Minecraft brings Burns' years at Ellisland to your phone

Robert Burns Ellisland Farm set to become visitor attraction

Sarah Macdonald of the South of Scotland Destination Alliance said: “The mobile version of Explore Ellisland! in Minecraft will help us in our quest to raise the profile of Burns in Dumfries and Nithsdale and reach even more potential visitors to South Scotland.

"We hope that children and young people who play the game will encourage their parents to visit the heritage site in real life and in 2024 many more of them will be able to access it. With 140 million players a month worldwide, the potential is enormous.”

Virtual sensation as Burns' real life inspiration is Minecraft hit

Joan McAlpine, the Project Director of the Robert Burns Ellisland Trust said: “Our visitor numbers increased last year and the publicity surrounding the Minecraft Ellisland game definitely helped. The game is a very rich experience, using Scots language and several of Burns’s poems.

"It reaches out to a different generation and modernises the understanding of Burns and the time he lived. The mobile and education version of the game will help us reach many more young people.”

Bailey Hodgson, the University of Glasgow Minecraft Society’s President, next to Rhona Keenan from Dumfries using the Minecraft Ellisland game, watched by her Richie Keenan, her father, dressed as Burns (Image: Martin Shields)The new version of Explore Ellisland!, created by students and academics at the University of Glasgow, allows many more users to explore the 18th century farm and interact with the poet and his family.

An educational version of the game is also being released for use in schools, just in time for the Bard’s birthday on January 25.

In 1788 Burns had been in training for the position of Excise Officer and by coincidence a vacancy for such a job had arisen in Nithsdale just as Patrick Swinton, an acquaintance of his in Edinburgh, had bought the nearby estate at Dalswinton. It included three vacant farms, and Burns was given the first choice of which of the three to occupy.

The farm has been virtually re-created for the Minecraft game (Image: University of Glasgow Minecraft Society)The poet took up the lease of the 170-acre farm at Whitsun that year and began farming on June 11. The following December he brought his wife, Jean Armour, and his two-year-old son Robert there, and they lived in a six-apartment house that he built. Two other sons, Francis Wallace and William Nicol, were born at Ellisland.

Maurice Lindsay’s Burns Encyclopedia notes that when Burns took over the farm, its soil, in common with most farms in 18th century Scotland, was exhausted. It was stony, too, and neither crop-growing nor dairy farming, to which Burns turned his hand, paid.

As the Ellisland farm website puts it, however: “Burns experienced his most creative and fruitful years here at Ellisland. He found great poetic inspiration in the beauty of the surrounding countryside, the various people he met and the events he witnessed whilst living here”.

Farm where Robert Burns wrote Auld Lang Syne awarded museum status

Burns and his family left Ellisland for Dumfries in November 1791.

Players of Explore Ellisland! can hear an exclusive recorded version of Auld Lang Syne by the singer Emily Smith and listen to the epic poem, Tam o Shanter, which was written at Ellisland, the best preserved of all Burns’ homes and the only one he built himself.

The project is a partnership between the University, Robert Burns Ellisland Trust, which runs Ellisland Museum and Farm, and The South of Scotland Destination Alliance (SSDA), the connection with the University’s Games and Gaming Lab being made by Interface Online.

It was funded through the Scottish Government’s Tourism Leadership & Recovery Fund to support business and community-led tourism enterprises taking the lead in the sector’s COVID-19 recovery. It was designed to encourage more visitors to the farmhouse museum in Dumfriesshire.

Kevin McKenna: Rescuing Burns from the Scottish establishment

The PC version of the game, launched in 2022, was shortlisted in last year’s Knowledge Exchange Awards’ ‘Innovation of the Year’ and Scottish Games Awards’ ‘Best Educational Programme’. All three versions can be downloaded from the Robert Burns Ellisland Farm website by anyone with Minecraft enabled on their device.

It was built by students in the University’s Minecraft Society and academics from its Games and Gaming Lab. The students worked hard to create the new versions of the game which are coded in a different computer language.

The Ellisland museum and farm (Image: Martin Shields)Bailey Hodgson, the Minecraft Society’s President and one of its founders, who has been playing Minecraft for a decade, said: “These new versions will make the game more accessible to many more people ahead of Burns night. We were delighted with the success of the PC game and have had so many expressions of interest – it even features in some university courses.” 

Lessons to be learned from the home of Robert Burns

The Minecraft Ellisland project was led by Dr Timothy Peacock and Dr Matthew Barr from the University’s Game and Gaming Lab – a cross-disciplinary lab – based in the University’s College of Arts and Humanities - on how games and gaming can be used in research and teaching.

Bid to 'save' Robert Burns farm gets 'overwhelming' backing

Dr Peacock, the Lab Director and a Lecturer in History, based at the University’s School of Humanities | Sgoil nan Daonnachdan, said: “The success of Minecraft Ellisland has led to our being approached about similar projects. We are delighted with the interest in it, and in the opportunities provided to find new collaborative ways of exploring heritage through research-led gaming.”