With lots of new resources coming on-stream soon, this is the perfect time to take stock of what is currently available for teachers, students and members of the public on our website and also to point out some upcoming highlights!

In podcast land, we are continuing with our popular “Greek gods in under five minutes” series! Over the coming weeks and months, our wonderful podcasters Eleanor and Maria will introduce us to Apollo, Artemis, Hermes and Dionysus! Last week, we also launched a second podcast series! These podcasts deal with things we often get wrong about the ancient world, again in under five minutes! We began with an introduction to the surprisingly colourful world of ancient buildings and temples. You will find this and all of our podcasts under the “podcast” tab. Happy listening!!

We are currently building up our stock of resources for the Junior Cycle, particularly for the core component of the specification, so keep an eye out for our upcoming resources on daily life, looking in particular at objects and artefacts associated with daily life. These will join our current resources on mythology (including a new resource on the connection between Greek mythology and the names for certain birds, etc. – click on the image above for a copy of this resource!) and Greek and Latin classroom posters! For the Senior Cycle, both outgoing and incoming, a video on Greek art will soon join our videos and PowerPoints on Alexander, Virgil, Greek funerary practices, Greek tragedy and Roman architecture!  

Our Transition Year resources are ever-expanding! In addition to the extensive core manual and accompanying PowerPoint, you will find resources for Ancient Greek (wordsearch), the Parthenon, the Casino at Marino and Heracles & Monsters! Soon, we will be adding a walking tour of Classics-associated sights in Ireland!

We are delighted to announce the return of our mythology podcast: once again, sit back and allow our wonderful podcasters, Eleanor Kellett and Maria Wood, to introduce you to some of the main gods from the Greek Pantheon, each in under five minutes! This time around, we will meet Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes and Dionysus! Keep an eye on our Twitter (@ClassicsUCD) so you don’t miss any episodes!

Also (*drum roll*), we will soon be launching a new series of short podcasts on the wonderfully broad topic of ‘Interesting Things in the Ancient World’! Have you ever wondered whether statues and temples were a riot of colour in the ancient world? Would you like to know more about ancient pirates, or the Amazons? If so, this is the series for you! More details to follow soon!

Access Classics is delighted to announce that the new cohort of students in the UCD Access Classics module have taken over the @AccessClassics Twitter feed! Over the coming months, our wonderful students will be using @AccessClassics to spread the word about all things Classical – we can’t wait to see what you come up with! You will find the feed on the right-hand side of our webpages, and please consider supporting our students by following @AccessClassics!

Have you ever wondered what careers you can go into after studying Classics, or what transferrable skills you can gain through a Classics degree? Well, wonder no more! Maynooth University is running “Careers with Classics”, an online event open to undergraduate and postgraduate students of all Irish universities, and to Transition Year and 5th- and 6th-year pupils in secondary school. The event will tackle questions such as: Where do Classics graduates work? What skills can I gain from Classics, and where can I use these skills?

The event will be hosted by Maynooth University on Microsoft Teams on Thursday, 16 September 2021, 14:00-16:00. More information can be found here. To register you interest, please contact Dr Cosetta Cadau at cosetta.cadau@mu.ie.

Attention all Transition Year teachers! We are delighted to announce that we can supply schools with a tailored certificate for their students who complete the Access Classics TY Unit, or complete aspects of it as part of a Unit. Simply get in touch (bridget.martin@ucd.ie; access.classics@ucd.ie), and we can tailor the certificate to your school! If you have not seen our TY Unit yet, you will find the Teaching Manual, accompanying PowerPoint and additional resources under the Transition Year Unit tab. We would be delighted to answer any and all questions and would love to hear from any teachers planning to use the Unit!

Access Classics is excited to be part of the virtual Creative Arts Summer School 2021! This free Summer School, which is funded by the Department of Education and Skills Programme for Access to Higher Education (PATH) fund, aims to introduce participants from underrepresented groups to different pathways to higher education. It is a collaborative project run by the National College of Art and Design, MTU Crawford College of Art, Marino Institute of Education, RCSI University of Medicine & Health Sciences, University College Dublin, Institute of Art, Design and Technology, and Trinity College Dublin. During the Summer School, participants will be given the opportunity to participate in a virtual programme of, for example, creative arts workshops, campus tours and informative talks on course options and various student supports. Access Classics will give their workshop “Classics: The ancient world today” on 24 June. You can find more information on this exciting initiative here and here.

Congratulations to all winners and finalists of the Young Classicist Awards 2021! UCD Access Classics’ Dr Christopher Farrell and Dr Bridget Martin were delighted to act as judges, alongside Dr Cosetta Cadau (Department of Ancient Classics, Maynooth), Gina Mockler (UCD School of Education) and Dr Charlie Kerrigan (Department of Classics, Trinity), and were very impressed with the imagination, research and standard of the entries! Massive congratulations to all students and schools involved and to Seamus O’Sullivan for his fantastic organisation of the awards! Full details on the winning entries can be found here.

