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The Scottish Press awards were a slightly more subdued affair this week.

The usual banter between the Daily Record and the Sun curtailed by the fact that no-one from the Record was there.

Journalists from the Record and its sister paper, The Sunday Mail, boycotted the event ahead of a three-day strike over jobs cuts.

Meanwhile, senior management weren't there either, as they were preparing to put the papers together in the journalists' absence.

The Record picked up three awards for Journalist Team of the Year for their coverage of the Angelika Kluk murder case, News Photographer of the Year for Tony Nicoletti and Multi-media Journalist of the Year.

The Sunday Mail won another for Reporter of the Year (for a second year running for Charles Lavery) - hopefully all delivered in time for them to hold them aloft on the picket line this weekend.

But the Sun table did some solo celebrating after picking up Newspaper of the Year, Sports News Writer of the Year, Front Page of the Year and Columnist of the Year (for Bill Leckie).

A good night for Scotland on Sunday writer Peter Ross (who won Newspaper Feature Writer of the Year and Magazine Writer of the Year) and Bill Jamieson of the Scotsman who won Financial Journalist of the Year and Journalist of the Year - one of six for his paper.

Like several speakers, he urged journalists to stay strong in the face of the worst industry crisis since Wapping.

"Words are our gift that will see us through this storm and through other storms," he said.

It did little to lift the mood of the room - well aware that this is an industry in rapid decline.

Sports journalist Doug Gillon - who has seen off 14 editors in his 30 years at the Herald - used his speech accepting a Lifetime Achievement award to encourage better training of younger journalists.

He said: "I'm certain we'll adapt successfully to the digital and online era. I'm less confident that the staff-cutting, rife throughout the industry will promote the kind of training and mentoring which I was fortunate to receive.

"So if may use this platform to urge anything, it's to encourage a culture which helps nurture and encourage young journalists. It remains critical for all of our futures."

A case in point - the recipient of Young Journalist of the Year, Mike Farrell - who works for my old paper the Dumbarton and Vale of Leven Reporter.

His coverage of the C.difficile outbreak in the Vale of Leven Hospital won him the award and a few nods of approval from his peers.

The paper is now based in Clydebank - and employs just a fraction of the staff it once did - but at least it's still there as a vital training ground for young journalists.

Whether the traditional career path through regional and national papers still exists in the future, is another matter entirely.

The most extraordinary thing about the whole Susan Boyle story is surely the fact that it's so ordinary.

From the woman in the church choir with the fabulous voice to the shy boy who's the leading light in the local am dram society, we are surely a country of Susan Boyles.

A report from the Scottish Arts Council a few years back confirmed what I'd always known, that three out of five of us are budding performers (try it on your social circle next time you're out, it's surprisingly accurate.) We just don't often make a song and dance out of it.

The only difference with Susan - and I wish her the very best in Britain has Talent, especially if it means I can continue to watch her progress without enduring the rest of the show - is that by stepping onto national television, she's unwittingly stepped onto the international stage.

Everyone from Demi Moore to Oprah Winfrey has been weeping into their cornflakes, Susan can't even go to the shops now without reporters asking her how she's coping.

And the council has apparently had to come and reinforce her garden fence, thanks to the truckloads of American TV crews who've been tramping across her lawn.

Meanwhile, thousands, nay millions of web-users are glued to their computer screens waiting for the next email alert about whether Susan's bought a new frock/vowed to keep her West Lothian accent/been back down the pub for a burst of karaoke. (and yes, I'm aware this will just add to the paper trail!)

While Susan lives life in the limelight, the rest of the country - at least those three in five - continue quietly performing as before.

But never underestimate the power of performance. This week, in Edinburgh, the very first Polish Cultural Festival got underway. The number of Polish people in Scotland has been increasing year on year, and must now come some where close to those arts council figures for the number of performers.

And there are clearly plenty of people keeping the culture alive here in Scotland. The whole festival has been organised entirely by volunteers who've raised much of the money themselves - no mean feat in the middle of a recession.

Among those appearing at the festival over the next few days, jazz musician Jarosław Śmietana, famous film director Krzysztof Zanussi, and mountaineer Piotr Pustelnik.
The offical opening ceremony takes place at the Queens Hall in Edinburgh on Thursday with the St. Nicolas Orkiestra and folk group Krakowiacy and organisers are confident it'll become a regular part of the cultural calendar.

