RIGS Geology Action
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Geology Action and my mum, an article by Jane Robb.
It started one day when I made a very simple comment to my mother that there was nothing to do with geology at Guides. She was County Secretary at the time for Girlguiding East Lothian and I guess she thought- well there could be!
As I was a member of the Edinburgh Geological Society, we also knew members of the local RIGS (Regionally Important Geological Sites) group. My mum approached them and asked if there was any way that Guides could help with geological sites in East Lothian.
Plans were made and a group of ten Guides from the 4th Haddington Unit were down at Barns Ness, near Dunbar, looking very closely at the rocks. I was there to help with my mum and three geologists from Lothian and Borders RIGS group - Mike Browne, David McAdam and Cliff Porteous. The Guides on this excursion knew nothing, or very little, about geology before they came and only two hours later they were full of it! They had seen a variety of rocks, investigated dip (the angle of slope of the rock layers), performed an acid test on limestone, and found fossils.
Over the next two months, the Guides worked on drawings and wrote little bits and pieces suitable for a brochure describing and explaining Barns Ness. My mum scanned the drawings into the computer, typed up the writing, added some photographs and designed it all into a brochure. The Guides had some input to how it looked, as she visited them at their Unit meetings with draft copies. RIGS geologists checked the geology and with the help of grants from Science Year in Scotland and Scottish Natural Heritage, 10,000 glossy copies of the brochure arrived in our hall. (That's a lot of boxes!) The brochure was distributed to other Guide Units in East Lothian, libraries, schools, other groups, and the Edinburgh Geological Society.
Then someone had the idea that this could happen every year, and different Guide Units from around the county could produce brochures on their own areas.
My mum thought that it would be better if she formalised and structured the whole project. From work, which I had produced over the last four years for various projects with Rockwatch, the Edinburgh Geological Society and the British Geological Survey, my mum put together an educational pack. It contains information on RIGS, Fossil Facts, Rock Research and Mineral Magic. It also introduces five geologically interesting areas in East Lothian - Barns Ness, Belhaven Bay, Dunbar, North Berwick and Traprain Law. Finally it contains do-it-yourself instructions on how to put together work for leaflets and posters.
'Go For It!' is a general name for Guide team work projects on lots of subjects - and our educational pack therefore became called ' Go For It Geology Action!'.
Both these publications were entered into the ENI-Lasmo Geological Challenge Award and amazingly, they won! Girlguiding East Lothian, jointly with Lothian and Borders RIGS group, have their names engraved on the glass trophy held at the British Geological Survey for the year 2003. This prestigious award recognises work in the field of conservation, interpretation or field geological education within the UK. The whole team who worked on the project - leaders from RIGS, myself and my mum and the Haddington Guides were all presented with the award at Dynamic Earth. The project has progressed and two other groups of Guides - one from Musselburgh and Longniddry investigated North Berwick shore; and one from Dunbar investigated Belhaven Bay. These brochures are now also in print. (The North Berwick brochure was funded by The Geologist's Association and Scottish Natural Heritage funded Belhaven Bay.)
Despite my mum not being a geologist, she led the project. And if you would like Geology Action to come to your area, why don't YOU make it happen?