In this episode, Tom Dawson, Director of Digital at the Association for Cultural Enterprises, interviews Stephen Preston, Deputy Head of Heritage and Culture at St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh. Celebrating the cathedral's 900th anniversary, they discuss the cathedral's importance to the city, and how it manages challenges both ancient and modern. They explore various topics including the cathedral's architectural changes, its use as a filming location for major films like Avengers Infinity War, the impact of the Edinburgh Fringe, why people flock to see a sculpture no bigger than a phone, and its role during Queen Elizabeth's lying in state. Stephen shares his journey from tour guide to his current position and provides insights into the cathedral's efforts to engage visitors through digital initiatives and interactive exhibits. They also discuss the complexities of managing a historic site that serves multiple purposes, balancing being a place of worship, a cultural landmark, and hosting art exhibitions and blockbuster films.
In this episode, Tom Dawson, Director of Digital at the Association for Cultural Enterprises, interviews Stephen Preston, Deputy Head of Heritage and Culture at St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh.
Celebrating the cathedral's 900th anniversary, they discuss the cathedral's importance to the city, and how it manages challenges both ancient and modern. They explore various topics including the cathedral's architectural changes, its use as a filming location for major films like Avengers Infinity War, the impact of the Edinburgh Fringe, why people flock to see a sculpture no bigger than a phone, and its role during Queen Elizabeth's lying in state. Stephen shares his journey from tour guide to his current position and provides insights into the cathedral's efforts to engage visitors through digital initiatives and interactive exhibits. They also discuss the complexities of managing a historic site that serves multiple purposes, balancing being a place of worship, a cultural landmark, and hosting art exhibitions and blockbuster films.
Build St Giles' interactive game: stgilescathedral.org.uk/build
Find out more about the Association: culturalenterprises.org.uk
This episode is sponsored by King & McGaw, the market leader in print on demand framed and unframed prints. King & McGaw, proudly supplying the cultural sector for over forty years.
Tom Dawson: [00:00:00] Hello, I'm Tom Dawson, Director of Digital at the Association for Cultural Enterprises, and welcome to the Arts and Culture podcast. Today, we're in Edinburgh at St Giles Cathedral, celebrating its 900th anniversary, and speaking to Stephen Preston, Deputy Head of Heritage and Culture. If you're a fan of great art, you'll love King Magour, supporters and sponsors of arts and culture.
Tom Dawson: King McGaugh have supplied bespoke printed art products to the world's greatest institutions, including the National Gallery, Tate, V& A and MoMA, for over 40 years. Their in house designers create and produce best selling products, from prints and postcard packs to signed limited editions, for blockbuster exhibitions and innovative museum shops.
Tom Dawson: An early adopter of print on demand and dropship technology, they are the market leader in print on demand framed and unframed prints. King McGaw proudly supplying the cultural sector for over 40 years. [00:01:00] Hi Stephen, thank you for joining me on the podcast.
Stephen Preston: No, no, thanks for inviting me. I'm excited to have a chat about St Giles.
Tom Dawson: It looks like to me you're in a very thick set walled part of the cathedral with a kind of really tiny stained glass window. Where are you speaking from?
Stephen Preston: Yeah, so I'm speaking from up until the 1980s what would have been a kind of a plant room, but in the 1980s they decided to dig out under the cathedral, which is no small feat because it's all volcanic rock.
Stephen Preston: But this area was always here, and then it was turned into a cafe fairly soon after they dug it all out. And then now it's an office space, so yeah, but these massive thick walls, and then tiny stained glass windows. Nice thick walls so we can't hear what's going on in the madness outside.
Tom Dawson: Right, we've got 900 years to get through, but before you tell us a bit about St Giles, give us a sense of the real Stephen.
Tom Dawson: Can you share two truths and a lie, and I will see if I can weedle out the lie.
Stephen Preston: So I've scored a goal in the European Cup final. I have climbed all of the Monroe's in Scotland. And, uh, I'm [00:02:00] currently learning Irish. Okay, amazing.
Tom Dawson: Well, uh, I reckon you've climbed the Monroe's.
Stephen Preston: I have not climbed all the Monroe's.
Tom Dawson: Oh, you have not climbed the Monroe's, okay. I see, I'm terrible at this. I'm clearly, at the number of podcasts I've done, I'm clearly terrible at this.
Stephen Preston: I would love to have done that, yeah. I'm, I'm about, uh, 20 percent through. Yeah. What, what was the, you scored a goal in the what? Scored a goal in a European Cup final.
Stephen Preston: When I was 13, I went on a football tour. We got to the final of the, the cup that we were playing in, and I scored a goal in that, that final.
Tom Dawson: I mean, you completely got me on that one. So somebody who hasn't been to St Giles, just kind of give a bit of a description, like, where, where does St Giles sit within Edinburgh, in the old town, and how important is it to Edinburgh?
