The routine maintenance of council houses included the painting of the front doors every few years. Tenants were not allowed to paint their own front doors in a colour of their choice. In Glenrothes the head of the Direct Labour Organisation, would simply repeat the existing colours or, would use a different set of colours if instructed by the architects. In the older areas of the town this had been going on for nearly 30 years. As part of a major environmental improvement project in one of those areas, the architects invited me to come up with a colour scheme for the front doors. Recent new legislation had allowed tenants in the new towns to buy their houses and I documented the way in which those who did so immediately transformed their properties by changing their colour, building balconies and erecting fences and pergolas among other things. They were exerting their own identity on the exterior of their homes. I had been to Paris to meet the architect/artist Bernard Lassus and was attracted by his research and writing on what he described as, 'Les habitants paysagistes,' literally, 'dweller landscapers.' This phenomenon, which seems to be more prevalent in France than in the UK, was the practice of people decorating their exterior walls, gardens and yards with colour, mosaics, sculptures and other artefacts. It was, Lassus believed, a serious and deeply fundamental activity for them and he had gone on to use these ideas in new housing developments for which he acted as consultant on the surface finishes. I went to see some of the results in Dijon and in Evry and featured them, as well as much other material, in a small book entitled, 'Artist and Buildings', published by the Scottish Arts Council. At the same time I was influenced by Colin Ward of the Town and Country Planning Association who had written extensively and passionately about the tenant control of council housing. He argued that a sense of responsibility could only be achieved when tenants shared in the ownership of their homes. Finally I had read articles by John Turner, an architect who had worked in South America on housing for the inhabitants of the favellas. His resounding message was that the word 'housing' was not a noun but an adverb; not an object, but an activity. For my colour scheme I armed myself with a colour swatch from a paint manufacturer and went knocking on the doors of every house in the area inviting tenants to choose a colour for their front door. This action was, in the main, met with incredulity. People thought I was joking and I had to prove that I was serious and was actually a member of the Development Corporation. One said that she had been living in that house for 25 years and no one had ever asked her about the colour of her front door. Apart from one or two who didn't care what colour their front door was or said any colour except.... the rest made very specific choices. These were based on their favourite colours, the colours of their hallway, curtains and other such things. Armed with this information I 'designed' the colour scheme for each street on the elevation drawings and signed each sheet indicating that it was my colour scheme. It was approved and the details sent to the painters who duly painted all the doors. This was an unprecedented act at the time. If I had disclosed that the tenants had in fact selected the colours for their own front doors the colour scheme would not have gone ahead.

As the scale and scope of the opportunities for work increased the Development Corporation agreed to my proposal to set up one-year apprenticeships for graduating art students. Over the years six graduates came to work with me. They got a house and a reasonable wage. All of them were able to develop their own ideas which contributed enormously to the breadth of art works in the town. The first was Stanley Bonnar, a graduate of Dundee, who created one of the town's most enduring works, the hippos. After his year with me he went on to become the 'town artist' of East Kilbride. Simon Jones graduated from Barnet College of Art and was employed by Stevenage after his year with me. Hugh Graham, an Edinburgh graduate, spent two years with me and has since worked as an artist for a number of different agencies in Glasgow. John Gray studied at Aberdeen and has been employed in the planning department of Dundee City Council since leaving Glenrothes. The others were George Legg from Edinburgh and Ian Swan from Dundee - I do not know what happened to them. I was also able to take on a number of 16 year old school leavers under 'job creation' schemes. It was so good to have these young people around. They were keen to learn and they learned so much that the studio became part educational and I wondered at the time if the two years they worked with us could not be taken into account as a preparation for further study in art education. It seemed that the studio of artists had become a centre of creative energy. It was like a stone being thrown into a pond and as the ripples spread out other creative practices began to be generated in theatre, crafts and writing.

On the departure of Merlyn Williams John Coghill became the Chief Architect and Planning Officer. We often discussed the possibility for the further development of the arts in the town. Having read in the press that there was a shortage of studio space for artists to work in, a 19th century stable block, in an estate that had once been the seat of the Balfours of Balbirnie, was converted into housing and studios for artists and craftspeople to live and work. Eight moved in with their families. One of the lodge houses to the estate was designated the 'writer's cottage' and, in co-operation with the Scottish Arts Council, was offered rent-free annually to a different writer. Among these were the film writer Douglas Eadie, the actor and writer Harry Stamper, the poet and anthologist Alan Bold, the poet Alan Jackson and the actor John Bett. A few of them stayed on in the town renting council houses and, in the case of Bold lived and worked there till he died. This was a significant infusion of creative talent into a town of 35.000 people. When one compares this to some city housing estates with an equivalent population, one could conclude that Glenrothes was in fact well-endowed in this respect.

Around 1970 I attended a conference called, 'What Kind of Scotland?', organised by Bill Tait, editor of the contemporary literary and political magazine, 'Scottish International.' It was held in the George Square Theatre of Edinburgh University. The programme noted that there would be a reading of a new play then being developed by John McGrath and the 7-84 theatre company. I was to witness one of the most momentous theatrical experiences of my life as, John Bett, Dolina Maclennan, Elizabeth Maclennan, Alex Norton, Bill Paterson and the rest did the first public presentation of,'The Cheviot,The Stag and The Black, Black Oil.' At the end of it the audience of 400 or so, including Norman and Janey Buchan, Fr Anthony Ross and a then unknown Brian Wilson, stood and clapped for what seemed like a very long time. The theatre had never seen anything like it nor would it ever again. We repaired to the Catholic University Chaplaincy across George Square for a ceilidh. The ceilidh after the performance became a major part of future presentations as the company went on a 17,000 mile tour with the play. I saw it in Kirkcaldy and again at the Lyceum in Edinburgh. But I was not at any of the last Lyceum shows when, with the demand for tickets being so great, the 'gods', which had been closed off for a number of years, had to be reopened to accommodate the numbers demanding to see it. The play was filmed in 1973 by BBC Television and, in the Abbotsford bar in Rose Street, in Edinburgh, Dolina asked me to spread the word around for people to watch out for the broadcast due in the coming January. I duly did so but January came and went as did February and March. Much later Dolina told me why. There had been a General Election that spring and the Labour Government had put pressure on the BBC to pull it from the schedules. It played later in the year.