Happy New Year.

More than a few of you will have heard the familiar refrain of Auld Lang Syne last weekend.  Rabbie Burns looms large in the Scottish mindset at the  beginning and end of every January, as we remember our national bard around his birthday on the 25th.

Burns will be the focus for a series of caricature workshops we’re doing which school children from his home county of North Ayrshire.  We quoted Burns in the introduction to our Fizzers book:

O wad some Power the giftie gie us. To see oursels as ithers see us!

We argue that power lies in caricature, the act of observing and exaggerating – or distilling – the physical aspects of another’s face and getting it down in a drawing.    The Wha’s Like Us? workshops are for P6/7 pupils and will run at the Harbour Arts Centre, Irvine; the centre has invited classes looking at the topic of Burns to participate.

We’ll write about further projects in communities around Scotland throughout 2012.