Stephen Preston: Yeah, so, uh, St Giles is slap bang on the middle of the high street on the Royal Mile. Yeah. This year I'm predicting we'll get over 1. 5 million visitors. That is in part, hopefully, because of the good work we're doing to suggest people come, but it's also because it's very hard to miss. If you come off the train, you walk up, you'll get to the high street part of the Royal Mile, and then we're [00:03:00] a big church on it, so people often come through.
Stephen Preston: But in terms of its importance to Edinburgh, people often see that St Giles isn't the most impressive cathedral in terms of scale. But that's partly because it used to lie right on the edge of the city wall. So you couldn't build a massive cathedral because the city wall was kind of stopping any, any building.
Stephen Preston: So St. Giles has always been right at the heart of Edinburgh, whatever you want to call Edinburgh. It's been here since 1124, hence our 900th anniversary, although we're slightly sneaky with that because the building that you see today isn't that building, it was a Romanesque building that the English, Boohiss, destroyed in the early 14th century, so the building that you see today is a 14th century building, but there has been a St Giles on this site since 1124.
Stephen Preston: Over the last few years, especially with all the large events we've had, it's felt like St Giles has come back to the fore again in people's minds and imaginations and what it means. Because as a witness to history, St Giles has seen it all. It's very hard to look at an event, especially Scottish history, if not UK history as a whole, that St Giles hasn't been a part of.
Stephen Preston: I was taught about the English Civil War at school, as [00:04:00] I'm sure a lot of people listening might have been. But if we actually look at it as what's called the War of the Three Kingdoms, which is encapsulating the whole of that period, St. Giles could be argued to have kicked that period of history kind of off.
Stephen Preston: Well, I'm biased, but I think it's very important.
Tom Dawson: But I was reading it's not technically a cathedral. Is that right?
Stephen Preston: Well, this is a tricky thing. And I think this is, it's almost a nice summary for how Scotland deals with its history. So, In terms of what an English definition, or maybe a kind of a European definition of a cathedral is, no, it's not a cathedral.
Stephen Preston: It doesn't have a bishop. However, in terms of what Scotland defines as a cathedral, there was a really weird little act in, I think it was 1920 in the Church of Scotland, which basically said, if you've been called a cathedral at any point in your history, we're happy with you to have the name cathedral.
Stephen Preston: So for example, no one really thinks of Glasgow Cathedral as not a cathedral. No one thinks of St. Andrew's Cathedral, which is a ruin, as not a cathedral. So these are the places. There are four or five cathedrals in Scotland, which in theory shouldn't be cathedrals because the Church of Scotland doesn't have bishops.
Stephen Preston: But I think [00:05:00] the Church of Scotland got round that by just saying, ah, if you've had the name once, we'll give it you forever.
Tom Dawson: Understood. Understood. St. Giles is a fascinating place and it sounds like you've got a fascinating job. I was really interested to hear how you Manage the kind of daily challenges of working in such an ancient building.
Tom Dawson: You've got worshippers You've got people coming for the architecture the history the music, but then you're also accommodating art installations blockbuster films There's a lot going on a lot of presumably quite basic competing visitor demands How did you get started at st. Giles? Did you start as a tour guide?
Tom Dawson: Is that right?
Stephen Preston: I started as a tour guide Yeah, 10 years ago actually on the 4th of august 10 years ago. Uh, so it's pretty much my 10 year anniversary So I studied economic history at the university of Edinburgh. I'm from Blackpool originally in England. One of the fellows who I studied with worked in a separate department here, but he told me they were looking for tour guides, so I applied for that role, thinking, I'll do this for a year, see where it takes me.
Stephen Preston: Then I'm here [00:06:00] 10 years later. Like many small places, Especially in the heritage sector, I think, as soon as you get going and you start to learn the ins and outs of it, it can drag you in and get under your skin, which definitely happened with me at St. Giles. And then through different opportunities, people leaving or opportunities to expand, I've kind of got to the place I am today in St. Giles, yeah.
Tom Dawson: I mean, that's a really interesting story. I know quite a lot of people who think, Oh, well, I'll do this for a year or two. And then you get completely sucked into this amazing place or this amazing world. Tell me a bit about your job then. Lots of different types of audience who are presumably looking for different things.
Tom Dawson: I mean, what's your mix in your kind of day to day managing of the operations?
Stephen Preston: Yeah, I think as I go further forward working here, I've just become aware that I should never assume why someone's here, and I should never assume why they're here. that they're here just for one reason. And I think the festival often, so it's the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh at the moment, and for people who don't know what that is, it's a massive arts festival.
