Donald Smith

Curator of Tradfest

Favourite room: The backroom

THOUGH Alison and I were both brought up in or around Stirling, we have lived in Edinburgh all our working lives. We've been in this house 30 years and our five kids grew up here.

The house is on the edge of the old south side of Edinburgh. I describe it as being in the foothills of Arthur's Seat.

The area has a very Scottish feel to it and it's very settled. People tend to stay for a long time.

It is part of a terrace of up-and-down villa flats. They are set quite high, and the front of the house looks right on to the Pentland hills.

Most of the flats in the row have two bedrooms and a box room but this one at the end had four bedrooms and a box room so with five children, that was the appeal.

It was built in 1913 and we are only the third owners.

We are the last row of stone terraces. Below us it is bungalows and I always say to the neighbours that between you and me is the First World War and the Depression. It is literally where the old south side stone cottages stop.

My favourite place in the house is not a large; it's what you might call a backroom and kitchen and for generations of Scots that was the whole house. There is still a little bit of that atmosphere.

It is quite a long, narrow room, with an old, high-backed church pew running all the way down one wall alongside a long table which leads to a wee window at the bottom, which looks right on to the main lion's haunch of Arthur's Seat and a garden below.

It is a social space so that is where people eat, chat and we've had lots of wee sessions in there, what I call "kitchen ceilidhs". We've been collecting Scottish art all our lives and I've organised a lot of exhibitions, so everywhere there are pictures and sculptures.

Fireside chair

This old-fashioned, wooden storyteller's chair evokes that idea of people relaxing in front of the fire and conversations getting up and then somebody launching into a story.

Storytelling involves humour and humanity and also a wee touch of magic and wonder, a sense of the supernatural. It's been an important part of my personal and professional life.

This chair has featured as a prop at innumerable formal storytelling events and theatre shows all over Scotland because it is so handy. It came out of a secondhand shop. There is quality and design in it but it's simple, not flashy. I've had to stick it back together several times on its travels. It's a chair with a few stories to tell.

Piano

I don't play, but Alison and a couple of the kids do. To me, the piano is about the importance of live music. Obviously, we have radio and CDs, but it the traditional Scottish get-together, where people share live stories and make their own entertainment, is really important. Live music brings a house to life. I like that the piano is not a separated object in a music room, but there in the midst of everything and the mess of things all over it. It is just part of the everyday.

Shepherd's crook

I part-funded my way through university by working summers, and sometimes the lambing season, on a big hill farm near Stirling. It was no easy ticket. It involved lifting hay bales by hand and doing huge sheep shearings and with me being the unskilled "orra loon" [odd job boy], I'd be sent in to wrestle a 20-stone Leicester tup to the ground, if it didn't wrestle me to the ground first. The shepherds came from all around to work together at these shearings. The work was always accompanied by banter and humour and there was a social element to it. I was lucky to experience the back-end of that traditional way of life, which is gone now.

The top shepherd gave me this crook as a present when I left. He was the most bad-tempered man and then at the end he said: "I've made you this." It's a proper working shepherd's crook. Being in the hills for that time, confirmed my real love of the Scottish landscape and of walking. That is something which has accompanied my interest in storytelling and in the old, traditional ways of life across Scotland.

Owl sculpture

This is beautifully-made and captures a little of that sense of the mystery of the night. It was made by Harry Gilchrist. He didn't go to art college, he was a carriage-maker for the Queen. Then he worked on the Polaris submarine as a fabricator and through that he got this notion of the potential of metal as a creative medium. He is particularly well-known for his bird sculptures. We didn't know anything about him at the time, we just thought it was beautiful piece of art. Original art doesn't have to be bought for thousands of pounds from posh galleries. There are lots of young artists and craft-makers and there is something about supporting the originality of that.

Hugh Brydon print

Hugh Brydon is a Dumfriesshire artist and a wonderful print-maker. He is incredibly inventive.This vinyl-cut print comes from an exhibition that I organised 10 years ago celebrating his work.

I can be sitting here having my coffee and looking out at the gorse in its full fierce, yellow bloom in our northern climate, and he is sitting at a window with the sun shining. He captures something about that sense of the south and the way we are all in love with the sun and that outdoor way of life.

Steam cooker

This was a recent Christmas present from my kids. You have a basket for your spuds, another for your vegetables and something else at the top. I had lots of great aunts and uncles in Ireland and used to go and stay with them. The first time I saw a steamer in action was at the home of my old Aunty Esther. It was a working farm and there was always church on a Sunday morning followed by a big lunch. I don't know whether she had everything gently steaming while they were all at church or if she sneaked away early, but by the time everybody else trailed in, it was ready to go.

With five kids, their partners, friends and a grandchild, we do some big meals. The steamer means you can have two or three things going on, without juggling different pots.

Donald Smith is director of the Scottish Storytelling Centre and a curator of and performer at Tradfest, Scotland's festival of traditional arts and culture, which runs across Edinburgh until May 10 www.tracscotland.org/festivals

His book, Pilgrim Guide To Scotland, is published at the end of this month by Saint Andrew Press