91Èȱ¬

The Dr Who exhibition arrived in Glasgow with so much tailwind hype, it was hard to know what to expect.

A 150 costumes, props and figures, but only from the most recent series and one, we were told, the massive Empress of Racnoss, had been sent back since it was twice the size of the allocated space in the basement of Kelvingrove.

Ten-year-olds who've only known the David Tennant/Christoper Eccleston years would be in their element but what about those of us who guage our earth years by earlier doctors.

Ian (first doctor: William Hartnell) and Kenny (first doctor: Tom Baker) both recalled the 1993 exhibition in Paisley.

"It was good but hardly anyone was there," says Kenny.

"The programme had really fallen out of fashion and it didn't have the same sort of following as it does today."

I recall seeing the one in Blackpool in the late 70s (First Doctor: Jon Pertwee, thanks for asking.) One of the first to be staged, it revolved around the Tardis. Entering through the familiar blue police box, which even as an eight-year-old, I could see had been conveniently attached to a massive building containing the rest of the exhibition, it was brilliant and had the terrifying spectacle of Daleks rumbling along on tracks (this being in the days before Daleks learned to elevate.)

So how did this one compare? Well it does pack a lot in - everything from the Face of Boe to Cassandra to Scarecrows, a Screaming Angel from Blink, and of course Daleks and Cybermen. It has just the right element of scare factor from the moment you walk through a guard of Autons who snap into movement (worth bearing in mind if you have any small fans - several small children including mine, left in tears at this point).

There are several interactive displays, the Cybermen and the Daleks being the most impressive - although staff at Kelvingrove are going to have their work cut out over the next nine months keeping on top of maintenance and repairs due to the volume of visitors.

Even before the exhibition opened to the public, at least one of the big red buttons (tantalisingly labelled Do Not Push) had blown a fuse.

For those with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Dr Who, there's plenty of interesting background information about how the costumes and props are made and a full sized replica of the workspace of the Dr Who design team (wonderfully mundane but also fascinating to see).

Like the Kylie costume exhibition - and this one includes her little waitress number from her own cameo appearance in a Christmas Dr Who - it's interesting to see how small some of the costumes actually are. Not just Kylie but Tennant and Eccleston are clearly skinnies while David Morrissey and Catherine Tate have reassuringly normal shapes.

We're promised updates with each new Dr Who episode this year - the first special due in just a few weeks time - so it should be worth a return visit.

Nothing for me quite topped that Dalek rumbling down the track (although the elevating Dalek display is pretty cool) and fun as it is, the scariest part of the exhibition is the size of the shop full of Dr Who paraphernalia you're forced to exit through.

The aforementioned Edinburgh toile created for this year's Edinburgh International Festival didn't take long to cause a mild rumpus among the capital's more traditional residents.

The images, on bags and brochures at yesterday's launch, show a selection of images in the French Toile de Jouy tradition, but instead of rural French scenery, they show modern urban vignettes, like a double decker bus beside some roadworks, a homeless man sleeping rough outside St Giles Cathedral and most controversially two men vomiting and urinating on Greyfriars Bobby's statue.

It didn't take long for journalists to rouse a few politicians.

Tory MSP David McLetchie reckoned it was artistic sabotage - a Glasgow design team having fun at the expense of its old rival.

But fans of the Glasgow-based company Timorous Beasties will point out they produced a similar toile for their own home city in 2005.

It included heroin addicts in a graveyard, teenage mums pushing prams by Glasgow towerblocks and a man urinating against a tree.

The Beasties - Alistair McAuley and Paul Simmons - who first met as students at Glasgow School of Art - created the toile as a backlash against the boring safe design of the 1990s.

They found the original French patterns of the 1770s, a little sinister and unsettling, not surprising since they were produced during the civil unrest in pre-revolutionary France.

As well as replacing the landscapes with urban icons, they replaced the revolting peasants with their 21st century Scottish equivalent - the ned.

The toile was so popular it was used on wallpaper, cushion covers and lampshades - and despite the inevitable political outcry about how it gave the wrong impression of the city - they soon became the must have housewarming present in many a fashionable home.

Edinburgh wasn't even their next target. They did one for London first.

In 2007, they made a version for Edinburgh, one of five new designs commissioned for the Six Cities Design festival, and displayed prominently in Edinburgh's Waverley Station.

Edinburgh International Festival say they're delighted to use the design - which will feature in all their publicity material.

