| Garden Festival 'zone' | Science and Technology |
| Sponsor, if appropriate | Scottish Development Agency |
| Type of object | Pavilion, building or other structure |
| Current situation | Partly known |
| Current location, if known | The glass box used as part of this exhibit now encloses and protects the Shandwick Stone, a Pictish Symbol Stone (image here) This is discussed by Foster & Cross in their 'Able Minds and Practiced Hands: Scotland's Early Medieval Sculpture in the 21st Century', which states that the Shandwick/GGF box came via Robert Gordon's Institute of Technology, who had collaborated on the SDA exhibit. |
| Notes | According to a leaflet produced for the University of Strathclyde pavilions, two water sculptures here were 'designed by a Strathclyde Civil Engineer'. |
Not sure how interested you’ll be in a rambling anecdote, but here goes …. In 1988 I was a junior civil servant at the Manpower Services Commission in Sheffield, working in a branch developing the Training Access Points (TAP) programme. This was cutting edge at the time, to create stand-alone computer terminals with details of every training and education course across Britain. The MSC had no official remit for Scotland but we developed collaborative links with the Scottish Development Agency in Glasgow (predecessors of Scottish Enterprise) and ended up being offered some space on the SDA stand at the festival, so a few of us came up with one (or two) of our prototype demonstration terminal(s) for a few days for the public to try out. This was tall enough for stand-up usage, had a dark grey plastic housing and was decorated with the red-on-yellow TAP logo so might show up if you’ve got any pics of the SDA stand. We had a few banners/posters and would have handed out leaflets, promo pens and drinks mats etc. Photos were taken for in-house publicity/newsletters etc but no idea where they could be found now if they still exist as MSC, TAP and SDA are all long defunct. TAP was actually a brilliant concept and could have conquered the world, but t’interweb technology a few years later suddenly changed the goalposts and dumped stand-alone computer terminals relying on self-contained databases into oblivion. One teeny bit of trivia was that TAP’s short-lived roll-out into Glasgow was handled by a group called Network Scotland, whose CEO at the time was a certain Mike Russell …
I think I was up for a couple of days only, so memories not very detailed but the neolithic pathway rings faint bells. I do have one memory from one of my TAP responsibilities which was compiling lists of non-standard courses round the UK which were only offered by specific providers – this was a miscellaneous assemblage of eg mining colleges, saddlery/leatherworking, jewellery etc. I caught up with one of my Scottish spy network at the festival who told me about Kilmarnock college offering a course in cheddar cheese technology – she stoically kept a straight face when she revealed it was a sandwich course.
Hi David – yes, very interested in this ‘rambling anecdote’, actually! Will email you with some relevant info and questions. Thanks for getting in touch.