
Prominent Scottish museum selected as one of best in UK
Tracey Smith, Learning Programme Producer – Families, from V&A Dundee said: 'Our team are all thrilled to be shortlisted for the Family Friendly Museum Award, particularly from our friends at Kids in Museums who champion creativity and family-centred museum experiences.
'It means so much to us to have our programme recognised in an award voted for and judged by families themselves. We'd like to share a huge thank you to everyone who nominated V&A Dundee and we hope to see you in the museum for lots more family fun across the summer!'
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Hundreds of nominations were whittled down to a list of 18 heritage attractions across the UK, including four in the 'Best Medium museum' category; the V&A, the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea, The Amelia Scott in Tunbridge Wells, and the Great North Museum: Hancock in Newcastle.
The shortlisted museums will now be visited by 'undercover' families who will assess the venues during the summer holidays against Kids in Museums' Manifesto.
The awards will be announced at a ceremony in October.
The V&A opened in September 2018, and has served as a vital aspect of the revitalisation of Dundee's waterfront.
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Scotsman
18 minutes ago
- Scotsman
Hospital Tuesday joins Moustache Wednesday on superstition list
Seymour Mace Does Things With Stuff is on at 12.45pm each day at Stand 2 Comedians are a fairly superstitious bunch of people at the best of times. Many of us, myself included, don't like to be paid cash before we go on stage in case we have a bad gig. Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... This, of course, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. First of all, if you do have a bad gig after accepting cash beforehand, at least you still have the money in your pocket. Secondly, over the years I've worked for a number of very dodgy bookers who have mysteriously gone missing at the end of a show. In some cases I've had to hang around for hours before they reappear with my fee. In one particular instance, it took several days and an unscheduled trip to Airdrie before the promoter handed over a brown envelope in a pub car park. It must have looked very suspect. Thankfully no one had been tailing me. Obviously not. I'd driven to Airdrie. Only a complete idiot or a lemming would had followed me there. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Anyway, superstition goes into overdrive during the Edinburgh Fringe. Performers are utterly paranoid about doing anything which might jinx their show. All kinds of superstitions, traditions and folklore have sprung up over the years. Many days have been given names as they are allegedly where things go wrong or audiences don't turn up. We have Black Monday, Moustache Wednesday, Hangover Sunday and Dead Thursday. However, the experiences of myself and my temporary housemate Seymour Mace may establish a new superstition, a new day to avoid. We're calling it Hospital Tuesday. Seymour is lodging with my family for the month. On Tuesday afternoon, he was cycling down Dublin Street after his show at The Stand. He was approaching the junction with Albany Street. It's a really dangerous crossing and I've had some near misses there in the car. Traffic coming along Albany Street and Abercromby Place seem to think they have priority and I've had to slam on the anchors several times in the past. Despite Seymour having right of way, a car pulled out in front of him and he ended up crashing into it and hitting his head on its windscreen. He was rushed to A&E at the Royal Infirmary where they patched him up as best they could. He arrived back at our place at 2am with 20 stitches on his head in a wound so severe it looked like he'd been to TV studio make-up. He also fractured several metatarsals and was wearing a moon boot which made him walk like the pirate in Family Guy. This all happened exactly 52 weeks after I was taken into A&E in an ambulance when I had a mysterious seizure. I was kept in for three days and had to cancel several shows. Seymour had to cancel Wednesday and Thursday but is back on stage this weekend. So we're now calling the Tuesday of Week 2, Hospital Tuesday. I joked to our other lodger, Irish comedian Ian Coppinger that it will be his turn next year. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Anyway, go and see Seymour Mace Does Things With Stuff at 12.45pm at Stand 2. He needs to sell tickets to pay for a new bike. But be careful if you're out and about in week 2 next year. Hospital Tuesday will be August 18.


