New funding will enable primary-school pupils to perform an opera about one of Scotland’s greatest inventors.

The James Watt: Head of Steam project has received a pound;43,600 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. It will help 300 children look at the science behind the work of the Greenock-born engineer, whose improvements to the steam engine were crucial to the Industrial Revolution. They will work in a “James Watt laboratory” in Greenock’s James Watt College, as well as learn about his life and 18th-century society and customs through drama, dance and visual arts workshops.

These will lead to an exhibition and an opera next June to tie in with the Enlightenment strand of Homecoming 2009, the Government-organised year- long celebration of all things Scottish to mark Robert Burns’s 250th birthday.