Happy Birthday Radio Music Store!

My grandfather started an electrical store in Stirling in 1932.  This picture was taken not long after the shop was opened and as part of the 2012 birthday celebrations, I used it as the inspiration for an audio feature.

In order to appreciate the audio, you’ll need to be looking closely at the image.  Therefore if you click on the image, it will open in a different window (or right click on the image and select open in new window) and you can then click “play” on the audio below.

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Gruffalo Creator Julia Donaldson

Author and creator of the Gruffallo, Julia Donaldson, has written over one hundred and sixty books for children in the last fifteen years.  Despite being best known these days as a wordsmith, Julia started out as a busker and songwriter so has always been as comfortable on stage as behind a typewriter.  We caught up with her at a recent sell out performance of some of her books at the MacRobert theatre in Stirling and first asked her if, of all her books, she thought when writing it that the Gruffalo would the one to make her famous.

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Children’s author Michael Morpurgo

Former Children’s Lauriete and “War Horse” writer Michael Morpurgo was involved in a “webcast” to over 10,000 children at schools around the country recently.  We caught up with him to find out more about the event and find out what the firm favourite amongst children has been up to recently.

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Deep Purple musician Jon Lord

“Deep Purple” musician Jon Lord worked with the pupils of Stevenson College in Edinburgh to give the first ever Scottish performance of his 1969 work “Concerto for Group and Orchestra”. We caught up with him at a rehearsal to find out more.

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The Singing Kettle 30th Anniversary

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Doing a Henke

Most authors like to sit behind a desk at book signing and wait to be approached, but that makes for poor book sales (unless you’re really famous).  When we heard that a national bookstore chain called a more proactive approach among authors “Doing a Henke”, we had to find out more.  We followed Scottish author Paul Henke around one of his book signings to see his approach to book signings in action.

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Thomas Hirschhorn exhibition

International acclaimed artist Thomas Hirschhorn presented his first ever UK exhibition at the Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre in 2009.  He invited us along for a personal preview tour of “It’s Burning Everywhere”.

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Testing a Sony E-reader

BBC Scotland’s Book Cafe wondered if the latest e-readers would ever replace the humble paperback as the reading medium of choice on holiday, so asked us to take one along to Aberdour beach in Fife to see how the ereader fared in amongst the sand and sea, and to ask holidaymakers what they thought.

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Shauna McMullan’s “Blue Spine” art project

Artist Shauna McMullan was commissioned by the Mitchell Library to create an artwork celebrating women’s literature.  She created the “Blue Spine Project”, which asked women from all over Scotland to donate a book that means something to that person, but specified that the book had to have a blue spine.  In the end, over 500 books were collected and displayed across the centre of the library’s Jeffrey room.  Chris Kane went along on the day of the exhibition to find out more from Shauna.

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Holyrude Cemetery renovations

Nestled next to Stirling Castle is a series of graveyards connected to the Church of the Holy Rude.  The church dates back to the 16th Century and is incredibly important to Scottish history (John Knox preached there and James VII was crowded there).  The five interconnected cemeteries recently had a multi million pound facelift and Chris Kane was given a guided tour by the Project Manager to see what had been done.

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MacRobert Cinema – “Baby Pictures”

The MacRobert Cinema in Stirling runs a weekly “Baby Pictures” event which is open to parents with children aged one and under.  The cinema shows a series of films which have had their age restrictions waived for kids aged under one, meaning mums can take their babies to see films normally classifed as “15″ or “18″.  The lights are turned up slightly, the soundtrack is turned down, there are mats spread around the cinema for kids to play on and nobody minds if there’s a lot of crying!  Chris Kane took his 6 month old daughter Katie along to see what it was all about …

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