Glasgow rapidly evolved from being a small merchant town in the 1750s to a burgeoning industrial city by the 1890s. Shipbuilding and trade in coal made the city the powerhouse of the Scottish economy and one of the largest cities in the world.
But fast-forward to the 1970s and Glasgow was a very different place. The city experienced a period of economic decline as heavy industry contracted, leading to rising unemployment. Inevitably, social and economic deprivation followed as it struggled to reinvent itself as a modern global city.
Yet, incredibly, in many ways it has achieved this. Like a phoenix from the ashes, Glasgow has risen to become the cultural capital it is today. Poverty and economic inequality are still a problem, but the city has changed markedly for the better.
It is now known as a stronghold for art and artists, music and musicians too. Glasgow has converted the tough times into positive product. So what’s the story behind its radical transformation?
The root of this now-blossoming cultural Glasgow seems, conversely, to have been borne out of the smog-ridden 19th-century city, in particular the nature of the then-emerging industry: shipbuilding.
Constructing beautiful floating vessels, whether for war or commerce, brought an ingrained desire to make stuff in the Scottish city. And though seemingly tangential, that is absolutely at the heart of the Glasgow we know today.
Crucially, with industrial development came investment in infrastructure, international trading, education and the development of arts and culture. And all that led to the Glasgow School of Art being founded in 1845.
From that art school emerged the famous artist, architect and designer, Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928). His art nouveau lines still beautify much of central Glasgow to this day.
So, that gives us the beginning. But what about the middle? How did Glasgow make the leap from 20th-century postwar poverty to the cultural hotbed we have today?
Nurturing culture
“Glasgow runs the most-visited museum service in the UK outside the London nationals,” says Jill Miller, the director of cultural services for Glasgow Life, the trading name of Culture and Sport Glasgow, a community interest company set up by the city council in 2007.
“In effect we have a national museums service, but with collections recognised as being of international quality. Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum is the most visited civic museum in the UK, and the Riverside Museum of transport is the second.”
Glasgow Life looks after the council’s museums, galleries and leisure services under various sub-brands, which include Glasgow Arts and Glasgow Museums.
Most notably, all of the city’s museums and galleries are free to visit.
“Because of its history as a great industrial city, its role as Scotland’s largest city and its relative isolation from the rest of the UK, Glasgow has developed a unique approach to culture and sport – unique in Britain and globally,” Miller says.
The city has an astonishing infrastructure, says Mungo Campbell, the deputy director of the Hunterian, a museum and gallery run by the University of Glasgow.
“We have a diverse ecology of open discourse and mutual support across what are now several generations of artists, from the talent emerging from the art school to those with globally established reputations,” says Campbell.
The Hunterian is based at the university, close to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, but the museum is going to move nearby to Kelvin Hall, a redbrick early-20th century exhibition centre.
Kelvin Hall is being redeveloped and the first phase of this will open in September with the unveiling of a centre to house collections from Glasgow Museums and the Hunterian. About 1.5m objects stored in various locations in the city will be relocated to the facility. The project is a collaboration between Glasgow City Council, Glasgow Life, the University of Glasgow and the National Library of Scotland, and will provide an incredible cultural, learning and sport offer, says Miller.
“As well as the Hunterian moving into the building, we hope to build an outstanding contemporary art space,” Miller says. “London has the Turbine Hall, Glasgow will have Kelvin Hall, and in it a contemporary art space without rival in Scotland.”
The council hopes the scheme will form the heart of a developing Glaswegian cultural quarter to complement the many art galleries and museums across the city.
Making connections
Glasgow’s culture of connectivity strengthens the city’s art landscape considerably.
Trongate 103 is an artistic complex located on the other side of the city centre from the Hunterian, housing spaces to display art a printmakers and framers. It also houses Street Level Photoworks, the only space dedicated to photography in the city.
The director of the photography gallery, Malcolm Dickson, says their remit is not just to show work and sell prints.
“We also have a dark room and artist facilities. And we run exhibitions off-site that help us build up local, regional and international networks of places and people working with photography,” he says.
Dickson has been part of the Glasgow art scene for a significant time, and he says that many galleries there have fostered local, national and international connections.
“It’s this outward-looking approach that has been a hallmark of the city’s development as an art centre, and has grown significantly in recent years,” says Dickson.
Out of these links, Glasgow International Festival has materialised. Now in its tenth year, the contemporary art biennial runs in multiple venues and disused spaces across the city every other springtime. It’s now an integral part of Glasgow’s art landscape.
Working together
The desire to work collaboratively has been part of Glasgow’s artistic environment since Dickson can remember.
“In the 1990s there were regular meetings of the Glasgow galleries group, where representatives of the galleries would get together and talk about ways to promote and cross-promote,” he says.
Most of Street Level Photoworks’ funding comes from Creative Scotland (the public body that supports the arts, screen and creative industries) and Glasgow Life.
“Funding has diminished, but they have managed to keep it the same for the next couple of years, which is an achievement,” Dickson says. “Glasgow City Council has done really well in protecting and supporting the arts.”
Dickson says that while artists are helped by the cheap studio spaces in Glasgow, there are other core factors that have contributed to the city’s artistic success.
