Albert meets Pudsy
Neil and I visited BBC Scotland's new £188 million headquarters this afternoon. We were guests of BBC Children in Need. Recently SAMYP received an award of £87,000 to develop work among children and families in our community here in Bo'ness. We are looking forward to developing a first class service to children and young families. Already we have seen quite spectacular success over the years in our youth work. This award, is an endorsement of our present work among youth, and will help us build on this success as we work with younger children and their families. We look forward to taking some of our young people through to Glasgow in the Summer to experience the scale and creativity of the new building at Pacific Quay in Glasgow.
We had an interesting afternoon in the building which will eventually be home to 1,320 workers. Our guide boasted their 34,000sq m building is the last word in digital design and claim it will become "a living, breathing, creative hub".
An open-plan environment means that the building also has the potential to be a hi-touch place.The central feature of the building is a huge staircase rising through the five floors. Called "the street", managers and those engaged with programme production will be able to interact more easily as they go about their work.
The five-storey glass-box building now houses three fully digital TV studios. One of them, at 790sq m, is only surpassed in size by the studio capacity at the BBC's television centre HQ in London. We were told that the reception area will allow visitors to log on to computers, listen to different radio and TV output and even try their hand at presenting the weather. This area is hoped to be visited by many school children.
All this talk of new buildings got me really excited thinking about the plans w have for the redevelopment of the church buildings.