Stephen Preston: I think the largest arts festival in the world. Edinburgh [00:07:00] just gets absolutely hit by every stand up comedian, every performer, every, everyone who wants to do anything arts related comes to Edinburgh. So St Giles is absolutely heaving. It's interesting because one of the things that I am trying to do currently with St Giles is to improve our dwell time, improve our engagement.
Stephen Preston: Whatever that means in terms of whether people are coming for heritage or religion or as some people do if it's raining outside We've become Edinburgh's biggest umbrella but I think When I first started I was very much focusing on the history of the building as to making sure people had a good heritage experience We can never assume that someone isn't coming just to sit and have a spiritual moment In the center of a bustling city and they don't want anything to do with the 900 years of history They want to use it as an active church.
Stephen Preston: So from our perspective, we have to make sure that anyone who comes to this building can have the experience they want to have. That partly comes from the way we try and interpret the building, that comes from making sure that all the uses can be signposted, that you don't come looking for heritage and [00:08:00] think, oh this is just a church, we need to make sure that everyone's aware of when the services are, but also just making sure that the heritage is, is well known.
Stephen Preston: Because I think St Giles has so much history, You go to a York or you go to a Westminster and you can almost feel it, right? The massive scale of the building and the stained glass windows and all that. Whereas St. Giles, we have to tell you the story. So, it's a journey that we are, I wouldn't even say halfway along yet, to try and facilitate everyone's uses of the building.
Stephen Preston: In terms of my day to day, I think it's really tricky to try and focus on the things that I actively want and like to do. So for example today I'm looking at some new interpretation that we're hopefully going to have out in the not too distant future on Mason's Marks but I also have to do as you mentioned some blockbuster filming requests and I think it's partly looking at trying to marry my desires and my aims with what people think St Giles is or can be because I think what people think it is, is a church or a [00:09:00] heritage site.
Stephen Preston: And not necessarily, yeah, blockbuster filming location, or a place to change a baby, or a place that a choir is going to perform later, or installation as an art exhibition. The balancing is tough.
Tom Dawson: Is it a strength as well, though? I suppose it draws so many people in. I mean, that's quite a wonderful thing in a way, isn't it?
Stephen Preston: Oh, absolutely. If I didn't think it was wonderful, I would say no to most of the things. You know, if somebody said we want to do a film, no. Can we spend half an hour here filming a documentary before we open? No. Can we have an art exhibition? I think it's, it's, you're exactly right that it's an opportunity that so many people want to use it for so many things.
Stephen Preston: And I suppose that's part of being 900 years old is that the opportunities kind of present themselves. One of the big things we're looking at at the moment is improving our digital interpretation. We put a request out for a project and so many people applied for it. I thought we were going to get one.
Stephen Preston: But so many people applied for this project that I think it's important that St. Giles is open to as many people as possible because it seems to still have that draw and [00:10:00] that desire to be engaged with.
Tom Dawson: I was seeing a recent example of a kind of digital program I think you worked on, working with the University of Glasgow Games and Gaming Lab.
Tom Dawson: You put together a kind of interactive, would you call it a video game, exploring the history of St. Giles? Is that what you'd call it?
Stephen Preston: We're calling it a video game. A fella came to me recently, one of my colleagues, and said, It's not really a video game, is it? And I said, well, what do you think a video game is?
Stephen Preston: And he said, well, I think it's where you walk through and you complete tasks. And I said, well, this is a game and it's video. But, yeah, it's been a real eye opening experience doing the video game. We have to tell the story of St. Giles architecturally, but doing that non digitally would be incredibly hard to say, here's 900 years of history in a kind of a physical format.
Stephen Preston: So we decided we'd go digitally. If people haven't found interface, Google interface, they're absolutely fantastic. They link businesses, I'm calling this a business, with academics. And I've had a fantastic experience from start to finish with interface in University of Glasgow. But basically, yeah, the interface linked us up with Tim Peacock from University of Glasgow and the video game [00:11:00] kind of went on from there.
Stephen Preston: His researchers were fantastic in researching the history, and we've ended up with this beautiful model of St. Giles changing over its 900 years from the Romanesque building all the way to It's really funny because one of the really good metrics off the back of that is dwell time and how dwell time's improved.
Stephen Preston: And I was expecting the median playtime to be 3 minutes. Turns out it's actually 10, which is maybe longer than I would like people to play it for, but I'm happy they are playing it for as long as they are. And it's right at the front of the experience as well, which means that people get a really nice introduction to St Giles, and then they can kind of take that round with them as they go.
Tom Dawson: You talked about you are a business. Again, that's something as a, you know, place of worship, you have to kind of juggle maintaining a 900 year old building as well as catering to your guests. I mean, what's the mix look like in terms of the income for St Giles?
Stephen Preston: I don't know if the treasurer will thank me for going into too much detail, but basically visitors are invaluable.