The Sun
10 hours ago
- The Sun
Five savvy ways to upgrade your bedroom to hotel-style comfort
COMING back from a summer break, you may be missing the calm of a hotel bedroom and want to improve your own sleeping space. A few low-cost touches can upgrade a boring bedroom to the place of your dreams. CLEAR CLUTTER: Hotels have clear, calm surfaces, which is easy to achieve at home. Sweep away your odds and ends and only have essentials on display. Store other items out of sight or in matching baskets. Tidy and hide cables and keep devices to a minimum. CALMING COLOURS: If you're handy with a paintbrush, decorating with a soothing colour will give you the bedroom of your dreams. Whites, beiges and soft greys are all relaxing colours, and you can add accents of colour with cushions, pictures and plants. Look out for paint deals to cut costs. Cotton sheets with a thread count of 300 or more will give you a luxe lie-in. Go for white bedding for a hotel feel and get a soft topper to upgrade a standard mattress. Stunning hotel that is the perfect balance between wellness and luxury If funds are tight, simply ironing your bedding will instantly give it a crisper, smarter feel. Add cushions for an instant upgrade. RIGHT LIGHTS: Modern LED bulbs are not only rated by lumens for brightness, but also have a colour temperature measured in kelvins. In a bedroom go for 2,000 to 3,000 kelvins to get a warm glow. A dimmable bulb can also be great for changing the mood. You can now get inexpensive cordless USB lights, which are perfect for small spaces. ACCESSORISE: A few carefully chosen low-cost extras will give your room individuality. A framed picture or photo of a special place makes a room feel personal. Faux flowers in a vase add luxury. Use a reed diffuser in a calming scent to change your mood as you step through your bedroom door. All prices on page correct at time of going to press. Deals and offers subject to availability. 7 Deal of the day 7 RELAX on the folding wooden sun lounger from Argos, complete with a classic cream cushion, down from £100 to £50. SAVE: £50 Cheap treat 7 SCOOP up a tasty ice-cream deal with a 900ml tub of strawberry Carte D'or, down from £3.75 to £2.75 with a Tesco Clubcard. Top swap 7 GET your pet the Morris & Co Blackthorn pet box bed, £65 for a medium at Dunelm, or try the William Morris pet bed from Aldi, £19.99. Shop & save GET set for the new term with a Kallax desk and Loberget chair, now £55 at IKEA for the store's Family members, normally £79. Hot right now has an exclusive code for 20 per cent off refurbished orders at Hurry, the offer ends tomorrow. PLAY NOW TO WIN £200 7 JOIN thousands of readers taking part in The Sun Raffle. Every month we're giving away £100 to 250 lucky readers - whether you're saving up or just in need of some extra cash, The Sun could have you covered. Every Sun Savers code entered equals one Raffle ticket. The more codes you enter, the more tickets you'll earn and the more chance you will have of winning!


Times
13 hours ago
- Times
Rosanna Cooney: I'm a luxury spa consultant and these are Ireland's best
Unless you've been living under a hot rock, you'll know that mobile saunas have been popping up at pace around Ireland. From windswept shorelines to city car parks, these wooden barrels and hot boxes have become community hubs for sauna lovers seeking heat, connection and a time-out. But a second wave of sauna culture has been quietly breaking across the island. These are sustainably built, design-led spaces with privacy at their core, and they are quickly becoming an essential draw of boutique nature-based stays in places like Fernwood Farm in Connemara, Co Galway. Drawing inspiration from Scandinavian-style cabins, the lakeside sauna at Fernwood was designed by Aidan Conway of Marmar Architects and mimics an oversized birdhouse. 'We were keen to create a unique feeling for our sauna and wanted it to feel like none other,' says the Fernwood co-owner Anne Ashe. The Fernwood sauna is emblematic of the rapid development of sauna architecture in Ireland, which has gone from standard flat-packs to permanent bespoke structures that work in conversation with their environment. This follows the European trend of sauna buildings as architectural jewels and places that foster a deeper relationship to nature. At Fernwood guests follow a sauna polku, the traditional Finnish ritual of walking a sauna path that physically takes you from house to sauna, but also prepares you for the transition from one mental state to another. It is an opportunity to slow down and follow the organic patterns of nature along a winding, narrow track. 'The walk to the sauna through our native woodlands gives guests time to observe all the nature on the lakeshore,' Ashe says. 'As with all of our buildings, we wanted to create as little impact on the environment as possible. Every single piece of wood was carried in by hand, and the only time a machine was used was to lift the sauna window. We were grateful we only had to remove one tree in the whole building process.' • Should we all be taking regular saunas? Creating unobtrusive sauna spaces that blend into their surroundings is a key part of this new movement. At the Fermanagh lakeside hideaway Finn Lough, which gained worldwide fame in 2021 when its treehouse domes went viral online, two saunas were added to the grounds in 2017. Both the lakeside sauna and aromatherapy sauna were designed in collaboration with Rebelo de Andrade, the award-winning Portuguese design studio. To fulfil Finn Lough's brief that the saunas needed to look like part of the landscape, the cabins were modelled on heritage farm buildings. Locally sourced corrugated iron and burnt larch were used as cladding. The strange thing is that sweat baths are already part of the indigenous Irish landscape. While there has been an explosion in the popularity of saunas on this island in past decade, it is a misconception that this is a new trend. • I've stayed in over 100 places in Ireland. These are my favourites Ireland has an ancient sweating culture going back 3,000 years to the Bronze Age, when our ancestors built hazelwood