Room 13 is a classroom with a difference. FRANCES McLEOD reports on the unique artistic activites at Caol Primary School in Lochaber, where the pupils are firmly in charge.

ROOM 13 is a studio in Caol Primary School near Fort William. It is extremely difficult to explain what Room 13 is because it covers so much. However I will try and tell you about it.

It is different from any other class in the school (probably in the country), because we run it ourselves. It is also the only classroom where we go to learn but we also have fun at the same time.  The most unusual thing about it is that those of us in P7 can use it at any time. I think a lot of teachers would be quite scared to give their class this chance but it works very well. It is completely up to us to keep our class work up to date.

Some people in the school (particularly the wee ones) just come here to eat and talk but a lot come to paint and make-work. The work we make is very different from most Primary Schools and some people have called us the home of Brit Art because a lot of us really admire artists like Tracy Emin and Mona Hatoum.

We make installation pieces, performance pieces, video pieces, text works and also the normal paintings and drawings. Everything we do is about stuff that is important to us. Most people work hard but of course some just waste paint. This is a problem because we are completely separate from the school so we have to pay for all our own materials.

To do this we have a Room 13 business and we sell T shirts, post cards and Christmas Cards. The management team this year is Ami Cameron who is MD, Rosie Flanigan who is treasurer, Cameron Mackenzie is Chairman and Haley Boomer is secretary. The directors are Scott McLean, Eilidh Innes, Frances McLeod (me!) and Rachel Allison.

At the moment we are making a documentary film about Room 13 for Channel 4, and I mean we are making it. We have written the script or plan and we are doing the filming and controlling the sound. For the next three weeks we will be doing all the editing. Hopefully you will be able to see it in November sometime.

Lots of things are so different about Room 13.

At the end of last term Mrs Smith, Mrs Cameron, Lindsey Martin, Danielle Souness, Jodie Fraser, and Frances McLeod went to London to go and view the Tate and the Tate Modern. We went down on the train over night. We went because we had won two categories in the Artworks Awards.  There was lots of people there and we had an excellent time.

We went to Tate Britain first to see the Bridget Riley exhibition, which was good, but Danielle did not think Riley’s work was as serious as the Barnet Newman exhibition she had seen on her previous visit. Then it was down the Thames in a boat to Tate Modern for the prize giving. It was really exciting to see our work in Tate Modern and we met lots of exciting people like Anthony Gormley.

Mr Fairley was not with us on this trip because just before the schools broke up for the holidays a group of students from the Lochaber high school, and Mr Fairley and Claire Gibb went to India for a month. They visited the Taj Mahal, the Dalai Lama’s Monastery, lots of other temples and went to see Nek Chand’s Kingdom in Chandigarh.

Next Easter a group of last year’s management team is going to Kathmandu for two weeks with Mr Fairley to work with an orphanage and to see how the new Art College is doing.

Room 13 has become so successful that Lochyside Primary kids wanted to start their own and we are now running that as well (Room 13 Lochyside have just phoned wondering where our film team are ‘cos they are meant to be filming there today!). Lochyside has its own management team but we will have to learn to work together cos you can get materials cheaper if you buy in bulk.

During the summer holidays two of the curators from IMMA in Dublin came to see our exhibition in the West Highland Museum (maybe you read the review in the Culture section of the Sunday Times?) and in two weeks time Danielle Souness and Eileen Innes are going across to Ireland with Claire to discuss the possibility of us doing workshops for IMMA and the chance of us having an exhibition there.

Also this term (when the film is finished) we hope to collaborate with Robert Jarvis who is a sound artist who is working with a school in England. We have e-mailed him lots, but we have never been able to set up collaboration before.
© Frances McLeod, Director Room 13

Related links

• Room 13’s Homepage
• Room 13 received a grant of £200,000 from NESTA in June 2003