“There’s a network of organisations that support artists here, not just by showing their work but also by providing production centres,” Dickson says. “Glasgow has an infrastructure that supports the making of art.”
Next to Street Level Photoworks is the Transmission Gallery, a volunteer-run space that runs an exhibition programme, events, talks, parties and gigs. Transmission has facilities to make art too: everything from woodworking equipment, to a video-editing suite, even an archive and library.
“The gallery was founded in 1983 by a group of artists who had been through the Glasgow School of Art and felt that the existing galleries in town were inaccessible to the multitude of artists who worked in the city,” says Andrew Black, a committee member.
The gallery’s “art for all” ethical agenda means that artists can become a member for just £20 a year, £10 for students/unemployed, or can simply donate in kind. On top of the membership payments, the gallery receives funding from Glasgow Life.
Pivotal moment
Glasgow’s generous and supportive artistic ethos has spawned a number of famous artists, and no less than six Turner Prize winners. The first was Douglas Gordon, who slowed down Hitchcock’s film Psycho to an eerie timeframe of 24 hours. He won the Turner Prize with this work in 1996.
The creation of that work epitomises something about Glasgow’s art scene: making something big out of very little. And central to that is Glasgow School of Art’s environmental art course.
Set up in 1985, the course is thought of as pioneering in art education, and it became the catalyst for an ever-more experimental art scene in the city. A core principle is that the context for making work is as important as the work itself.
Black pins the city’s artistic success on the organic nature of what that art course brought. He says that tenement flats are generally big, and it’s possible to work and exhibit in them. “There’s a history of artists putting on shows in whatever space is available to them, without institutional support,” says Black.
By the late 1980s, culture was beginning to be used as a tool for regeneration across the city, and in 1990, the city was given the title of European City of Culture.
“Historically, I would say we should look to the 1980s when, as it had done in the past, Glasgow set about reinventing itself around a new industry – cultural tourism – by embarking on a journey to use culture for regeneration,” says Miller.
With its revolutionary fine art education, DIY art happenings, and Turner Prize nominees and winners under its belt, the city had really upped its game by the 1990s.
The Burrell Collection, which houses a collection of more than 8,000 objects gifted to Glasgow by Sir William Burrell in 1944, opened in 1983 in Pollok Country Park. The museum is closed until 2020, as it goes through substantial refurbishment. Then, in 1996 another important art space was unveiled: the Gallery of Modern Art in the city centre.
But before all these was the Third Eye Centre. Set up in 1975 and rebranded as the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) in 1991, it provides a series of spaces for events, thinking, showing and making.
“We basically run a hub,” says Francis McKee, the director of CCA and the first director of the Glasgow International Festival, from 2005-08. “We programme six exhibitions a year, and let anyone use our spaces for events,” he says. He means it. Everyone – from scientists, to the Red Cross, to sex workers discussing topical industry issues – has run events there. “We hold more than 1,000 events a year.”
In many ways CCA is a microcosm of Glasgow’s cultural melting pot. “The people we want putting on events here don’t have much money, but if you put them all together you get a whole bunch of things happening that should be happening,” says McKee. “If there were fees involved these people would have to go elsewhere.”
There isn’t such a strong art market in Glasgow – maybe because art has always been free to see there just isn’t the culture of spending money on it. But McKee thinks this is absolutely key, because the artistic emphasis remains on experimenting and making, not selling.
Even Glasgow City Council’s marketing bureau is branded on the theme as “People Make Glasgow”.
It seems to be that age-old bedrock in shipbuilding – making stuff – combined with the ultimately generous funding structure and reliance on culture to regenerate that has got Glasgow to where it is now. That unique cultural outlook should stand the city in excellent stead to continue to lead the national cultural scene.
“There were three swimming pools, a Turkish suite, a bathhouse and a wash house nicknamed ‘the steamie’,” says Bruce Downie, the theatre manager at the baths. “There was the whole health and hygiene package here.”
The steamie closed in the 1960s as washing machines became commonly available,
but the pools and the baths stayed in operation until 2001.
“Then the council, which ran the baths at the time, decided to close them down,” Downie says. “Local people were outraged and wanted to save it, so they occupied the building for five and a half months. There was a picketline out front, with police and security. It turns out that this was the longest occupation of a civic building in British history.
“Eventually the council sent the police in to evict the occupiers, and that looked like it would be end of the story. But shortly after that Historic Scotland put a Grade B listing on the building, which meant that it couldn’t be demolished and could only be sold to someone who wanted to maintain its character and preserve its heritage. So the occupiers decided to form the Govanhill Baths Community Trust.”
It took another six years of negotiation before the council recognised the trust as a proper organisation.
And finally, in 2012, the trust was given the keys to the building.
A £100,000 grant from the Scottish executive helped to make the entrance functional and install plumbing and toilets.
“We now have about £4m to fund the next phase, which will fix the leaking roof, make the building windproof, watertight and functional again, as well as open the two smaller pools,” Downie says.
Now, the centre is run as a resource used by and for the community.