Access Classics is delighted to be shortlisted for the Best Education Outreach Award for the Education Awards 2021! Congratulations to all those shortlisted – more information on each can be found here. We look forward to meeting everyone virtually during the online ceremony in May!

Attention, everyone!! The excellent Panoply Vase Animation Project is joining forces with the University of Cambridge Schools Classics Project to launch five new animations to help bring the excitement of mythology and animation into classrooms! These animations, which were made for the Our Mythical Childhood project (through the Universities of Roehampton and Warsaw) all relate to Greek mythology: Heracles and the Erymanthian Boar, Dionysus, Iris, Libation, and Sappho 44.

The event will take place on 24 April, 1–5.30pm:

The animations will be shown during the first hour, and this will include, for the first time, the showing of a recording of Sappho 44 sung in Greek and accompanied by a lyre. It will be sung to the tune it would have had in antiquity – this is not to be missed!  

The remainder of the afternoon will be dedicated to a pedagogy session, which will begin with a short talk by an experienced teacher on using the animations to teach visual literacy in Greek Art. This will be followed by:

o   information on the materials available to accompany each animation

o   some brief information on how the animations fit in with the UK GCSE/A-Level curriculums**

o   some short presentations from teachers on their experiences of using the animations in the classroom

o   a look at the mini documentaries that Panoply has made to go with them

**Teachers of the Irish Junior and Senior Cycle Classics curricula might also find these very helpful and interesting!

For the Junior Cycle, all would be a great accompaniment to the core Myth strand, and Sappho 44 would work very well with both the World of the Achilles strand and the Ancient Greek language option!

For the current Senior Cycle, the animations of Dionysus and Sappho 44 could add to the Greek Drama and Ancient Epic topics, and all would feed into the Art and Architecture in Greek Society topic.

For the new Senior Cycle curriculum, the animations could be really helpful resources for the World of Heroes (Heracles and the Erymanthian Boar; Sappho 44), Drama and Spectacle (Dionysus) and Gods and Humans (Libation) strands.

You can find more information about this great event at this link, and you can book your place here. 

Students enjoying a Panoply workshop!

What a month! Access Classics has had a jam-packed few weeks – hold on to your hats…

Firstly, we were delighted to speak about our experience of setting up an education outreach programme at the UCD Agile Work Smarter Together 2021 Conference. It was great to share what we have learned and also to learn from others’ experiences – thank you and well done to all involved! Taking to heart the idea of working together, we joined forces with the fantastic SPARC UCDictionary team to create an exciting competition! Enter your favourite Ancient Greek or Latin word to the UCDictionary and you could win a prize! The competition is open until 5 April (see details in the post below) so there’s still time to enter!

Casting the net even wider, Access Classics was delighted to be part of the Creative Arts Spring School, an exciting initiative which gives participants the chance to take part in a virtual programme of, for example, creative arts workshops, campus tours and informative talks on course options and various student supports across six colleges and universities in Dublin. Through this Spring School, underrepresented groups are introduced to different pathways to higher education – how brilliant is that!? Access Classics was honoured to be part of this important initiative, and Dr Bridget Martin spent two wonderful Saturdays taking the engaged participants through a tour of connections between the ancient and modern world!

The Creative Arts Summer School is one of the projects of Dublin Learning City, a festival that promotes learning through an amazing range of creative online activities. With the encouragement of UCD Access and Lifelong Learning, Access Classics continued their participation in the festival by offering a virtual night at the UCD Museum! Dr Christopher Farrell took the audience through a ‘reading’ of a 2,300-year-old coin depicting Alexander the Great and Athena, the Greek goddess of war and wisdom! You can download the handout from the event in the post below!

Back on more familiar ground, Access Classics held online workshops in two second-level schools in early March, introducing the students to aspects of daily life in ancient Greece. Thank you to the Classics students and teachers of St Andrew’s and Sandymount Park ETSS for inviting us and being so attentive!

Speaking of online events…drumroll, please! Last week, we launched our podcast series on the ancient Greek gods, beginning at the top of the food chain with Zeus and Hera (click on the Podcast tab to have a listen!). Huge thanks to Eleanor Kellett and Maria Wood for their amazing work on the podcasts, and to Access Classics’ Tasneem Filaih for her editing wizardry! Working with the Classical Association of Ireland Teachers, we also released the first two of our videos addressing topics on the current Senior Cycle Classical Studies curriculum. Go to the Resources tab to listen to our videos on Greek Tragedy and Alexander!

Thank you so much to everyone involved in our activities this month!