Stephen Preston: Our role is to First of all, engage visitors, make sure they're having a good time, but make sure that [00:12:00] that can be realised in donations as well. So we're still free to enter, I like to call it donation entry, although I think HMRC will have thoughts if I go too much into saying entry by donation, but yeah, you can enter and donate if you want to.
Stephen Preston: And I think that's important for us at the moment, because entry to churches and museums, both, is a really tricky path to walk. Because, first of all, If you go to the castle and you pay, I think it's 16 pounds now maybe, that conversation is very overt. You go in for a heritage site, you're paying 16 pounds, that's the value, there you are.
Stephen Preston: Whereas for something like us, people don't know exactly what they're gonna get, they don't exactly know what they want, I suppose, from a church, and maybe for the same from a museum. It's a really tricky balancing act to say, We need you to help support this building. And we need you to do that financially.
Stephen Preston: But we also want you to appreciate it as a heritage site, as a place of worship. Because I can imagine someone coming in for a prayer, might think, oh, I'm not giving you six quid, I'm just coming in to, you know, have a spiritual experience in a [00:13:00] spiritual building. And for them, fair enough, I think. If you're spending half an hour here, and you've derived an awful lot of value in terms of enjoyment, I think it's only fair that we can say, would you like to give us some money for that?
Stephen Preston: And I think as well, hopefully we're not means testing it, that people will give what they're able to give rather than what we might think it is worth to everyone, because that changes, I suppose.
Tom Dawson: Yeah, exactly. What works for you in terms of, you think, encouraging people to donate, if you're kind of giving advice to someone else in your position?
Stephen Preston: We are I'm trying a bit of a new thing, uh, I'm engaging academics to see if we can work out a way to what I'm calling professionalized donations in inverted commas. What I mean by that is to try and message to people what the value of a donation based experience should be. Again, if you go to a charge attraction, that conversation about value is very overt.
Stephen Preston: I've paid my money, I should be getting 10 worth of value. Whereas for us That conversation is a bit trickier because [00:14:00] people might come in thinking great I'm getting this for free and then we've got to try and convince them actually they should give something So I think that's the really important thing for donation based buildings is to say You need to work out exactly when you're having that conversation about value because it isn't an omission thing It's not the same at all.
Stephen Preston: So if you're trying to compete with a charge building And have the conversation at the same time, you're failing. So for us, my take on it is that I've got to make sure people have enjoyed themselves as much as possible. So we have four donation boxes around the building. The entrance box is currently our highest one because people are assuming it's the the entry by admission of donation, I suppose.
Stephen Preston: But the one i'm most interested in is the exit box. If someone came in and they just wanted to sit down out of the rain, But I've grabbed them and I've said have a look at this video game Have a look at this new exhibition on the National Covenant of Scotland and they've ended up spending 49 minutes by accident I'm hoping that if we had can have a conversation towards the exit that says did you enjoy yourself today?
Stephen Preston: They might give some money as a voluntary thing
Tom Dawson: That's really interesting and I suppose it comes [00:15:00] up that argument of even if every one of your visitors Donated a pound you'd have over an extra million pounds a year. I mean it's quite transformational, isn't it?
Stephen Preston: Yeah, well our donation per head is under a pound.
Stephen Preston: So yeah, if we could get it to a pound we'd be laughing I think donation per head is I suppose it's quite a crude System because as soon as you say donation per head everyone's imagining people fishing into their pocket for 50p Rather than the opposite which is some people giving six quid as we ask and the rest giving nothing. So yeah
Tom Dawson: So, as someone whose background was tour guide, you obviously must have a really interesting sense of what engages people and drives people. I remember going on a guided tour at Edinburgh Castle a few years ago. The tour guide was, the entire tour was taking the mick out of the Americans and trying to persuade them that standing on the battlements, looking over the Firth of Forth, they could see North America.
Tom Dawson: It was the North Shore. You must have some interesting stories as a tour guide.
Stephen Preston: Yeah, I think, I don't know how Americans feel about it [00:16:00] because I think there is a narrative in tour guiding, in Scotland especially, which is Americans are the butt of the jokes. I would love Americans to let us know how they feel about that, because I think it must be a bit wary.
Stephen Preston: It must be. For us in St Giles, I remember there was a fella, he ran in one day, he sat at the piano, just in his boxer shorts, and then his friend dumped a load of flour over him. And we still have no idea why that happened, but You know, it was some, I suppose, the use of the church in a different way, whether it was marketing or whether it was just having a weird day.
Stephen Preston: People that we see here, uh, generally, it's so easy to focus on the bad people and say, Oh, you know, we had someone come in today who was mouthing off about the church, asking for donations. But the plethora of folk we see in August is, is absolutely fantastic. I think the funniest thing is with kids who come into the cathedral.
