Two designers are celebrating the first birthday of their businesses with a joint pop up shop at Whitespace in Edinburgh. From 25 to 29 May 2013 designs by Fiona Purves (left) of Paper Aeroplane and Amy Dolan of Ziggy Sawdust will be for sale. Fiona is the owner of stationery business Paper Aeroplane. She uses her colourful and playful hand-drawn illustrations and lettering to create cards and prints. Throu ...

Probably not one for the camping purists but pop up tents could be coming to a city roof top near you. This May & June is Brooklyn - New York, August is London and October is Boston. You just sign up for a night in a city and the location will be texted to you the day before. According to the founder, artist and builder, Thomas Stevenson,  'the tent takes only 2 people, a rubber mallet and 20 minutes to ...

Did Sir Norman Foster get as much pleasure from designing The Gherkin as architect Robin Baker did from designing Birks Cinema in Aberfeldy? It seems unlikely. 'It's been such a privilege to work on this project and now that it’s finished it will feel like a bereavement. For the past 18 months it's been my life.' But Robin, who lives in Aberfeldy, will soon be able to watch movies at the state-of-the-art ci ...

STAnza, Scotland's international poetry festival will be filling venues in St Andrews, Fife from 6-10 March 2013. The issue of  venues must have been a fraught one this year with the sudden closure of the Byre Theatre but every event, with the exception of one exhibition, is going ahead. Eleanor Livingstone, festival director explains: 'The Town Hall in Queens Gardens, which has always been our secondary hu ...

Patrick Dalton loves London, especially the shit parts. Seven years ago he started the website Shit London as a response to Secret London which featured photographs of sunsets at Tower Bridge and pictures of Beefeaters. As he pointed out, he lived in London and Beefeaters didn't feature hugely in his life. Most of the photos are sent in by readers and he selects the best for publication. His captions are th ...

Edinburgh (above and below) Television journalist David Cowan has recently seen his creative hobby develop into a popular sideline. Scotland in Detail is a series of montages of Scottish cities and towns focusing on small, often unnoticed elements. 'They say the devil's in the detail,' says David, 'and he may well be hiding somewhere in these photomontages. Many of the images are decades old; names of long- ...

Fee and Adam Storey want to tell a story. The story is the one behind the products and the designers they stock in their new shop in Broughton Street, Edinburgh. 'Life Story', a new concept lifestyle store, opened in November 2012 selling fashion and products for the home. Too often the designer's tale is lost amidst the retailer's branding according to the husband and wife team - both with a background in ...

We're always interested  to hear about Scots around the world. Here Rupert Wolfe Murray tells of his experiences in and love for Romania... I first went to Eastern Europe in 1986,  en-route to China, after graduating  from Liverpool University. I'm glad I saw East Berlin, Poland, Hungary and Romania before Communism fell and a raw form of capitalism took over. I remember dim stations, bad food, friendly alc ...

Kissing random strangers while standing in the street was how New Year used to be spent - without the fireworks, the bands, the ceilidhs and the satellites beaming pictures of competitive-partying around the world. Before Edinburgh started the world's longest Hogmanay Festival in 1993, revellers used to gather at the Tron Kirk on the Royal Mile. This very recognisable landmark, which dates from 1636 and was ...

Sonica, Glasgow first sonic arts 'festival' might be both flattered and bemused by Grazia magazine's 'brilliant but bonkers' tag. But it does serves as a warning to those who are fairly traditional when it comes to visual art and sound. The brilliant bit is the radical nature and the theatricality of the performances. Lithuanian composer Juste Janulyte presents the Scottish premiere of her work Sandglasses ...