ACE STUDENTS MAKE OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTIONS TO COMMUNITY

29th May 2014

The Access to Construction and Engineering (ACE) students from the North Highland College UHI have gone above and beyond their call of duty this academic year. The students have raised £973 for charity, contributed enterprise projects to a local festival and donated some of their work to a local community group.

The ACE course gives students the chance to develop their core employability enterprise and citizenship skills. As part of their enterprise unit, one group of students became involved with Caithness Horizons' Year of the Ancient Ancestors Festival by developing Viking inspired products for the museum.

The project took around 3 months from start to finish (1 day a week) and combined practical skills in a wide range of construction and engineering disciplines. The students began research for the project on a day trip to Orkney to visit the UHI Centre for Nordic studies. Prototypes were then made before undertaking work in the Welding and Construction workshops. The boys used a combination of both modern and traditional methods to create the Viking longship, Norse helmets, shields, swords, axes and display cases for the museum.

Joanne Howdle, Deputy Director of Caithness Horizons worked closely with the students and said "We were delighted to work with the Access to Construction and Engineering course at the North Highland College. The students came and made a professional presentation to us about their proposals, then undertook detailed historical research and produced both display props for children to handle and Museum quality replicas for display in our new exhibition. We were so pleased by the quality of the work that we awarded the students a certificate of appreciation".