And for the judges of Britain's Got Talent, a reminder perhaps, that we all always had.

I've been a judge on the for the past eight years - they're held biennially - and chair of the judging panel for the last two prizes, quite a challenge as well as an honour.

They're genuinely judged blindly - an irony which i'm sure would have tickled Helen Keller, who established the fund which allows the prize to be awarded.

As judges, we have no idea whether work is by a professional artist, a community group or an enthusiastic amateur. All we have is a room full of art and a shortlist to draw up in less than a day.

Make that two rooms full of art.

The competition is now attracting so many entries - almost 200 from across the globe - that they had to be spread out across Glasgow Royal Concert Hall and Sense Scotland's new headquarters Touchbase, in Kinning Park.

As we picked our way through the early diners in the concert hall café, noting artworks here and sculptures there, the scale of our challenge began to hit home.

How on earth do you find a winner in work so diverse that it includes papier mache sculpture, fine art, drawings, collage, video installations, even a website?

Fortunately, I had plenty of help from my fellow judges, Amanda Catto, head of visual arts at the Scottish Arts Council, Monica Callaghan, head of education at the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery and Keith Salmond, who as a visually impaired artist brought a welcome new dimension to our judging process, often highlighting the more accessible works, the stuff you can smell and touch as well as see.

In the end, we were unanimous about our winner - a large artwork made of up 20 smaller squares. Each featured a different pattern made in black paint, slowly dribbled across the fabric.

It was vibrant and interesting, worked on different levels for sighted and non sighted audiences and had an oomph about it we all loved.

It was also in Touchbase, leaving the organisers with the challenge of projecting it at the awards ceremony in the concert hall (while also encouraging everyone to come and see it in the flesh along with the rest of the entries).

With a lovely twist, the winner - turned out to be from Helen Keller's home town of Florence, Alabama.

Rich Curtis created the piece over 12 months, working with students at the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind.

He played them music and asked them to respond by drawing marks on paper. The resulting 20 textured paintings are designed to be felt as well as seen.

One of the loveliest things about the way the competition is judged, is meeting the artists afterwards.

Sadly, Mr Curtis wasn't there in person but many of the other artists were in Glasgow for the prizegiving.

Among them was Matt Hulse, who created a website Dummy Jim about a real life story of a deaf man and Jean Compton, whose vivid image of a child in the womb earned her a runner-up award.

Also represented were many of the creators of the children's work, Shawlands Academy and Hazelwood School in Glasgow - who worked with recycled to create their ambitious artwork Medusa.

My job is nothing if not varied and my week ends with two very different sorts of recording news.

Ian Wilson was a war correspondent here at the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ in the 1940s.

His discs were recorded right in the thick of it on the state of the art midget recorder - a misnomer if ever there was one since it weighed a whopping 42lbs and was effectively a giant record player to be lugged around war zones.

Ian died in 1963 and his records and notes and other wartime paraphenalia were forgotten until another relative died earlier this year and they were discovered in her loft.

His nephew Ian and great nephew Neil - who both live in Lennoxtown - had no idea what to do with the haul, which they found in an old trunk.

Unable to even play the old 78s, they took them to McTears auction house.

Their military expert, John White, agreed to bring them into the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ so we could listen to them on an old 78 player.

They include reports from Ian on board a bombing mission, interviewing military personnel in France and reporting on the liberation of Dachau.

Even his test recordings offer a picture of war-time London with queues of people waiting to get into the air raid shelters while Ian listens for the "doodlers" overhead.

I was able to get a CD of the recordings to take to Ian and Neil.

Ian, who remembered his uncle from New Year parties, said he found the whole experience quite emotional.

Neil, who never met his great uncle, was surprised by his "received pronunciation" tones but delighted to listen into a little piece of history.

Both insist their decision to sell was based on the fact they didn't know what to do with the material.

"We just thought at least this way it might go to someone who could look after them, maybe play them, preserve them and let other people play them,"says Neil.

Lot 70 - which includes Ian's scripts, cigarette box and hip flask as well as the records - will go for auction in Glasgow today but the family say if it isn't sold, they'll consider giving it to an interested museum.

And to recordings of a more modern sort.

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Not the most obvious location - surely Birmingham or Manchester must have been in with a bigger shout - but the organisers seem sure the ceremony will go down a storm here.
DJ Paul Njie is also convinced.

