Doors Open Day - Cool film and free book!

There's lot's to see at this years Doors Open Days - Fergusons, Tobacco Warehouse, an exhibition from Dark Side o' Inverclyde...it's all good.

We'll be at Dutch Gable House, where you have another chance to see our short film Restorations (in fact edited by Louie 'Dark Side' Pastore) which will be showing throughout the day.

There will also be some original artwork on display from Achi Baba, and your final chance to grab a free hardback copy of the graphic novel. We may do a 'not for profit' edition at some point in the future, but for now we have a limited number of copies left. Various other Magic Torch publications will also be available for sale on the day.

Dutch Gable House is open Saturday only this year. We hope to see you along on the day, or maybe even out and about over the weekend.

Uncommon Tales - Free Download

Rounding off our 13 Commonwealth Tales project, our Uncommon Tales comic is now available to read for free online.

Physical copies will be available at various Magic Torch events throughout the rest of the year, and also at Glasgow Comicon.

If you are interested in receiving a copy of the physical edition, you can drop us an email.

Tales of the Oak - Uncommon Tales

Time and Place - Restorations Reflections

We had three fully booked shows for the final part of our Time and Place project, a showing of the Restorations film, edited by Louie Pastore with soundtrack by British Sea Power - all supported by National Lottery Awards For All.

After people had watched the film, we asked them to hang around in the Dutch Gable for a hot beverage and a blether and to fill in a postcard for us, answering a few simple questions. Here are a couple of the responses...

All in, a grand night, and there was certainly enough interest for us to consider running it again. We shall keep you posted.

Time and Place - Restorations

As part of our National Lottery Awards for All funded project, Time and Place, we had the opportunity to work with one of our favourite bands British Sea Power, on creating a new soundtrack for a short film edited by Louie Pastore. Restorations features old photos of the area alongside recut footage from the Greenock Corporation film 'Greenock Plans Ahead'.

The ten minute film is being shown on Thursday 5th February at The Dutch Gable House, Greenock. There are three evening showings, at 7, 7.30 and 8, and while tickets are free, they must be booked in advance, as the nature of the display means we will only be able to show it to small groups.

Tickets can be booked either via email from aulddunrod@gmail.com or by calling 01475 649587.

The showing is also weather dependent, and so subject to slight changes to the programme on the night.

Book Week Scotland - Fun With Folktales

If you didn't manage to pick up a FREE copy of 13 Commonwealth Tales earlier in the year, be sure to head along to our Book Week Scotland event on Saturday 29th November in The Dutch Gable House, where you can also enjoy some craft activities and storytelling from 10 - 2 (we'll be in The Back House...)

There are lots of great events on throughout Book Week Scotland, thanks to the support of the lovely folk at Scottish Book Trust, Including lots of cool stuff at our own Inverclyde Libraries. Get involved!

And if that weren't enough to get you out of the house on a potentially chilly November Saturday, The Dutch Gable House also plays host to the Violet Skulls Christmas Market on the same day! With lots of local craft, arts and gifts plus the Bygone Photobooth Company will be along to take your picture too.

Uncommon Tales - Inspirations

cover by Andy Lee

Our winter comic for this year is Uncommon Tales, in which Sir Glen Douglas Rhodes travels around various commonwealth countries, encountering creatures and monsters. The really horrible ones we left out of the 13 Commonwealth Tales book. As such, we're celebrating a grand tradition not only of storytelling, but of international monster hunting...

In our house, Scooby Doo is on near constant repeat. And it has been for over ten years now, each of the kids loving it in their own way, but especially loving the monsters. If you don't have kids under 8, or are not attempting to forlornly recapture your childhood, its unlikely you are watching Scooby Doo on a regular basis. But you should. From Owl Men, Ogopogo, Baba Yaga and Tikki monsters, via Yeti, alien abductions pirate ghosts and Goatsuckers, Scooby Doo and the gang have pretty much explored every popular folk legend there is. The programme moves from the early days of "science versus superstition" where all the bad guys turn out to be people in masks, through to the newer series, where the monsters are entirely real. A high watermark is the recent Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated series, a 52 episode arc of horror, conspiracy and self referential cleverness which riffs on everything from the Saw films and the Velvet Underground to Twin Peaks and Cthulhu...and is still suitable for children!

