People and Place

Over 5 million people live in Scotland.

This area of the pavilion was designed to show the immigration and emigration that has shaped not just our country but also communites all over the world, such as the highland and lowland clearances, the building of the Empire and economic emigration to such places as Canada and Australia and the immigration of peoples from countries such as Italy and more recently Poland and Eastern Europe.

Rather than creating conflict, the recognition of the diversity the immigration and emigration has created will be celebrated. This was to be conveyed through sculpture and multi sensory experiences.

Scotland is also pioneering research into Alzheimers, which will have global benefits for the world’s ageing population. St Andrews University biologists have developed a compound which has successfully prevented the disease killing brain cells. It also appeared to improved memory and learning ability already damaged with research continuing in conjunction with other Scottish universities and research centres abroad.

We have a strong oral history tradition in Scotland and this can be developed to provide support and activities for people suffering with the illness, protecting their past knowledge for future generations. Oral history can also be used to show how culturally and ethnically diverse we are as a nation and help to break down barriers between age and race alike.

The pavilion would create an interactive environment where visitors can leave their
own messages, a bit like a time capsule, and also experience examples of collated stories with related images and artifacts.

It is important that the residents of our cities have a sense of place. By working to create harmonious living environments, we can ensure that everyone feels they belong.

The Design Process

The design process for this zone of the pavilion started with my research. I have had some previous experience in recording oral history sessions, when I recorded wartime reminiscence sessions for Flintshire County Council. They were really interesting sessions, that brought together people from the community to dicuss the World War Two and their memories and experiences. Some of the people had never talked about it before and they were all very emotional sessions. We had veterans, prisoners of war, evacuees and even decoders of the enigma machine. The sessions linked with a primary school project where school children then got the chance to ask the people featured on the recordings about their experiences, which culminated in a DVD and booklet that was used as part of the curriculum.

My memory of the sessions was that they were extremely useful for getting people talking and that they developed friendships and community spirit, particularly with an ageing population.  Our family has a history of alzheimers and with growing numbers of people interested in family history, I knew that recording personal histories before they are lost forever is important. But oral history can be used for everyone and in many different ways. I wondered if anyone was using oral history as a way to improve health and diversity, using oral history to record social and industrial histories or in youth work or work in community development. Luckily the Scottish Oral History Centre project, based out of Strathclyde University, is doing just that and I decided to design an area in the pavilion to record the visitor experience of the Expo, rather than the usual visitor book. The room would explain our strong oral history tradition and the research work being done, through images on the walls, but I realised that the oral history recording machine had to be striking and interesting enough to get a diverse range of people excited enough to want to participate.

It poured with rain the day I was trying to design them and I had an eureka moment…rain! We are known in Scotland for our rain, or ‘dreich’ weather, and I remembered the iconic bubble umbrella, which covers the head and shoulders. Why couldn’t my recording machines look like umbrellas? I remembered, of all places, a recoding machine in the store, Build a Bear workshop, where I recorded a voice for a teddy I purchased. It was a simple microphone built into a shop fitting, and that meant my umbrella design could work.

I researched umbrella history in China and Scotland and found that the people of Shanghai, who would make up the majority of visitors to the EXPO, would recognise the umbrella as it is a socialogical symbol in Chinese culture, representing wealth and honour. I went about designing the devices, using suitable Chinese colours. The Chinese believe that certain colours promote health, posperity, luck..and red is their good luck colour.

Using red Chinese brocade and the red Munro tartan for the linings of the umbrella recorders would mix both traditions and be fun visually, when viewed from below.

The umbrella would be on a retractable cord, to allow them to fit over the head and shoulders of every visitor, young and old, short or tall, able bodied or with disabilities.

You can the umbrella recorders in the Vectorworks model images.

The umbrella could be used by the individual, or in couples or small groups. You just pressed a button and the inbuilt camera and microphone recorded your message, which could be stored and played back, watching yourself on the lcd screen inside.

However, not all of the umbrellas would be at a level that could be used, there were still more that were designed to move up and down towards the ceiling, giving the impression that they were floating. That would have injected a little bit of fun into the pavilion and provide something to remember for the visitor.

The next area of this zone had to be as visually engaging and I knew that I wanted to use a 360 degree cinema, to explain the immigration and emigration of the people of Scotland, and how diversity should be promoted rather than discouraged. The images on the film would not just be from history, but also feature more contemporary figures, such as Sharleen Spiteri, who are descended from people from different nations, or who have moved into or out of Scotland, taking their cultural identity with them.

I wanted to have some way of making the room more interesting, rather than having flat walls with images projected onto them. That was a bit simplistic. I designed a room that would be filled at floor level with smoke, to represent the haar (fog) that we get on our coasts and that would be filled with the smells associated with the images and accompanying audio, such as the smell of heather, whisky, shortbread, ice cream, fish etc.

I came up with the idea of having simple clay figures that would have images projected onto them, to make them appear to come to life. These figures formed part of a sculpture I called ‘diaspora’ which is the term for the movement of people in and out of a country. The sculpture hung from the ceiling of the double height room and at random heights, making some of it in touching distance.

I did not have time to make a small version of the sculpture even in clay or in paper, so I used watercolours and painted several simple images in clay tones.

These were then scanned into photoshop and the images rendered to give an impression of what they would look like.

We are a nation that is more diverse than we realise, made up of people from all over the world, with people that have left our nation and established communities of Scots around the globe, maintaining and developing our traditions and absorbing new cultures. Hopefully the People and Place zone would show how promotion of this diversity in our cities will create a ‘better city and better life’ for everyone.