Stephen Preston: I think with kids it's so hard to pitch what the cathedral is to them without kind of trying to preach or anything like that. And I remember one kid I asked, I said, okay, who do you think that is in stained glass window? Now [00:17:00] it says St. Giles above his name. So someone said, Oh, it's St. Giles. I said, yeah.
Stephen Preston: And where's St. Giles from? Someone just guesses Greece. I said, yeah. How do you know he's from Greece? Kids will always guess. the right answer at some point and if they don't guess the right answer they'll guess a fantastic one anyway so you can always guarantee they're going to come up with
Tom Dawson: where would you start if you were just having a chat with someone by the exit what do you start with do you have a particular fact or anecdote or two you usually kind of bring out to engage people in the history of St. Giles.
Stephen Preston: I would usually start with the year, but if they said to me, tell me the best thing, or the funniest thing about St. Giles, I would tell them about, there was a golf competition, it happened in 1798, and two golfers, I'm not sure which club they were from, they must have been from a local club, had a bet as to whether they could hit a golf ball over the top of the crown.
Stephen Preston: So there's a little weathercock at the very top of the crown, could they hit a golf ball over the top of it? And a local newspaper reported on the [00:18:00] event, And the local newspaper said that these two golfers both managed to hit the golf balls over the top of St Giles. Now, there are two reasons I doubt that.
Stephen Preston: The first is that the golf balls in 1798 were what were called featheries. A feathery is, uh, from what I'm told, feathers with a little leather exterior. So, not the easiest thing to hit over the top of St Giles. But the second reason I doubt it is because the golf balls were hit from Parliament Square, which is immediately behind me now.
Stephen Preston: And they landed at supposedly in Advocates Close, which is almost immediately in front of me. So the trajectory, and I'm sorry for people listening and not seeing me, but the trajectory is pretty much I thought the sound effect was excellent there, by the way. Thank you. But actually, if you Google it, I was Googling this not too long ago, you will find Sean Connery pretending to recreate the event.
Stephen Preston: Although he stands in West Parliament Square, and I don't think he actually hits the golf ball, fortunately for us, because of the stained glass might take a knocking. But yeah, if anyone ever asks me for my, my best anecdote about St. Giles, it's that one. Oh, also, actually, up until recently, St. Giles was the last recorded place to have had [00:19:00] storks, the birds, in 1412 in the UK.
Stephen Preston: But I think somewhere in Worcestershire, and they've just tried to reintroduce them, so we might have lost that crown now. Oh, damn them Worcestershire!
Tom Dawson: I mean, I thought the kind of guy in his boxer shorts with flower thrown over him was pretty mad.
Stephen Preston: I assumed it must have been a fringe advert, but then there was no flyers or anything left, so Maybe it was just a dare to go and have flour thrown over him in the cathedral, so, yeah.
Tom Dawson: Just assume everything odd has to do with the Fringe. In August,
Stephen Preston: yes. Is it Occam's razor? Don't look for a holiday explanation when an easy one presents itself.
Tom Dawson: Yeah. So, so what is it like working in the middle of the Fringe? I mean, behind those thick walls now, as you say, as we're speaking, it's kind of going on.
Tom Dawson: What does it do to St Giles? Is it something that brings in a completely different audience you might not discover you? Does it have the opposite effect? I mean, does your footfall go up or does it go down. I'm presuming it goes up quite a lot.
Stephen Preston: So it's, it's actually really interesting and it's um, first of all I should say I'm going to preface this because I'm going to do a bit of fringe bashing.
Stephen Preston: I love the fringe. Lots of Edinburgh locals hate it. I think it's fantastic. They're having the world's largest artists [00:20:00] festival on your doorstep for a month. Love it. I've seen loads of shows already this year and we're only, well, I suppose we're nearly halfway through, but I think the thing is fantastic.
Stephen Preston: But, um, for us at St Giles, I think, and I'd be curious as to what other heritage sites would say, we find it is a competition on people's spend. If they come to Edinburgh with a set amount that they're looking to spend, St. Giles is the first thing that they can go, Great, we don't have to pay for this, we won't bother.
Stephen Preston: So footfall, as you suspect, does go up, but donations and any monetary interaction goes down. Which we can completely appreciate and understand why that's happening. You know, if you've spent 30 quid on tickets and food in a day, are you really going to try and fork out for something that you can have for free?
Stephen Preston: But I also think, in that regard, it's part of the balancing act that we were discussing earlier. Which is, we still do really well in August. It's not a hard luck story at all. And I think if we can provide a bit of solace for people on the Royal Mile. I mean, unfortunately, we're pretty heaving as we speak.
Stephen Preston: I could give you the visitor, how many visitors are in the cathedral now, probably about two, three hundred. [00:21:00] So the solid system quiet is as much as we might like. But if we can, if someone can have had a really hustle and bustle experience on the high street and they go, you know what? I just need two minutes.