"The Mobos are more mainstream than they've ever been," he says.

"You look at the top ten, Rhiana, Fifty Cent, Usher. It's commercial music, it's pop music and I think there's going to be a huge market for it."

Details of the performers and the shortlisted artists will be announced shortly, and tickets will go on sale this summer.

Speculation is now rife about who will appear.

Janet Jackson, Tina Turner, Amy Winehouse and Justin Timberlake have all dropped in in the past.

And even the oldies will recognise a tune or two. Last year's special award went to Mary Wilson, who joined the Sugababes on a medley of hits by the Supremes.

Not quite as old as Ian Wilson's historic records, but still worth a listen.

Even the most optimistic onlooker would have been surprised to see singer Edwyn Collins back out conducting press interviews, just fours years after the double brain haemorrhage which almost killed him.

But earlier today, he was doing just that, his speech vastly improved since i last met him at the Tartan Clef awards just two months ago.

As if re-learning to speak and walk wasn't enough, he's already released an album (largely recorded before his stroke), has various gigs under his belt and a slot confirmed at this year's T in the Park.

But it's his art not his music that brings him to Glasgow this week.

A keen wildlife artist as a schoolboy - both parents were students at Edinburgh College of Art, his father is an artist as well as a lecturer - he returned to his hobby with a vengeance.

He set himself the task of creating a picture a day - "except on sundays," he says with a cheery grin - and the show in Glasgow's CCA documents the change from simple line drawings of birds to complex and colourful sketches of all kinds of wildlife.

It's already been seen in London's Smithfield Gallery, and requests for additional showings have come from as far afield as Turkey.

Collins is modestly dismissive of some of the earlier work, which he says is crude. But family and friends have persuaded him to leave it in, to charter the progress he's made over the last four years.

He makes it look deceptively easy but it's clearly been a long, slow journey.

Part of the challenge has been that the stroke removed him of all ability in his right hand.

I clumsily try and shake hands with him twice during our filming but he laughs it off, well used to the faux pas.

Much harder has been the task of retraining himself to draw with his left hand.

Guitar playing is more complex yet. He can form the chords but needs a friend to do the strumming.

But he's done it. And this exhibition is just the latest event in an extraordinary road to recovery which inspires way beyond the realms of any other art exhibition.

The only fly in the ointment - the frequent offers of work mean Edwyn's wife Grace's plans to retire to a quieter life in their family home in Caithness look less and less likely at the moment.

As for Edwyn, he has modest ambitions.

"To keep working, to keep enjoying life and to keep improving," he says.

I'm sure I'm not the only person rooting for him.

Culture minister Mike Russell may have laid to rest speculation about the cost of Creative Scotland but he's left many questions hanging in the air.

In his statement to parliament this morning, he confirmed the new body, which will merge Scottish Screen and the Scottish Arts Council, will cost £3.3m to set up - with at least a third of that figure going towards redundancies at the existing organisations.

Other costs include rebranding the new body - £75,000 - and retraining new and existing staff although since both organisations' headquarters are being retained, there are no overheads in that area.

The money won't come from the existing organisations' budgets (although they've already footed the bill for the initial £700,000).

Instead, it will come directly from the Scottish government.

And while that will no doubt come as a relief to the artistic community, it's still a lot of money, particularly in the midst of a world wide recession.

Mr Russell - who admits he wasn't always won over by the idea - says he believes the resulting organisation will live up to expectations.

"It's a long term investment," he said, "it'll be another 12 to 18 months before we'll see what has been achieved."

Opposition MSPs and artists who signed the 400 name petition earlier this year, calling a halt to the transition, are less convinced.

"It's the old adage - don't fix what ain't broke," said artist Janie Nicoll, "you have to question why they feel the need to spend so much money on two organisations which are doing a reasonably good job of what they do. £3m is a lot of money, wherever it's coming from."

There are, of course, plenty of people who believe both organisations need a radical shakeup - but once again it raises more questions than it answers.

Will the new organisation offer loans instead of grants? Will it be based on the exisiting committee system? Will the costs rise in the year ahead? and will the body even be given the go-ahead, having failed to be voted through in a previous piece of legislation?

That question, at least, may be answered in the next month or two when the Public Services Reform bill is considered in parliament.