How the International of Stone 2027 Festival Fits within the Wider Stone Sector Marcus Paine to the Scottish Parliament 18 February 2026

Thank you all and in particular to David and Doug for asking me to be here tonight to give you a brief comment on how The International Festival of Stone 2027 fits within the wider Stone Sector.

So….as a matter of interest…. did you know that most Natural Stone Suppliers in the increasingly mechanising 19th century produced Catalogues to promote their products along with other suppliers of Construction products. A Masonry Walling type, a stairway, a fireplace, a door and window detail, a cornice, a facade, a whole street even could be selected from a material palette along with Banister rails, Door knobs, Joinery and everything else associated with a building. The clue for us here finally is the importance of mass-producing things that we do best.

David has already very eloquently hinted at The Golden Age of Natural Stone where incidentally Scotland’s Built Heritage across every Village, Town and City was so defined by its rugged, stoic beauty and it’s easy to see that by the beginning of the 20th Century we were at the pinnacle of our ability to build in it with absolute confidence and he has advised us on the Societal and other choices that brought about its demise….. and the Wilderness Years that have followed.

And make no mistake, the Wilderness years of ever diminishing returns for Stone use certainly in the UK has grown ever onward throughout the period from 1900 till today. Once used and endlessly proven as mighty in compression and perfectly beautiful in its perfect imperfections we have been reduced to a thin veneer, a wallpaper, sanitised in colour and range creating vast waste and high cost in a diminished marketplace. And we, the industry have acquiesced and diminished in a world that embraced the endless probabilities of moulded form and shape that manmade alternatives offered ….. and all based on cheap energy with no consequence.

And there it is. For an Industry that has spent the last 125 years in something of a sulk at our fall from grace we are provided with an alternative outcome. The Earth gives us all the materials we use to build….. but in our natural stone case it also preforms them in a never ending multi- million years cycle without our further intervention and it is this simple fact that gives us enormous reductions in material embodied Carbon over all other Building materials.

Armed with this, some of us and a now growing International Community have spent several years developing a new narrative, new processes and products all based around flipping perception of Stone from a modern day luxury high-cost niche product to a new low waste, low carbon, long lasting and ultra recyclable utilitarian product of a cleaner future. And one that through the mass production we appear to have somehow forgotten allows the UK to compete once more with manmade alternatives and the more questionable natural stone imports that continue till now to destroy us. This requires not just the embittered moanings of Stone Producers to make the case….. it involves Academics, Architects, Contractors, Designers, Engineers, Planners, Policy Makers, Public Procurers, Quantity Surveyors, Regulators, Suppliers and Society in need of change to engage and be engaged. There is a whole group of Younger Architectural Practices driven always by a deeper understanding of Climate and our need to change the way we build now engaged and developing the discussion and over time these will become the establishment but there is an entire Construction Industry that has done well out of our 20th Century short-termism and throw away construction culture that is actively resisting change to their familiar specification busting lowest price wins model and our job collectively is to make the alternative appealing both in regulatory, sustainability and costing ways and supported by project consistency in so doing.

The Festival then as proposed is and must be much more than a nostalgic “love of stone Fest” that we have for too long championed where we speak to ourselves about our unjust demise…. Moreover it is a polarising moment for Scotland to bring together international learning and show Sustainability leadership, intent and voice about a material that ironically almost entirely defines it. And Industry….. all Industry before we entirely lose it must be onboard because it desperately requires that voice in Scotland today. The target outcome?……Sustainable Construction, consistent Markets, developing workforce, mineral self-sufficiency, project delivery on time and on budget…. Oh and in a rehabilitated Industry we will once more be capable of training new generations to maintain our heritage too.

The chance to change is with us right now…… we must take it or be gone….. and in order to see a future for our own future generations we simply must take it.