Stephen Preston: I'm just going to head into St. Giles, have a sit down. No one's going to bother me. Because obviously you're not allowed to flyer and things in St. Giles. So it can be a real sanctuary, hopefully, for people. And if they do want to read a bit of history and they do end up donating, then that's absolutely brilliant.
Stephen Preston: But if they do just want to have a bit of a sit down from the hustle and bustle, then that's fine. And also we do get involved in the festival. We've got a show on in the international festival currently called 900 Voices. I'm doing a bit of plugging. I don't know if this is going out after the festival is ending.
Stephen Preston: So, and then we've also got celebrity organ recitals and we've got lunchtime concerts that are free as well. So we're hoping people might come in and pick up a bit of music. So yeah, I think it's an absolute fantastic thing. And I think so many heritage sites and churches would give their right arm to have kind of an international arts festival on their doorstep.
Stephen Preston: So yeah, we absolutely love it. Yeah, if we could convince people that St. Giles, you must donate to St. Giles before you do any show scene, maybe we'd [00:22:00] absolutely do it, but no, it's great.
Tom Dawson: Yeah. We must talk about blockbuster filming, because I think Filming is quite an interesting revenue stream in the cultural sector at the moment, and we've been talking to a lot of other organisations about filming tourism.
Tom Dawson: Most famously, I think, St. Giles was in one of the major Marvel film, Avengers Infinity War. Quite a spectacular scene set at the cathedral. I'm interested in what impact that's had again on your visitors? Do you find people coming specifically to St Giles because they've seen it in that film?
Stephen Preston: It's hard to know because uh, unfortunately in our surveying we haven't added saw it in a film to reasons for visiting, which we need to do.
Stephen Preston: I think it is a significant reason. We've had people who are recreating, I don't know if you've seen them online, there's a kind of a trend of Having a picture in front of a landmark, and then, sorry, it's a screenshot from the film in front of a landmark. So we've had a few people asked to go onto the roof so they can get the, I think it's Vision, is it?
Stephen Preston: Who gets chucked through our wall to ask if they can recreate that, and we've had to say, oh no, sorry, we don't really let people onto that part of the roof. [00:23:00] But I think it's, it's a really important part for us of Changing the opinion of St. Giles. When I first came, it was very easy to think of St. Giles as that black hole in the Royal Mile that no locals went to because why would they?
Stephen Preston: What reason would they have to go? And we're trying to make St. Giles seem like an engaging, modern place if you can make a 900 year old building feel modern. But engaged in the kind of zeitgeist, I guess. And doing these blockbuster films is a really nice way for us to do that. So, yeah. Any reason you've got to come to St.
Stephen Preston: Giles, come along. I'd like to give you guys a plug actually for this because we've been doing Filming for a little while now. I'd like to think i'm all right at working it out, but the Ace filming workshop that you've got on the training area is really good. It's fantastic If people are dipping their toe into the world of filming absolutely have a look at that because I think it's very easy for locations managers to Make it seem like you're doing lots of things to them as a favor But actually what was really good was it saying have your fees set out, make sure you know exactly what you're doing and what it's [00:24:00] worth to the film people.
Stephen Preston: And don't be afraid to say no as well, which I think is a really key one that sometimes film companies want the earth. And they say we'll give you loads of money and it'll be fantastic and you'll love it. And then when they come they end up kind of doing things that you kind of think, Oh, I don't know if we should be doing that.
Stephen Preston: Um, so yeah, saying no, I think is a, is an option.
Tom Dawson: Good bit of advice. Looking after the heritage of the building, again, you've got to balance preservation with income generation to fund that preservation. Do you have kind of red lines which say, well this, you know, this is going to be an important source of income, this is going to bring visitors, but actually, maybe this is a step too far?
Tom Dawson: Do you, do you find that balancing act quite tricky sometimes?
Stephen Preston: Yeah, absolutely. So we work reasonably closely with the ministers, so I think if there's ever anything that I'm worried about, I'll go and balance it off and say, what do you think about this? How does this work for you? Uh, there's a film that shall remain nameless, that they wanted to film a wedding scene in the cathedral.
Stephen Preston: And I actually, you know, I didn't know whether we should do that either way. The minister at the time said that we shouldn't do that, and that's fine. But actually, I think the current [00:25:00] minister, um, if I asked him, might change his mind on it. So, I think it changes as to what the interpretation of the space is.
Stephen Preston: One of the funniest restrictions that we have, though, which can be really annoying, if people want to do a concert and they want to do a reception before the concert, our floor is bright white limestone. So, we don't allow tea and coffee. Or red wine, which is one of the most annoying red lines when someone says, Oh, we'd love to do a reception.
