Culture
Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery which opened in 1925, contains a notable collection of paintings by the Scottish Colourists and a permanent display of the town's industrial heritage. A library was added to the existing building in 1928. In 2011 the museum closed to allow a £2.4 million renovation of the building. Work is expected to be completed by Spring 2013.
The Adam Smith Theatre, the town's main auditorium, plays host to theatrical and musical productions as well as showing a selection of arthouse and commercial films. Originally known as the Adam Smith Halls, the theatre adopted its present name in 1973 after a renovation of the building in time for the 250th anniversary of the birth of Adam Smith.
The Links Market originated as a farmers market on Links Street, before moving to its present site in 1903 on The Promenade (then known as Sands Road). The market visits the town every April and celebrated its 700th anniversary in 2004. The Kirkcaldy Pageant started in 1923 as a fundraiser for several hospitals (later local charities) in the area. The arrival by carriage of a lad and lass was introduced to the proceedings in 1968. Although the event was discontinued in 1977, it was revived from 2001 until 2006 and again from 2010 as part of the Beveridge Park Community Festival. Kirkcaldy has had a twin-town link with Ingolstadt in Germany since September 1962. There are plans for a joint celebration to recognise the 50th anniversary of the town's twinning with Ingolstadt in 2012.
There are three main public parks in Kirkcaldy. Beveridge Park, to the west of the town is a 104 acres (420,000 m2) park created from the existing Robbie's Park, and land purchased from the Raith Estate. This was part of a £50,000 bequest from linen manufacturer and provost Michael Beveridge, who died in 1890. On 24 September 1892 a crowd of over 10,000 came to see the park's opening hosted by his widow, the provost, magistrates, and the town council of the royal burgh. The park includes a boating lake, a formal garden with fountain, a skateboard park, rugby ground and woodland walks. The park was awarded a green flag award in both 2010 and 2011. Ravenscraig Park to the east of the town was formed from the estate of Dysart House. The grounds were bequeathed to the town by the linoleum manufacturer Sir Michael Nairn in 1929. Dunnikier Park, purchased by the town council in 1945, consists of an area around Dunnikier House to the north of the town, and is home to numerous woodland walkways.
Read more about this topic: Kirkcaldy
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“I’ve finally figured out why soap operas are, and logically should be, so popular with generations of housebound women. They are the only place in our culture where grown-up men take seriously all the things that grown-up women have to deal with all day long.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life—its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness—conjoin to dull our sensory faculties.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)