Lowville school house seeing more in the way of students - adults this time around. Film and poetry to be featured.

By Pepper Parr

January 6th, 2017

BURLINGTON, ON

It’s one of those old one-room school houses that so many of our grand-parents went to. They had pot belly stoves and an outhouse back behind the building.

Built in the 1870’s the school was closed in 1952.

The Lowville school house – Built in the 1870’s the school was closed in 1952.

Few of them survived but the one in Lowville is still standing, structurally in pretty good shape actually but sort of languishing as a venue. It doesn’t get used all that often.

That appears to be changing.

The Lowville Festival has used the building for each of its events the past two years and plans on using it again this year.

ThinkSpot, a small consulting form that located in Lowville a number of years ago, works at “shifting the way people think and the way they work together. They connect all the various intricate pieces of the puzzle – the people, the process, and the place and create a place where people collaborate, think creatively, and find solutions to complex problems.

Debra Pickfield, the ThinkSpot principle, entered into a lease with the city that allows her to use the space when her own premises are not large enough to handle the size of the group she is working with.

And from there it sort of grew.

Gillian Anderson – known to most as “Scully” – the female lead in the X files. Her film performance as Lily Bart in the film House of Mirth was a surprise to many. That film will be the premiere of the Lowville School House film series.

This winter there is going to be a small Lowville Schoolhouse film series – seating is limited to 40 people. That series of events starts in early February.

Robbie Burns

More immediate is the salute to poetry on the occasion of Robbie Burns’ birthday featuring Canada’s finest spoken word poet, Robert Priest. That event takes place Saturday January 21st. Nothing yet on whether or not there will be a piper and if the haggis will be shared.

The Lowville Festival people are now pretty sure they have an event they can grow and are looking at some long term plans that will see the Lowville Park location used more.

These two events, the film series and the poetry reading are events that came out of the minds of the people in the community – they usually know what works best.