Stephen Preston: And we go, yeah, no red wine. And they go, I'll go somewhere else. But I think that's the thing that to my mind, the red lines almost draw themselves. That if somebody came in, yeah, we had a Bollywood film a few weeks ago and they said, Oh, we want, we want to change the building into, I think it was a 19th century mansion.
Stephen Preston: And we said, well, why? And they said, oh, well, that's just what the scene demands. And we said, well, we're a 900 year old church, you know, you can use us for that, but we probably wouldn't let you put up a load of building work in the buildings, change it to a mansion, because what would be the point of that?
Stephen Preston: First of all, there's loads of 19th century mansions around Scotland that you could use instead, but second of all, you're gonna be paying us a lot to close our doors to visit us for a day to not use us.
Tom Dawson: And also, I'm really interested, [00:26:00] uh, again something really unique about St. Giles. You are the home of the Knights of the Thistle.
Stephen Preston: So the Thistle Chapel is one of the most requested things to, to go into. It's, an angel playing bagpipes is in the Thistle Chapel and it's about the size of my phone. The angel playing bagpipes is that size and so many people on tours outside, they say you've got to go into St. Giles because they've got an angel playing bagpipes.
Stephen Preston: Obviously the bagpipes being a big Scottish draw and it's tiny and I think, God, you've missed all this other history. Just for this tiny little sculpture. And unfortunately, due to a load of thefts, that happened about five or six years ago now. In fact, more than that. We can't leave the Thistle Chapel completely open access, so it's got to be a member of staff or a volunteer that takes you in there.
Stephen Preston: So for the fact that people are asking for it every, every few minutes. But the Thistle Chapel itself was built in 1911 to house the Order of the Thistle. The Order of the Thistle, if anyone knows the Order of the Garter in England, then it's the equivalent in Scotland. But basically, it's the highest order of chivalry or heraldry in Scotland.
Stephen Preston: And it recognises people have done good work for [00:27:00] Scotland to advance the name of Scotland internationally. At least, I say that. That's what we assume. Because relative to other orders, like the Order of the Bath, the Order of St John, things like that, the monarch chooses both the Thistle and the Garter.
Stephen Preston: And we're never told specifically why someone has been chosen for the honour. We assume, but we're never told exactly. So, it's a really important part of St. Giles in terms of the chapel being visited for its heritage. And it's a really beautiful arts and crafts example of a construction. But then also it becomes, again, an important part of what St.
Stephen Preston: Giles is, which is almost the civic centre of worship and recognising these people who've done good things for Scotland in a formal way, I suppose. Brilliant.
Tom Dawson: Alright, so what's next for St Giles? What are you working on at the moment?
Stephen Preston: Improving interpretation. That is entirely what we're working on.
Stephen Preston: When I came ten years ago, we weren't allowed to put any signs anywhere that told anyone anything. It all had to be done by humans. Now, I know a lot of people would think that a human interaction is the best form of interpretation possible. [00:28:00] Most of the time I agree with that, but then I'm also aware in our current climate, we have to be aware of people who just don't want to speak to people.
Stephen Preston: There are loads of folk who, all they want to do is read, all they want to do is listen, all they want to do is play. And that might not involve humans, so I think for us what I want to do is try and interpret St. Giles in the best way possible to as many people as possible. And whether that's introducing video games, whether it's 3D scanning the building and then presenting that in a physical sense.
Stephen Preston: I think just making sure that it's impossible for someone to leave St. Giles and say, What was that? You know, they have to have done something that told them something about the building. So, yeah, I think that's our key goal going forward.
Tom Dawson: It's a really lovely way of thinking about it, that, yeah, someone has come out and had that experience.
Tom Dawson: In the last ten years, have you noticed people's expectations when they visit somewhere like St. Giles? Has that changed? Have you noticed any trends and behavioural changes?
Stephen Preston: Absolutely, in terms of I think we have asked more of the visitor than when I [00:29:00] started, um, because when I started you could come in the door and there was no direction at all.
Stephen Preston: You could come in and it was completely free flow, which definitely has its advantages in you let someone find their own experience, but if you don't give anyone any guidance then I think you're a bit of a loss. You're on the back foot. So, The more we put out there, the more there is to be criticized, I think.
Stephen Preston: But I think that's a good thing. Although, except for one, one time we did an exhibition on witches, not too long ago, actually it was five years ago, it was pre Covid now, and someone criticized it because we hadn't taken enough of an angle on how witches work. Witchcraft was almost an anti feminist movement, which I think actually we did do.
Stephen Preston: I felt like we covered that sufficiently, but I guess the fact that we're putting something out means that someone will criticize it. And also, I really like the one way system that we have now, which was a kind of pre slash post COVID thing. We were kind of gently introducing a one way system and then had to because of COVID.
