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Royal Highland Education Trust Announces Programme for 175th Royal Highland Show

Posted: 1st June 2015

The 175th Royal Highland Show takes place from the 18th-21st June at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston and this year the Royal Highland Education Trust (RHET) will again be providing fun and educational activities for 250 school groups and 30,000 children over the four days.

RHET at the RHS

The Children’s Education Centre on Avenue Q will celebrate food, farming and soils with children treated to cookery classes, cheese and seafood tasting sessions, science experiments and much more.

Celebrating Scotland’s Year of Food and Drink, as well as the International Year of Soil, the Education Centre will be split into two with one side focusing on food and the other on farming with a special focus on soils.

Serving up a feast will be the popular QMS Scotch Beef Children’s Cookery Theatre where budding young chefs can learn to cook a variety of delicious dishes with Scotch lamb, beef and pork. Also cooking with fine Scottish produce will be Fife’s Food Ambassador Christopher Trotter who will be running a kids cookery class using game and venison.

After a filling dish young foodies might want to head to the Chefs@School workshop to learn about cheese in the diet and taste some fantastic Scottish cheeses.

Finally, Seafood in Scotland will also be running a Scottish Seafood tasting session and the braver food lovers might even want to try the produce blindfolded!

On the other side of the centre children enthusiastic about farming can learn about cereal production in Scotland with RHET as well as have their knowledge of sheep and livestock tested with the British Wool board.

With soil in the spotlight this year James Hutton and Our Dynamic Earth will be running a session of hands on workshops which will include soil testing science experiments and RHET will be helping children explore the root zone.

Fruit and vegetables will also be on the agenda and children will be able to get one of their five a day as Briarlands Farm demonstrate fresh Scottish fruit with a smoothie making session and Albert Bartlett cover how vegetables grow.

The Education Centre is open to the general public all four days of the show, however, schools may be booked into some of the activities on the Thursday and Friday.

The rest of the Showground

The Education Centre isn’t the only place for children on the showground and there are many other exciting stands for children to visit.

The Soil Trail will be jointly delivered by the IYS Scotland Soil Partners – Soil Association Scotland, RHET, James Hutton Institute, NFUS, SRUC, SOPA, British Society of Soil Science and the SEARS Tent. You can visit any of these stands to pick up a map and a passport to start the hunt for the soil characters and win a prize.

The Honey Tent is another popular destination for children with expert beekeepers on hand to help with candle making and games spotting the queen bee.

New this year, RHET will also be running a Careers Networking event for secondary school pupils with the help of Lantra, SRUC and the Scottish Food and Drink Federation. Over 200 pupils are expected to learn about careers in the food, farming and countryside industry at the event, which will run on Thursday and Friday of the show.

RHET’s Education Manager, Katrina Barclay, said: “Each year we look to inspire and educate young people, both at the Show and as part of the other activities we run all year.

“We have over 100 volunteers running the Education Centre and without them, our other partner organisations, sponsors, and other volunteers that help out throughout the rest of the year, we wouldn’t be able to achieve what we do. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank them for their help and support.

“If anyone would like to volunteer their time to help out at the Show, please do get in touch.”

The Royal Bank of Scotland, partners of the Show since 1981, maintain their support for the four-day event, which attracted in excess of 178,000 people in 2014.

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