Needless to say, any worldwide monster hunt owes a tip of the hat to Scooby Doo. Here's a topical clip from Mystery Incorporated..




Another, much more direct inspiration was from Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing. In a storyline called "American Gothic", Moore has the titular Swamp Thing trudging around America encountering creatures and objects from American folklore and mythology, including Native American ghost shirts, boogeymen and South American cultists. It's a classic, and initially I wanted to call Sir Glen's adventures Commonwealth Gothic in the flimsy hope it would make it just as cool. But we went with Uncommon Tales instead. You can get copies of the American Gothic storyline online. The storyline's other claim to fame, is that it is the comic which introduced the British occultist John Constantine...here's hoping the new TV series, starting this week, features some of those stateside horrors...





Remember of course, you can still enjoy last years Tales of the Oak comic on scribd below, or if you are lucky enough to live in Greenock, by popping into the Dutch Gable House to be furnished with an actual real copy.

Tales of the Oak by Paul J Bristow

13 Commonwealth Tales - Out in the Wild

the beautiful people

We had great fun launching our 13 Commonwealth Tales book earlier this month at the Dutch Gable House, and nearly 400 copies were distributed during Doors Open Weekend. Excellent stuff.

We'll be sending  copies out to local schools /libraries throughout October, but in the meantime, if you've missed out, you can still get copies from either 7 1/2 John Wood Street in Port Glasgow or the ground floor of The Dutch Gable House in Greenock. When they're gone, they're gone!

Next month will see the final part of our Commonwealth Tales project - featuring Sir Glen Douglas Rhodes, and we'll also be running an evening of scary stories in Dutch Gable and launching our Time and Place exhibition.

For a change, instead of mythical creatures or monster, here's some photos of members of 'The Torch', as our folklore based biker gang would surely be called, and if you wish, you can also enjoy myself and Mhairi blethering to Inverclyde TV about the project. Big thanks to everyone else who helped on the night, especially bysharonwithlove and milkywithtwo.

zuckerbeckers fonz impression

redandcaramel tells us a story

andy, al, artists

the curator speaks

13 Commonwealth Tales - Out This Weekend

Get yourself along to the Dutch Gable House this Doors Open weekend (September 13/14), to get your FREE copy of 13 Commonwealth Tales, supported by National Lottery Celebrate fund. Here's a wee sneak peek inside at the Solomon Island giants and a page from Captain Kidd's journal...

And in case you missed it before, here's our lovely cover...

Magic Torch @ Dutch Gable Doors Open Day

As ever, there's a great line up of buildings to visit in Inverclyde on Doors Open Day. We hope you will pop along to Dutch Gable House to see some of what Magic Torch have been up to over our busy year.

As I think I may have mentioned, we will be launching our new storybook, 13 Commonwealth Tales, and thanks to National Lottery Celebrate funding, it will be available for FREE over the weekend. The fully illustrated book retells folktales from commonwealth countries featuring all sorts of strange and wonderful creatures.

There will also be an opportunity to see a preview of our Battle of Largs Exhibition which reinterprets the gothic poetry of Greenock writer John Galt into a series of atmospheric comic art pieces.

However, there's other stuff going on in the Dutch Gable House as well. Downstairs in the Green Room, there's a World War One cafe, with a chance to pick up a copy of the commemorative newspaper from our Working the War project, which shares Inverclyde news stories from throughout the war. We will also be showing a recording of the popular drama performance created by St Columba's pupils and performed at the Albany earlier this year.

And on Sunday only, artist Alastair Cook will be along to do some of his collodion photography. Alastair ran a smashing collodion workshop for us a few weeks back, and has been working with us on the Time and Place project.