Stephen Preston: I like it because it takes people on the journey we want to take them on. But I can [00:30:00] appreciate people might say, well, I just want to go over there. How do I get over there? And then I say, Oh, you've got to go all the way around. And they go, Oh God. But I actually think it's a really important thing to do to try and help visitors experience what could be an inaccessible space if we don't give them interpretation and we don't give them a one way system, are you just supposed to take in the information by osmosis?
Stephen Preston: And I think there is a different expectation of the value of places like this, but also as specifically for donation based building, I think there's been a bit of a revision of the attitude of. You're asking me for money in a church? That's not acceptable. Whereas now people are aware that churches cost X thousand pounds a day to keep this place open.
Stephen Preston: So I think people are aware of that monetary incentive to do that and especially, and this is another plug for St. Giles, I think the Church of England has a big old fund to keep churches in good nick. The Church of Scotland doesn't. So St. Giles is relying completely on visitors, making sure that they have a good time.
Stephen Preston: They want to help the building stay open.
Tom Dawson: That's really interesting you've seen that change. Do you ever get a kind of pinch me [00:31:00] moment of like, ah, this could only happen. I'm really kind of lucky to experience this. Do you ever get that?
Stephen Preston: Today you've put me on a good day in that occasionally I'm in at eight o'clock.
Stephen Preston: So I'm in two hours before anyone comes in. And the two times, if anyone's thinking about coming to St. Giles, come early morning or late evening in spring or autumn, because it's absolutely incredible that Sometimes you just have to sit and watch the light come through the stained glass windows and I can completely, I'm not necessarily, or I don't really know what my belief is in any sense but that is incredibly spiritual, whatever spiritual means, when you sit down and the light comes through and you're the only person in, maybe I haven't even turned the lights on yet, and the sun's rising and oh, it's just absolutely incredible, it's one of, yeah.
Stephen Preston: And I think actually the only church that I've really felt that in, when it's been open to everyone and I've visited, The light coming through the windows there is incredibly spiritual. I think that's a fantastic time. But my other favorite thing to do is, I love to stand. So we've got a staff door, a north door.
Stephen Preston: People have seen it. It's [00:32:00] not necessarily only for staff, but, you know, that's the one we use. And what I love to do is to go and stand there in August and see as many people coming past as there are and then do that in January again and there's nobody there. So a cold Thursday morning in January, nobody's there at all.
Stephen Preston: And I think there's probably a lot of meaning that could be drawn out of, you know, make hay while the sun shines in terms of visitors being here in August and not in January. Um, yeah, I think St. Charles is such a special place that most days I have a painstaking moment and I think, oh yeah, this is, uh, this is, I still work here and after 10 years I'm still delighted.
Stephen Preston: You know, I don't feel that there's any staleness of, of, oh God, I've got to go in there again on Monday, you know, that type of thing. So, no, yeah.
Tom Dawson: That's brilliant. That's lovely to hear. That's a, that's a brilliant answer. A good tip, I shall follow up on that next time I'm in Edinburgh. Brilliant. You've also been the centre of some really important national events, obviously throughout the history, but most recently Queen Elizabeth's lying in state.
Tom Dawson: What was that like to work with such an important, sensitive occasion?
Stephen Preston: [00:33:00] So we'd always been told that if it happened in Scotland, we might have a phone call that says, you've got to come back from wherever you are. And I had just proposed to my fiancé in Keswick in the Lake District. The day after was when we heard, so I quickly got a train up and got back to Edinburgh.
Stephen Preston: It's a really interesting Thing it almost is a nice summary of our conversation in that it was all parts of the church being used for exactly what they're Supposed to be used for in terms of the heritage site, you know, regardless of yeah, you believed it was a turning point in history It was a church being used as a church And then also it was really crazy to see the queues and the people in the queues and how it was affecting people You know, some people were probably just there just to say yeah, I went some people felt that they had a deep Connection with the queen and so they were having quite an emotional moment.
Stephen Preston: So for us to be You Walking around, it was almost a kind of the, the concentrated version of what the point of St. Giles is. I think we were all delighted that everything went to plan. It was a brilliant moment for St. Giles to show what the point of it is.
Tom Dawson: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Thank you, Stephen. It's been an absolute pleasure talking [00:34:00] to you.
Stephen Preston: Thanks for having me. It's been absolutely fantastic. And, do you know, I love doing things like this because it makes you question where you've got to and whether you're doing the right thing. And, you know, you asking me some questions, I'm already thinking, Oh, actually, I need to send someone an email about that because I don't know if this is quite the right, the right tactic.
Tom Dawson: That's what I'm here for, Stephen. That's what I'm here for.
Tom Dawson: Thanks for listening to the Arts and Culture Podcast from the Association for Cultural Enterprises. And a big thank you to our sponsors, King McGaw. See you next time.