Team Town day. Working with Laura from The Neilston Development Trust and Elizabeth from The Lighthouse, we had a brilliant day. Despite drizzle and high winds, The actors and audience splodged and sang our way to the mill and back to school.  As ever creating an engaging way to connect with landscapes TWTC joined with the kids and we all really got a buzz out of becoming nineteenth century millworkers. The afternoon workshops recorded masses of material and gave the primary 5′s, the children of 2021 a real voice to impute into the new designing of Neilstons future and landscape.

TWTC this week visited St Thomas’ primary school in Neilston as part of our HLF funded project ‘Living History and Beyond’. We took the children out on a journey through time and around their town, out to the fields above the old mill building.  The walk was great fun and the weather was glorious.

After the walk we hosted workshops comparing Neilstons past with Neilstons present and recording the voices of the children as they expressed their thoughts on Neilstons future.  This work will now be fed back through the Neilston development trust to the architects and co-ordinators of the Renaissance town project. Our work here is creating a fun focussed forum to record the youth voice and give future generations a say in the current development of the town.

TWTC is delighted to be part of Neilstons ‘Team Town’ initiative. Working with the Neilston Development trust our role is to fascilitate the youth voice. Our Heritage Lottery funded project ‘The Millhouse Village Walk’ provides a dramatic interactive experince for Neilstons School children to take part in. The  journey will take them into their villages past where they will become childworkers in the Neislton mill.  As they move through the remants of a designed industrial landscape that was once to pivital in the growth of the comunity, they will then walk on into modern day and their own futures.  The purpose of the schools workshops is to connet the children to the wider programe which is to launch the ‘Town Charter’, this will map Neilstons future as a sustainable village under Scotlands ‘Renaissance Town’ process.

The Mill - by permission Neilston Development Trust