There's loads of places to go and see, all worth a visit, but of special interest this year, as a newly opened property, is the Tobacco Warehouses - had a wee wander around them over the last few weeks, really impressive space. And for a touch of class...check out 6Art as well. It's all good.

Time and Place - Restorations

Magic Torch have long been fans of the band British Sea Power, and so we were absolutely delighted when they agreed to work with us on our Time and Place project to create an exhibition for The Dutch Gable House.

For this part of the project we wanted to take old footage of the town, some of which people may be familiar with, and use it to tell a slightly different story about some of what the town has lost, both positively and negatively, in the name of progress and regeneration. The main footage we have used comes from Greenock Plans Ahead, which many local history and heritage buffs will be familiar with. Primarily using a high quality version of the footage from Greenock Plans Ahead, sourced directly from Scottish Screen Archive, local historian, folk singer and general Renaissance Man, Louie Pastore, has edited the footage into something new to accompany two specially created pieces of music from British Sea Power.

The short film with exclusively recorded soundtrack, will be premiered in The Dutch Gable House in the autumn as part of an installation there. For now, here's a very brief glimpse of what to expect.



Do check out more from British Sea Power, here's just a wee taster below...

Here's a clip from the wonderful From The Sea To The Land Beyond



And here's the band's classic No Lucifer




Just a wee disclaimer though - in these increasingly exciting and polarised times in Scotland, something as straightforward as a band's name can be seen as a political statement. Well in this context, it isn't. As we've said before, Torch involve a broad mix of folks, from archivists to anarchists, atheists to devout catholics and Yes supporters and those who say No Thanks. We'll all be voting in our own ways, with our own hopes in September, and so the reason we've involved the band British Sea Power, is because we really like their music. Just so everyone's clear. Sheesh.

Commonwealth Stories @ Dutch Gable House This Saturday

It's nearly Halloween...where do I get my free Tales of the Oak Comic?

It being the Season of Witch and all that, you'll be after your free copy of local horror comic, Tales of the Oak, how else will you accurately terrify the hordes of wee Galoshans turning up at your door with your knowledge of authentic local folklore? And what of you even more unfortunate souls, who do not live in Greenock with easy access to the terrifying Dutch Gable House?

Well, for a short period of time, you should be able to find copies in Quarriers Village at The Three Sisters Bake, in Port Glasgow at 7 /12 John Wood Street, from this weekend at Glasgow's Steampunk Cafe and there will also be copies available at Greenock Waterfront Cinema All Night Horror Marathon.

If you are interested in having a few copies of Tales of the Oak to distribute at a Halloween Event, let us know... auld.dunrod@gmail.com

After that, well. the final free physical copies will be given out at The Dutch Gable House during November at Book Week Scotland Events...then...it will be too late...all too late...

And if you just can't get enough of scary Inverclyde stories, you may enjoy our fundraising ebook A Nip in The Air, available for kindle.

Doors Open Weekend - Dutch Gable House Sale!

In addition to your FREE copies of Wee Nasties and the Tales of the Oak comic this weekend, there's also the chance to grab other Magic Torch books at bargain prices...

Our folktale collections Tales of the Oak and Downriver are half price at £5, our reprint of the Thriller Picture Library Captain Kidd comic is £2 and....while recently clearing out the boiler room we call our office, we discovered two whole boxes of our reprint of Views and Reminiscences of Old Greenock.

The book was originally published to raise funds for Ardgowan Hospice in 2001, and sold out very quickly. So this is probably your last chance ever to nab a copy of this version of the classic work, a fascinating time capsule of Greenock at a period of significant change. The very limited stock of Views will be available at the Newark Enterprise Shop in The Dutch Gable House exclusively September 14th and 15th, priced £5.

All profits from book sales are reinvested in local social enterprise and heritage projects, including The Dutch Gable House itself.

You also have an exclusive opportunity to purchase Limited Edition prints from Wee Nasties as produced by Mhairi Robertson and an additional print of Granny Kempock..

Oh, and there should even be some exclusively designed Tales of the Oak mugs by Andy Lee, and lots of new traditional hand finished gifts from Newark Products. So it's all go eh?