sweat lodges and gathered around heated stones. Hundreds of pre-famine stone sweathouses are still found around the country, and architectural traces of the Victorian Turkish bath phenomenon, a health craze for the bourgeois that began in the 1850s in a hydrotherapy centre in Blarney, Co Cork, are still visible in Dublin and Cork city. So while the Finnish sauna is the latest incarnation of sweat bathing to take hold in Ireland, it is far from the first. One of the puzzling questions around the interest in sauna culture is 'why now'? There have been Finnish saunas in Ireland for decades, built as part of leisure centres, spas and swimming pools, but these tended to be unloved corners that people used for a few minutes before heading for the hot tub. That aversion seemed to change when saunas were returned to the wild and the connection to nature was re-established. It started with mobile saunas that pulled up to the seashore in response to the resurgence in sea swimming during the pandemic years. Those pioneering saunas have now been reimagined by boutique stays where biophilic experiences such as forest bathing and saunas have replaced traditionally indoor-based spa treatments. Saunas offer the chance to slow down and rest, and can also release a boost of feelgood endorphins in the body, helping to fulfil the promise of these places where guests will feel better checking out than they did checking in. At Deerstone, the sustainable retreat centre near Laragh, Co Wicklow, built by the husband and wife Kevin Nowlan and Kirsty Foynes, a fourth sauna for guests has just opened. By the Avonmore River and surrounded by mature trees, this sauna was specifically built for practising pirtis, the Baltic style of sauna that focuses on bringing elements of the natural world into the heat. Pirtis originates from Lithuania, where a third of the country is covered in forest, and it tends to be a guided session, using leaf whisks to boost circulation, alongside salt scrubs and honey masks to pamper the skin and the soul. 'Three of our staff have just completed the level two training with the Lithuanian bath master Birute Masiliauskiene,' Nowlan says. 'We are now planning on offering experiences for individuals and couples on site, starting this autumn.' This use of the sauna as a warm enticement for guests to spend more time in nature and to feel the benefits of connecting with their surroundings is echoed in many unique stays across Ireland, from Common Knowledge, the non-profit social enterprise in the Burren, Co Clare, which has just opened a floating bog sauna for guests, to the garden sauna of the Native micro-hotel in Ballydehob, Co Cork. Native's sauna was designed by Simon Ronan's landscape architecture studio, Studio SRLA, using alder wood interiors, rock wool insulation and locally grown and milled Douglas fir cladding. Part of the motivation for Common Knowledge and Native in building saunas is to allow their guests to experience nature in all forms and all weathers, so that they appreciate it, respect it and want to protect it. 'Saunas in nature can be beautiful examples of this mutually beneficial relationship,' says Didi Ronan, the co-owner of Native. 'They offer a challenging yet rewarding exercise where one can appreciate the natural setting, but also because you can bring in the landscape's benefits through oils, dried meadow flowers, herbal scrubs and teas.' Ever since the chaos of the pandemic, when people's concerns about their health and wellbeing surged, investing in wellness has become a priority for those who can afford it. For some this means personal training, subscriptions to meditation apps and splashing out on fitness trackers. For ultra-high-net-worth individuals it means spending up to €5 million on home spas and luxury poolhouses. Spa4, a spa and wellness consultancy based in Northern Ireland, has worked with the likes of Center Parcs, Adare Manor and the Address Collective, Sligo, on revamping their spa offerings in the post-Covid era. More space, more technology and more of a biophilic (nature-based) approach is now demanded by guests seeking luxury spa getaways, but the company has also built up a client base of people in Ireland prepared to invest millions of euros on state-of-the-art home spas. 'People have been more aware of their health and wellbeing after Covid, when no one knew what was coming and everyone was spending more time at home,' Darren McGarry, chief executive of Spa4, says. 'Before Covid it was nearly a rush to burn out, to prove that you were working so hard, and if you didn't burn out there was a belief you weren't trying. There has been a change in that attitude now. 'In the last two years we've done a very, very high-end poolhouse in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland,' he continues, 'and the total running on that was about €5 million.' Spa4 worked with the interior architects Millimetre Design to create this poolhouse, featuring a sauna, steamroom, snow shower and meditation room wrapped around a pool with a moveable floor so the space can be used as a venue for events. 'Since then it has kind of exploded. You'd be very surprised at the level of wealth in Ireland,' McGarry says. About 15 per cent of Spa4's project work comes from the Republic of Ireland, where it currently has four multimillion-euro poolhouses under construction, and two more about to come online. The majority of their business comes from London, where 'there are no budgets', Markus Stasser, sales manager at Spa4, says. The clients that Spa4 works with tend to want to create spaces that function for their whole family while also reflecting their personal interests. One businessman wanted to incorporate elements from Northern Ireland into his London home spa, so Spa4 looked to the old Crumlin Road Gaol in Belfast, sourcing roof beams and doors from the site, stripping the wood back and drying it out. This historically significant wood was then used to build the sauna. Rosanna Cooney is a journalist and the author of the bestseller Sweathouse: The New and Ancient Irish Sauna Tradition (Irelandia Press €31.99). To order a copy go to