Many of the ideas for our summer schools came from a study of American projects including The Swannanoa Gathering in North Carolina and the Augusta Heritage Center in Virginia. Most of the projects in America have strong links to a College campus.

Our first Summer Schools were initially held at the Scottish Agricultural College at Auchincruive, Ayrshire and University Campus, Ayr. In these early years our summer school ran for one week in the summer, but 'the model' that we were aiming for was for a series of summer school weeks. See Swannanoa

In 2006, following discussions with Kilmarnock College and at their suggestion, we made plans to move our summer schools to Glaisnock House, near Cumnock, for 2007. At that time there were plans to develop Glaisnock House into a Centre for Enterpise and Creativity, with residential facilities.

There was common interest in developing our ideas and we envisaged a summer schools use for Glaisnock House, coupled with Kilmarnock College use throughout the year. The College use was to include the development of Leadership Courses for teachers.

Although Glaisnock House had been in use for some time (around 18 months) the Summer schools would be the first residential use of Glaisnock. At that time there were plans for 40 beds which we expected to be ready by the spring of 2007

In January 2007, it was agreed that Living Tradition would develop a series of weeks of summer schools under a management contract with Kilmarnock College.

Testing weekend - May 2007
In May 2007 we had a testing weekend comprising a mini summer school where we hoped we could establish procedures for dealing with the logistic issues of a ' new ' building. We were somewhat surprised to find that the Glaisnock project manager had chosen this weekend to take a holiday in Blackpool, however we established the ground rules ourselves and had good weekend which did indeed throw up a number of issues relating to the first use of the building. During the testing weekend we carried out our own risk assessment and sought documentation of the Glaisnock trust's and Kilmarnock College's risk assessments. After this weekend we compiled a report for submission to the Glaisnock board highlighting the various issues that required to be resolved before use of the building for the summer schools. In june in the run up to the summer schools we had several meeting with the Glaisnock board where an agreed plan of action was established in order for them to have the building ' fit for purpose '

First Summer Schools

Issues and problems

Dangerous building

Move to Dumfries-shire

Whistleblower

Barons Craig

Funding Issues

Move to Dundee and back to our original concept of a campus based project.

Ongoing funding issues

Ongoing whistle blower issues.

LINK to the Glaisnock House story