Tales of the Oak - Comic Making

With Tales of the Oak, we are trying to interest different audiences in local folklore. Unlike Wee Nasties, or our other books, here we have specifically concentrated on the slightly darker stories, so if it were a film, I think the comic would be rated 12A for "scenes of terror and fantasy violence". The original Tales from the Crypt comics we have based the project on were of course banned altogether, so we were careful not to go too far...

A page from one of the original EC horror comics,
we have tried to use a similar style for Tales of the Oak

The process for us, was to research some local folk tales and then turn them into comic stories. People script comics in all sorts of different ways, this is a page of one of our scripts...

The scripts were then passed to Andy Lee, who worked in two different styles - the pages were either pencilled, inked, scanned in and then coloured...

Or created from scratch digitally

Then evil genius Pete typeset, designed, swore at, reset and generally magicked the pages into the finished article. (which by the way is available exclusively at The Dutch Gable House this weekend for FREE)

A few pages we tried in different ways, so to go with the "silent movie" theme of Night of the Comet, Andy tried colouring the pages. It was really cool, but somehow the blood seemed a bit...bloodier. So we opted for eerie unearthly green instead.

Months and months of time and effort has gone into producing the publication, including lots of time from volunteers, and for Andy in particular it has been something he has worked on almost every day since last October. We hope you'll enjoy it.

We've shared this vid before, but it really is a tremendous overview of the history of the EC Comics...

Sir Glen Douglas Rhodes - Greenock Folk Hero

A recently discovered portrait of local archivist, adventurer and folklorist Sir Glen Douglas Rhodes, sometime resident of the Dutch Gable House. The picture and some of Sir Glen's archive materials relating to Captain Kidd are currently on display there.

Sir Glen disappeared shortly after his famous investigations into river and serpent worship cults in the area. We will dramatise elements of his archive and his battle with the sinister Cluthee in the Tales of the Oak comic later this year. Sir Glen is also involved in the Tin Jimmy Mystery, made an appearance in Identity The Archivists Treasure and has been a regular fixture of and inspiration for Magic Torch's folklore and heritage publications, since our very first book, 13 years ago.

You can pick up a FREE collectable postcard of this portrait at The Dutch Gable House, 7 1/2 John Wood Street and other community venues across the town.

Greenock Town Trail Launch

 

 

There's another opportunity to grab copies of Wee Nasties and see the accompanying exhibition upstairs at The Dutch Gable House tomorrow as part of the launch of the new Greenock Town Trail....

 

From Discover Inverclyde....

On Tuesday 9th July a new Greenock Town Trail is being introduced, using 21 plaques which are situated in pavements across the central area of Greenock, highlighting historic locations in the town as well as famous local people in Greenock’s past, notably James Watt and Abram Lyle.

The new Town Trail has been put together by local tourism group Discover Inverclyde and the Inverclyde Tourist Group with help from local historians and Inverclyde Council and with the majority of funding coming from the Council’s Community Facilities Fund.

Chris Jewell, a Director of Discover Inverclyde said, ‘We are delighted to have had this funding to introduce what we believe will be a fascinating insight into many aspects of Greenock’s past. The Trail will take around an hour to complete on foot, unless you linger at some of the areas highlighted by the individual plaques, but you can start and stop the Trail at any point. Thanks are due to the Council and the Tourist Group in particular for enabling the Trail to be put together for the benefit of the many tourists coming here and also for the local community.’

Eleanor Robertson, Chairperson of the Inverclyde Tourist Group added, ‘The Trail will provide a lot of interesting history of Greenock to the many visitors coming from the cruise liners, and help them to focus on our local heritage, while giving them a fascinating Trail to follow. We had a lot of fun putting all this information together, and also discovered a lot of facts about Greenock’s past which are not well known.’

