Category: Museum Culture

There is more than one way to be a patriot. The sign lit up in red on the back of a bike in the Contemporary Art Museum Bordeaux exhibition "

Gathering seeds of hope – on a train trip from Scotland to France

October 14, 2025 / fay / 0 Comments

The ugly dark hulk has a daunting bulk. A grim legacy of the Nazi occupation. The old submarine base still occupies the Bacalan district of Bordeaux. So many tons of concrete – 600,000 cubic metres of them – would be difficult to remove.

But walk round it and there’s a surprising softening in an imaginative reclaiming of wasteland. Winding borders of flowers – blue, pink, purple, white – and waving grasses invite butterflies, bees and birds to feed and the wildlife happily obliges. Why not? Plant it right and they will come.

Afton Moran as Peter Pan in David Greig's opening sequence for Ghost Light: this is a screenshot from the film by Hope Dickson Leach for National Theatre of Scotland

Don’t let big tech Captain Hook grab lockdown loot

August 31, 2020 / fay / 0 Comments

Every moment her light was growing fainter; and he knew that if it went out she would be no more. “Do you believe?” he cried.
Peter Pan: JM Barrie

I wrote a brief tribute to Edinburgh International Festival’s haunting celebration of theatre for Sceptical Scot culture section – with a caveat: we in the audience must do more than clap to keep the performing arts alive. And then I read the thrilling call to action by playwright James Graham in the Financial Times and I wanted to run through the city streets shouting.

Not by the wildest stretch of imagination is this an elegy. Graham’s article throbs with urgency for theatre to seize the opportunity to ‘come back better’, to be at the heart of restoring a ‘common culture’. Not just ‘national treasures’ – “theatres outside London are not “regional”. They are our “national” theatres, in the places where the majority of us live.” That applies, of course, to every part of Scotland. Now back to Edinburgh…

‘Who is it for?’ the big question at the heart of Dundee’s McManus

August 4, 2019 / fay / 1 Comment

The young dads, a group of single parents, needed somewhere to take their kids at weekends. Why not try the museum, asked the outreach worker. “Oh no”, the young dads say. “That’s for posh people.”

But then, persuaded, they come. They see among the displays Dundee football, factories, familiar faces, and they say, “Wow! This is about us. My dad, my granddad, worked in that mill….”

John Knox Sex Club – at Scotland's National Portrait Gallery during an enterprising project in 2009 (when the gallery opened to graffiti artists and rock music

Because I can

November 17, 2009 / fay / 6 Comments

If I can, anyone can. Admittedly it was with a little help from my sons Dougal and Tommy, but I have uploaded my first YouTube video, shot (in case you want to know) on my Nokia N95 when I peered through a hole in the wall enjoying the experience of seeing Scotland’s National Portrait gallery covered in graffiti. Here is the John Knox Sex Club – yes, I went for the name but stayed for the music – and a glimpse of Edinburgh the way I like it best, when it is not afraid to take a risk…

Gathering seeds of hope – on a train trip from Scotland to France

Don’t let big tech Captain Hook grab lockdown loot

‘Who is it for?’ the big question at the heart of Dundee’s McManus

Because I can

Categories