Stirling may have a castle that is every bit as splendid as Edinburgh's and a place in Scottish history that is second to none, but it was always on a bit of hiding to nothing this year.

Leaving aside the naivety (to be kind) with which the council set about appointing someone to run it, Stirling 2014, a Year Of Homecoming cultural celebration built upon the 700th anniversary of the Battle Of Bannockburn, had some pretty stiff competition from its civic big sister, Glasgow, to the south.

Given that Scotland's largest city managed to hijack ownership of the Ryder Cup, which was happening even further north, as a coda to a glorious summer of sport and delegate Stirling the supporting role of car park, you might be excused ignorance of Stirling 2014 at all.

Still to come is the inaugural Scottish Paranormal Festival, but the Stirling 2014 programme is winding down now, and for many of those involved, the culmination came on Wednesday of this week. And this was a "many" that really meant something.

The stage of the city's Albert Halls could barely contain the participants for the premiere of the less-than-snappily-titled Songs From The Enchanted Garden: Songs Of Heroes, Villains And Colourful Characters Of Stirling And Clackmannanshire. In total, some 640 school children, mostly of primary age, were involved in the project, and a significant number formed a choir under the direction of the ever-galvanising composer and chorus-master Stephen Deazley.

The youngsters were marshalled by 20 teachers for a project that drew on the talents of 16 professional artists. Most visible of those was an all-star band led by Lau's Martin Green and including Louis Abbott of Admiral Fallow, playing a new set of songs, using all the forces at their disposal (with the addition of a youth jazz ensemble at one point), composed by Green and Karine Polwart.

Polwart's lyrical starting point had been a vast storywriting project by the young people, taking its cue from the project's subtitle, and delving equally into local history and the fertile imaginations of the children.

They had come up with artwork as well, and we saw how that had been translated into film and animation projected on four screens above the participants, intercut with live hand-held video of the performance.

The production values of Songs From The Enchanted Garden were very high, and at its heart was a suite of songs that embraced a huge range of musical styles and nodded to such diverse influences as Michael Marra (Matsuo's Welcome To Muckhart) and Harry Partch (Green's own cutlery-deploying musical instrument), and included at least one hit tune, Shine, that I fancy Deazley may deploy with other fortunate youngsters.

It would be good to see the score have a further life in some form (it was recorded and filmed on the night), because Stirling and Clackmannan education's cultural coordinator, Clare Hoare, pulled together a piece of work that seemed to me to break exciting new ground in how modern musicians and schools can work together on a grand scale. If for nothing else, Stirling 2014 should certainly be remembered for that.