On behalf of Inverclyde Council, Provost Robert Moran said, ‘Inverclyde has a rich and varied history. The Greenock Town Trail highlights some of the most fascinating aspects of the town. It's appropriate the launch of the trail is in William Street in Greenock. It is our oldest street with two of the oldest surviving properties, next to the birthplace of the incredible James Watt, in the shadow of the historic Municipal Buildings and round the corner is the Strathclyde Fire Museum and Heritage Centre. Within a very short walk this town trail will open up some amazing stories and I would encourage as many residents as possible to take the trail and share the incredible history of Greenock with your friends and family.’

The plaques extend from the Custom House on the river’s edge to Greenock Cemetery to the south and take in the Esplanade, Ardgowan Square and part of Nelson Street, Grey Place, Clyde and Cathcart Squares and William and Cathcart Streets. An accompanying booklet has been produced giving more detail to each location and copies are available free of charge from local libraries, the Dutch Gable House, the McLean Museum and a number of local shops.

In addition to the new Trail, six new double sided information signs are being installed highlighting to tourists and visitors many places worth visiting and including a number of additional facts about Greenock, its people and its past. Chris added, ‘We hope that both the new Trail and the information banners will add considerable interest and enjoyment to visitors’ time spent here and they will also provide a good source of information for the local community.’

The new Town Trail will be launched in William Street at 11am on Tuesday 9th of July after which a mini trail of four of the plaques in the immediate area will be visited by those present, accompanied by a number of characters from yesteryear including James Watt and Abram Lyle.

Inverclyde Festival of Heritage

We're really excited about our Wee Nasties book launch this Thursday, but there's loads of cool stuff happening through the week. Here's a wee trailer for what's going on with the Identity Inverclyde project at the festival.

Newark Products

Newark Products is an enterprise run by Inverclyde Community Development Trust at Port Glasgow Business and Training Centre, offering paid work to local people on supported employment programmes. Many of the products and gifts produced by Newark have a local heritage theme, but there are also a whole range of bespoke products.

You can find Newark Products at this years Gourock Highland Games on Sunday 13 May, in the wee shop at The Dutch Gable House in Greenock and online here.

All profits are reinvested in creating further training and employment opportunities for local people.

Shop Local for Christmas....

detail from Bloom by Mhairi M Robertson

If you are looking for something different for folk this Christmas, and want to support local artists and enterprise while yer doing it, here's a few suggestions...

First up, why not treat someone to a print from local artist Mhairi Robertson. Mhairi takes her inspiration from local folklore and so her striking and original artwork all has a story to tell. She is very busy just now illustrating for our childrens book next year. Visit Mhairi's gallery here and get choosing...

For a whole range of wooden gifts and goods, many with a local heritage connection, pop along to Inverclyde Community Development Trust's shop at The Dutch Gable House. You'll find traditional woodcuts of local myths and legends, historic ships and handmade Christmas decorations, rustic cheeseboards and nativity scenes all made with reclaimed and recycled wood. If you're very lucky, you might also still be able to grab a FREE copy of the Trust's Identity Graphic Novel / Greenock Morton book.

The Dutch Gable House is also one of the places you can get your hands on Scotchpotch, a miscellany created and collected by our good friends at Greenock Writers Club. All profits to charity as well!

Magic Torch will also have an EXCLUSIVE stocking filler in the shop this year, from our all new Magic Torch Comics imprint, a fully licensed replica of Thriller Picture Library - Captain Kidd Buccaneer, a tale of swashbuckling skullduggery on the high seas featuring Greenock's very own questionable pirate William Kidd. Only available at The Dutch Gable House from mid-December, and for less than half the price of a pie supper*.

There are of course lots of other local retailers and artisans you can buy from this Christmas, you'll find much more comprehensive listings than ours on MyTownHomepage and Simply Local. For example, Gourock Kempock Street Traders Christmas Shopping Night on Thursday 6th December.

Local shops, for local people. In a good way.


*correct at time of blog entry, Pie Supper prices may fluctuate rapidly rendering this comment slightly less accurate

Scary Sharing

Busy today? C'mon see us at The Dutch Gable House, the shop's open and you can still grab free copies of the Identity graphic novel while yer there telling us yer spooky stories...