Time and Place - Celebration Ode

Our Restorations film featured a version of the poem Celebration Ode, by Jock Scott and British Sea Power.

Here are some more versions of this 'Greenock anthem' by local musicians...

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.

Dig Where You Stand...

A hard time we had of it...sleeping in snatches, with the voices singing in our ears saying that this was all folly. But 2014 is behind us now...this is the all new, all action 2015. Totally different.

Over the last year, I had the chance to undertake a study into heritage and social enterprise, interviewing lots of interesting and clever folks from places like New Lanark, Falkirk Community Trust and the Scottish Storytelling Centre...as well as clever and interesting folk from local heritage projects. I was mostly looking at the ways in which heritage can be used to generate income, either with a social purpose, or with the profits reinvested in ways which directly benefit communities - from the refurbished 18th Century watermills and looms of New Lanark, the bricks and mortar of old buildings finding new uses, to the intangible cultural heritage of Scotland's songs, stories and traditions. Often when looking at ways of using heritage to generate income, the natural inclination is to think no further than tourism, which is itself, fraught with challenge, but I was lucky enough to discover and hear about many other examples of heritage being used to assist with social end objectives.

Anyway, one of my favourite things I discovered while blethering with folk, was the principle of Dig Where You Stand, the community driven approach to exploring heritage, which is separate from academic historical research, and critically, no less valid. The phrase originates with Swedish activist Sven Lindqvist, who was initially talking about ways in which workers could empower themselves within workplaces...

“The experts might each be experts in his or her own field but when they are talking about your job, you are the expert. That gives you a measure of self-confidence and a basis for amateurs and professional researchers to meet on equal footing.” [...] Until workers understand where they stand...and how to use the resources/tools available to dig with (local library, county museum/archives, local/state labor history society), they will be forever in the background of the “official” version of events...[E]very worker in every country has the power and potential to create a new image for labor, one “that puts workers and their work in the foreground.”
[Sven Lindqvist, “Dig Where You Stand,” Meddelande Från Arbetarrörelsens Arkiv Och Bibliotek (Stockholm: Vol. 16, September 1980), pp. 42-47]

This is no less true within communities, as beautifully demonstrated by the Kist o Riches project, which challenges you to find your own folklore first. The community is custodian of that heritage, it determines how it should be best used and celebrated. None of this was a new principle, I was just really pleased that something we had been involved in for so long had a proper name ;) As such, I'm going to blog about it a bit more in the coming months...you have been warned.

All of which is a long way round to talk about how Magic Torch will be digging where we stand this year...

Our first project, Time and Place will be running at Dutch Gable House in February and features a short ten minute film and exhibition, Restorations, recut from Greenock Plans Ahead with an exclusively produced soundtrack from the band British Sea Power. Visitors will also have the opportunity to reflect on how place and time have affected our community. We won't be putting Restorations online, its a one off installation.

Our other major project this year, is focussed on the attempts on Achi Baba during the First World War. A reportage style graphic novel telling the story of the battle through contemporary documents will be produced and distributed for free during the centenary this July. You can keep up to date on other commemoration plans on the Inverclyde's Great War site.

We have a few other potential publications and projects on the horizon too, including two comics, Galoshans, a horror tale with a wee sprinkling of psychogeography and Tales from the Kist, another of our vintage horror comics, but this time featuring national myths and legends. We are also hoping to publish Battle of Largs with the text of John Galt's poem and some new commentary alongside the artwork from last year's exhibition. We are also looking very closely at Maps...

I'm sure, just like last year, lots of other projects will be digging where we stand as well - and we'll keep you up to speed on those too. Keep digging.

2014 - Year in Review

The endless, trudging march of time sees us once again stare bleary eyed into the uncertain future of a "new year" and "fresh start", while cursing the yawning chasm of empty darkness which now lies behind us. But we had a laugh eh? As the end approaches, a quick look back at our most read posts for this year, in no particular order...

Our main project focus for this year was 13 Commonwealth Tales, which explored folktales from other parts of the world, and also continued to encourage local storytelling. The project was supported by Big Lottery Celebrate funding.We all pitched in with our favourite stories and Mhairi did a smashing job on the artwork to create a storybook which we released during Doors Open Day in September. The 64 page book is available for free from Dutch Gable House and 7 1/2 John Wood Street, but will also be free online in January.

13 Commonwealth Tales cover by Mhairi

As well as details on the project itself, one of the most popular stories we shared on the blog (but which did not appear in the book) was the tale of Maddy Glasker...

Battle of Largs by Andy Lee

Details of our Viking comic strip exhibition, featuring artwork specially created to accompany the gothic poem Battle of Largs by Greenock's very own John Galt was well received. Which is good....as we will have some more news to share on this project next year...