If it creates a little frisson of fuss, they say, all well and good.

And most of the journalists at yesterday's press launch weren't so shocked by the images that they couldn't take home their press pack in a little Edinburgh toile cotton bag.

And for those who complained about the lack of Robert Burns in the official programme, at least it offers one more tenuous link to the Bard.

The design team of course take their title from the poem To A Mouse.

Any fears about the impact of the recession were swiftly dismissed by Jonathan Mills this week as he launched his third Edinburgh International Festival programme.

From the Timorous Beasties design of the programme (their Edinburgh toile includes a little vignette of a tram in a street full of traffic cones) to the extensive list of performances and performers.

Large scale works like the Romanian production of Faust, which requires an all new venue in Ingliston to accomodate the 110 performers required onstage, to the first staging of the medieval poem The Testament of Cresseid, and the sacred cantatas of Bach, performed in nine separate concerts.

The theme, although less political than last year, should certainly keep some of the politicians happy. It does plug into the Year of 91Èȱ¬coming celebrations but not in the obvious way of celebrating Robert Burns.

"It just felt that by August, everyone else would have done that, and done it very well," says Mills.

"We saw this as an opportunity to look at Scottishness in another way, through people who weren't always recognised."

There are plenty of homegrown Scots - from Scottish Ballet to Aberdeen born choreographer Michael Clark, who last performed at the festival 21 years ago.

James MacMillan and Peter Maxwell Davies are both celebrated in a concert. But Mills has also commissioned international companies to take a fresh look at Scotland.

A Belgian company will produce a tri-lingual production about St Kilda, while the Singapore Chinese Opera will explore the impact Scotland has had on their own culture in Disapora.

Sponsorship - including large dollops from the financial industries - still seems to be forthcoming and public sponsorship is up.

"Most of the cheques are in the mail, or they say they are," says Mills.

"I don't want to get into a detailed description of what we're going to raise but it's fair to say in the current climate that it's a very robust achievement."

The only question now is how well this year's festival will do at the box office when tickets go on sale on 4 April.

It's not every day you find yourself holding a ten thousand pound artwork. A ten thousand pound artwork which could go up in flames at any moment.

But that's how I found myself on Wednesday night at the opening of the Stanza poetry festival in the Byre Theatre in St Andrews, clutching a life-sized head of Robert Burns made out of matches.

David Mach, its creator, was suitably blasé when he handed it over.

He's made several of these matchstick creations - an interesting development considering he recently quit smoking.

I asked if he'd had any disasters. None, he said, apart from the time he was working on an exhibition and laid out ten matchstick heads on a snooker table in his workshop.

Unfortunately, a fellow artist welding set off a spark which lighted every head one by one. Too bad he didn't have the cameras running at the time.

Fortunately, the Stanza launch was a lot less eventful.

I didn't drop the head on live television - although there was a spare.

The First Minister stayed inside to avoid any photos alongside anyone's flaming head.

And David Mach lit Burns' chin with the minimum of fuss (unlike a recent Pittenweem Art Festival where he insisted on holding the head while he set fire to it!)

The whole thing was over in 30 seconds, with the scorched head going on display alongside the unscathed head for the duration of the festival.

Meanwhile Stanza meant a reunion for Annie Boutelle and Stephen Crosby, who both studied at St Andrews in the 1960s.

Annie is now a published poet and a senior lecturer at Smith College in Massachussets and Stephen lives and works in Canada, but both recalled as students attending a session given by Hugh MacDiarmid in the town.

This week they're among 80 poets who've come from as far afield as Canada, the US and New Zealand - a far cry from the first Stanza which was just a handful of poets in the town's art centre.

It's not unusual to find groups of things in museums. Artefacts, costumes, fossils. But government ministers?

That was the situation at the Scottish Mining Museum where Culture Minister Mike Russell was announcing a one off grant of £1.3m for urgent repairs to A-listed buildings on the site of the Lady Victoria colliery, which the museum has occupied since 1984.

Delighted as they were to receive the grant, it falls short of the £2.5m required for the repairs and fails to address the shortfall in revenue funding which has troubled the museum trust since the start of the year when Midlothian Council and Historic Scotland withdrew their support.

The council has long argued that if the mining museum is truly a national museum, then the government needs to take more responsibility.

Mr Russell was quick to point out the government already funds the Scottish Mining Museum to the tune of £200,000 - and that in these tough times, it's unlikely to be able to raise any more without cutting costs elsewhere.

