WHILE visitors and schoolchildren wander the galleries of the Burrell Collection to look at Renaissance and Impressionist art, in a room upstairs a group is enjoying a rare hands-on experience.

The new recruits to the Craft Collective are busy measuring, sawing and hammering away as they make an exact replica of a medieval baby's crib that is on permanent show in the museum.

The exercise offers a unique insight into just how the piece was made by a craftsman hundreds of years ago. It will also produce a copy that can be used by staff at the collection, allowing visitors to touch it and get a closer look at the workmanship involved in producing such a piece.

There is another purpose to the group - to encourage more men to visit the city's museums.

A keen woodworker, retired town planning officer Tim Mitchell, 65, joined the Craft Collective to sharpen his skills, but more importantly to meet other people.

"I live on my own and have a wood workshop in the spare bedroom at home, so I have always enjoyed doing things like this," he explains. "Coming here makes you do something you wouldn't normally do. With the help of the tutors you're doing something different and keeping this thing working," he says, tapping his head.

"One of the risks for me of being on my own is you can stay in all day. So coming out, meeting new people, you look forward to the next Friday and the challenge of the project.

"It is expanding the skills I already have, though I've never done wood carving before. I've made mortise and tenon joints but I haven't made a piece this complicated. It looks quite simple when you look at it down there but it's really not."

Tim lives nearby in Shawlands and often visits the park but says the Craft Collective encouraged him to visit the Burrell Collection as it offered the chance to make something, rather than just looking at the pieces on show.

"I'd say to someone thinking about coming to a group like this to come, because you can always leave," says Tim, who also volunteers at a local youth theatre company. "It's as easy as that. It's free, so there is no financial risk, and if you don't fancy it you just don't come back.

"But you never know what you're going to find. I've been retired two years now and I positively chose to get out and meet people, get involved in things or else I would wither.

"A day can be a long time, you have to actively pursue how you're going to fill that day, what it is you really want to do.

"It's part of that deal you have to make with yourself as a single retired person - take a chance, have a try and don't be embarrassed. I'm not a natural joiner so I know if I'm honest with myself that you have to work at it."

Also in the group in Johnnie Millar, a 61-year-old engineer from Elderslie who has been unemployed for the past eight years.

He is a volunteer at GalGael, the Govan-based initiative that teaches traditional woodworking skills, which also supplies tutors to the Craft Collective.

"I'm giving a helping and guiding hand here but I am also taking part in building the crib," he says. "This is a fabulous place, this is the first time I have been in the Burrell Collection. This is a fantastic idea because it allows the public in to do a project within the museum space.

"It is giving them skills they don't have and they will go on to produce something that will be a legacy for the museum."

Forging new friendships has been as important to Johnnie as learning how to expertly craft wood. He says the years of unemployment have taken their toll and he has suffered from depression.

"I had lost all my self belief - I had sent away letters, CVs, phoned people, chapped doors and you're getting the door thrown in your face. You're thinking, what's the point?," he says.

"I think anyone coming along to this project would get a lot of satisfaction because you are learning a skill but also meeting new people. You're building up a network of friends.

" All the people I worked with have disappeared to other jobs or moved away so I don't have that circle of friends. Because I went to GalGael and came to this project I'm getting the chance to meet people I would never have before, so I have gained more friendships and I think that is very important."

Although the Craft Collective is open to men and women, and there are a couple of females in the group, it is targeted at men, according to learning and access curator Caroline Currie.

She is delighted at its success, the group has changed the men's opinions on museums and they are now regular visitors.

" It has evolved to be quite an organic thing where people are helping each other," she adds. "Maybe younger guys who might not sit down and talk to an older man who they see is from a different class or from a different social group, but now they are working together and learning about each other."