One of our most viewed posts from way back in January, was actually not about heritage at all, but some well meant, hard learned advice from myself about finding funding for projects, and how the "community" bit isn't what you add in to get the project to look nice for funders, but instead, the fundamental building block for the whole process.

Tin Jimmy by Andy Lee

In March we shared a page from a comic strip featuring "the robot James Watt built", Tin Jimmy. And we will have more, slightly longer adventures for our Victorian Robot in 2015. Meantime you can read James Watt's own notes on the robots creation right here... In a similar vein, news of An Ancient UFO sighting in Greenock caused quite a stir...

And we haven't actually talked much about it yet, but it would be remiss not to mention how much fun Andy and I had working with the Gies Peace project and St Ninian's Primary Seven in Gourock all through November and December on a particularly wintery comic...Coldheart. Here's a wee sneaky peak...

So aye, 2014 has been a busy and rewarding year for us, but there have been a few other heritage projects delivering across Inverclyde over the year as well, so props to Rig Arts Are Ye Askin project,  the major event that was White Gold at the Sugar Sheds, Dutch Gable House's WWI drama project which you can watch here, the Absent Voices project, which explored the history of the Sugar Sheds and produced a whole archive of creative responses to that story and of course the start of Inverclyde's Great War project. Hats off all round.

We also turned Fifteen in 2014, which was nice, especially as we seem busier now than we have ever been. 2015 is shaping up nicely too, but there will be lots of time to talk about that next year. For now, here's another chance to see the trailer for our upcoming Time and Place project, featuring a new soundtrack from the band British Sea Power. The film and accompanying exhibition will be displayed in February...

Thanks for reading!

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.

All The Things...

the volunteers of magic torch are delighted with a busy year

We have been really fortunate this year to receive support from a whole range of funders. We have loads going on over the next few months, and so we felt it was important to just stop, take a wee breath, and remind you about each of our projects individually...but yknow, also all at the same time.


13 Commonwealth Tales is supported by the Celebrate Fund, created to help communities recognise the Commonwealth Games in different ways. We've already had some storytelling days and right now the project is just finishing production on two books, 13 Commonwealth Tales, an illustrated childrens book collecting traditional stories from Commonwealth countries and Uncommon Tales, a comic in which Sir Glen Douglas Rhodes explores some of the darker folklore of the Commonwealth. Thanks to Lottery funding, limited copies of both of these books will be made available for FREE in September and October.


Time and Place is supported by Awards For All Scotland, and is sharing creative responses to Inverclyde past, present and future. Exhibitions and music created by the project will be on display in The Dutch Gable House throughout October and November.


Achi Baba is supported by Heritage Lottery Fund and will explore an important part of Inverclyde's World War One history in comic form. The comic book will be published in July 2015, on the centenary of the battle.


Alongside that, we have our own self supported project, The Battle of Largs, which has created an exhibition based on John Galt's gothic poem, using artwork from Andy Lee and woodcraft created by local social enterprise Newark Products.

And of course you can still access our kids book Wee Nasties on scribd and ibooks, and our vintage horror comic Tales of the Oak, from last year's project Tales of the Oak, supported by Heritage Lottery Fund Our Heritage.

So aye, busy times. Good times too. Probably our most action packed year since we started. It's worth noting, that all of the grants above, are under 10k, awarded through funding streams which are ideal for smaller groups. I wrote a wee blog post at the start of the year with my own thoughts about funding, and if you, or your group has an idea for projects, why not try making them happen?

Hopefully we'll see you at some of our events over the next few months.

Time and Place

Magic Torch are pleased to announce that we have been successful in receiving £8900 support from Awards For All Scotland for our project Time and Place. This project will explore creative responses to the past and future of Inverclyde, using a variety of media. Local people will be involved in a range of creative activities and the project will culminate in a month long exhibition in The Dutch Gable House. Elements of the project include...

Snapshots of yesterday ; Acclaimed photographer Alastair Cook will run a community workshop on the art of Victorian collodion photography, in which local volunteers will create their own photographs. Alastair will also curate a selection of portrait photos for the final exhibition, contrasting older photos with the new ones created.

Restorations (Greenock Plans Ahead) : A Greenock corporation film made in the 1950s to show post war reinvention and investment opportunities will be re-edited and a brand new contemporary soundtrack provided by award winning band British Sea Power.

Postcards from tomorrow : Community groups and schools will be invited to send postcards describing or illustrating life in the area in 20, 50, 100 or 200 years time.

What You Leave Behind : Through a series of community workshops, a new science fiction comic strip set in the Inverclyde of the future will be created and published digitally.

The project and associated exhibitions will be running throughout September and October and we'll be sharing more details on each of the projects soon. Meantime, here's a wee teaser...