Which is where another former minister - former First Minister Henry McLeish comes in. He took over as chairman of the trust which runs the museum last October.

He admits they've yet to resolve the funding issue - but is confident the new cash will help them lever further funding until 2010. Beyond that, there's still uncertainty.

Enter yet another former minister - Rhona Brankin, once the culture minister, whose constituency covers Newtongrange where the mining museum is based.

She presided over a funding crisis herself - helping establish the emergency funding pot which now provides funding for all three national industrial museums.

But she believes this government has to go even further and - as is the case in England and Wales - include the Scottish Mining Museum in its circle of national museums, thus guaranteeing secure funding.

No such promises from Mr Russell (perhaps he wondered why Ms Brankin didn't pursue her own idea when roles were reversed and she was culture minister while he played shadow) but he does promise some serious brainstorming in the museum sector, which he believes will finally throw up a solution.

I last met the artist Antony Gormley in a workshop near Liverpool where he was encouraging members of the public to make small clay people.

I made one myself - one of 40,000 clay people which became his award winning artwork Field for the British Isles.

I never did spot my little clay person among the thousands spread across the gallery floors of the National Museums of Wales, but it gave me a real kick to know he was in there.

Since then, Gormley has made many more much loved an accessible works of art from the eerie Another Place (100 cast iron figures on Crosby Beach) to the unmissable Angel of the North.

But with his latest work, he's relying on people power again.

The Fourth Plinth will use the vacant space in London's Trafalgar Square - already famous for a range of rolling artworks - to create a new living artwork.

Gormley wants to find 2,400 people who'll agree to pose on the plinth for an hour each - 24 hours a day for 100 days.

Volunteers can do anything they like - dance, sing, demonstrate, shout, scream - as long as it's legal.

And in true democratic style, Antony Gormley is basing his selection of volunteers on proportional representation.

So ots.

Speaking in Edinburgh, where he launched his campaign he said he appreciated the efforts Scots would have to make in getting to London but said he was confident they would.

And already he's at up to 600 Scots offering themselves as volunteers.

Volunteers can register their interest online at his website https://www.oneandother.co.uk/ although formal applications won't begin until April.

The successful candidates will be chosen randomly by computer - even the artist must take his chances, apparently - and the living artwork will begin officially on 6 July in Trafalgar Square.

And for those who'd rather not make an exhibition of themselves, there's always his next work - a series of six life-sized figures for the Water of Leith.

"They're already being cast," he says. "We're just in the process of seeking planning permission."

If successful, the figures will be seen at various points in the city, including outside the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, in Stockbridge, and at a pier in Leith.

"The idea is simple,"he says.

"It's the relationship between human beings and the city and between the city and the elements.

"The Water of Leith is an ancient geological pathway to the river, older than the city itself, and it's a lovely way to connect up different parts of the city."

Many small people round the country will be counting the days till 28 March.

Many larger ones too, as that's the day the much anticipated Dr Who exhibition opens at Kelvingrove in Glasgow.

Advance ticket sales for the event suggest it's going to hugely popular, perhaps even topping the Kylie Minogue exhibition which brought in 165,000 visitors.

But already there are murmurings of disaproval from those who feel it's inappropriate fare for a museum.

And not just elderly board members either.

A colleague of mine - a youngish dad - was complaining that exhibitions like this have no place in a museum like Kelvingrove.

He wanted gravitas and educational displays, he said, not cybermen and Kylie's pants.

But in the same breath, he admitted his wife and three children were counting the days till they could go.

These are unashamedly populist exhibitions, and I appreciate not to everyone's tastes, but our museums can't really afford to be prissy about finding ways to draw new visitors in.

Figures released last week by ALVA - the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions - showed a 35 per cent drop in visitors to Kelvingrove in 2008, and declining numbers at many other flagship attractions.

And despite Kelvingrove's argument that this is simply a levelling out of the record numbers achieved post-refurbishment, the fear is that the recession is affecting visitors.

(And since many London attractions noted an upturn in the same period, the suggestion is that many foreign visitors are simply curtailing their trips to the UK).

There are still elements of Kelvingrove post-refurbishment which need work.

While the cross-collaboration of some of the displays is ambitious, they could provide just a little more basic information about the artefacts.

Sometimes, a simple identification label isn't enough.

But generally, it's a livelier place and if a few Cybermen can further boost its visitor numbers, who's complaining.

Who, indeed?