QMU teams up with Papple Steading to offer £27,000 digital media prizes for students
Queen Margaret University (QMU), Edinburgh, is partnering with East Lothian's Papple Steading to offer the opportunity for emerging digital content creators to use their medium to tell stories of the contributions made to global agriculture in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries by the people of Lothian and across Scotland, as well as their agricultural innovations.
The Papple Steading Digital Media Prize focuses on bringing together QMU students and recent alumni from a range of disciplines to create and produce engaging digital media to celebrate agricultural and food heritage in the Lothians. The competition will run for at least three years, resulting in £27,000 worth of support to QMU. Two successful groups of applicants will be awarded prizes of £4,500 per team to undertake the work submitted, with the winning work displayed within the heritage centre at Papple Steading. This engaging digital content will be one of the first displayed in the museum.
George Mackintosh, Director of Papple Steading, said: "East Lothian has a wonderful industrial, seafaring and agricultural heritage. This partnership with QMU will bring to digital life the stories of how our agricultural heritage changed the county's social and physical landscape and how innovators in this part of Scotland had a huge impact on the development of farming and food production around the world. And my father was a farmer, and my mother trained at QMU!"
Professor David Stevenson, Acting Dean of QMU's School of Arts, Social Sciences and Management (ASSAM), said: "This is a great opportunity for our students and graduates to bring the stories of our shared agricultural history to life, whilst also gaining the practical experience of turning a concept into a viable pitch and budget. This is the beginning of a very exciting partnership with Papple Steading, and we are very grateful for their support."
Notes to Editor
About Papple Steading
Papple Steading is one of the finest farm buildings in Britain and provides a space for heritage, business, and community use. It will be a place to discover more about farming and the "improvement" which changed our landscapes so dramatically and the organisation of agriculture so radically; a place for groups of business-people, families, well-being practitioners to retreat and build or reawaken relationships; and a place for local communities to meet and be entertained and for people of all ages to enjoy its buildings, woodland and open spaces.
For further media enquiries about Queen Margaret University, please contact Gavin McNee (Media Relations and Content Officer), Edinburgh, E: gmcnee@qmu.ac.uk.