“Apart from running our own theatre productions here, we make the space available for community events, theatre companies, anyone who needs an interesting unusual space – we just work out a price that works for both parties,” Downie says.
“We have had a huge variety of events, from theatre to music, film, art and sound installations.”
National Theatre Scotland ran a production in one of the pools in 2012, and the last two Glasgow International art biennials have used Govanhill Baths as a venue. The theatre programme has driven visitor numbers, helped fill the donation box and raised awareness, Downie says.
The Museums Association Conference & Exhibition is in Glasgow from 7-9 November. It will include evening social events at Kelvin Hall, the Riverside Museum and the Gallery of Modern Art.
But fast-forward to the 1970s and Glasgow was a very different place. The city experienced a period of economic decline as heavy industry contracted, leading to rising unemployment. Inevitably, social and economic deprivation followed as it struggled to reinvent itself as a modern global city.
Yet, incredibly, in many ways it has achieved this. Like a phoenix from the ashes, Glasgow has risen to become the cultural capital it is today. Poverty and economic inequality are still a problem, but the city has changed markedly for the better.
It is now known as a stronghold for art and artists, music and musicians too. Glasgow has converted the tough times into positive product. So what’s the story behind its radical transformation?
The root of this now-blossoming cultural Glasgow seems, conversely, to have been borne out of the smog-ridden 19th-century city, in particular the nature of the then-emerging industry: shipbuilding.
Constructing beautiful floating vessels, whether for war or commerce, brought an ingrained desire to make stuff in the Scottish city. And though seemingly tangential, that is absolutely at the heart of the Glasgow we know today.
Crucially, with industrial development came investment in infrastructure, international trading, education and the development of arts and culture. And all that led to the Glasgow School of Art being founded in 1845.
From that art school emerged the famous artist, architect and designer, Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928). His art nouveau lines still beautify much of central Glasgow to this day.
So, that gives us the beginning. But what about the middle? How did Glasgow make the leap from 20th-century postwar poverty to the cultural hotbed we have today?
Nurturing culture
“Glasgow runs the most-visited museum service in the UK outside the London nationals,” says Jill Miller, the director of cultural services for Glasgow Life, the trading name of Culture and Sport Glasgow, a community interest company set up by the city council in 2007.
“In effect we have a national museums service, but with collections recognised as being of international quality. Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum is the most visited civic museum in the UK, and the Riverside Museum of transport is the second.”
Glasgow Life looks after the council’s museums, galleries and leisure services under various sub-brands, which include Glasgow Arts and Glasgow Museums.
Most notably, all of the city’s museums and galleries are free to visit.
“Because of its history as a great industrial city, its role as Scotland’s largest city and its relative isolation from the rest of the UK, Glasgow has developed a unique approach to culture and sport – unique in Britain and globally,” Miller says.
The city has an astonishing infrastructure, says Mungo Campbell, the deputy director of the Hunterian, a museum and gallery run by the University of Glasgow.
“We have a diverse ecology of open discourse and mutual support across what are now several generations of artists, from the talent emerging from the art school to those with globally established reputations,” says Campbell.
The Hunterian is based at the university, close to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, but the museum is going to move nearby to Kelvin Hall, a redbrick early-20th century exhibition centre.
Kelvin Hall is being redeveloped and the first phase of this will open in September with the unveiling of a centre to house collections from Glasgow Museums and the Hunterian. About 1.5m objects stored in various locations in the city will be relocated to the facility. The project is a collaboration between Glasgow City Council, Glasgow Life, the University of Glasgow and the National Library of Scotland, and will provide an incredible cultural, learning and sport offer, says Miller.
“As well as the Hunterian moving into the building, we hope to build an outstanding contemporary art space,” Miller says. “London has the Turbine Hall, Glasgow will have Kelvin Hall, and in it a contemporary art space without rival in Scotland.”
The council hopes the scheme will form the heart of a developing Glaswegian cultural quarter to complement the many art galleries and museums across the city.
Making connections
Glasgow’s culture of connectivity strengthens the city’s art landscape considerably.
Trongate 103 is an artistic complex located on the other side of the city centre from the Hunterian, housing spaces to display art a printmakers and framers. It also houses Street Level Photoworks, the only space dedicated to photography in the city.
The director of the photography gallery, Malcolm Dickson, says their remit is not just to show work and sell prints.
“We also have a dark room and artist facilities. And we run exhibitions off-site that help us build up local, regional and international networks of places and people working with photography,” he says.
Dickson has been part of the Glasgow art scene for a significant time, and he says that many galleries there have fostered local, national and international connections.
“It’s this outward-looking approach that has been a hallmark of the city’s development as an art centre, and has grown significantly in recent years,” says Dickson.
Out of these links, Glasgow International Festival has materialised. Now in its tenth year, the contemporary art biennial runs in multiple venues and disused spaces across the city every other springtime. It’s now an integral part of Glasgow’s art landscape.
London has the Turbine Hall, Glasgow will have Kelvin Hall, and in it a contemporary art space without rival in Scotland"
Working together
The desire to work collaboratively has been part of Glasgow’s artistic environment since Dickson can remember.
“In the 1990s there were regular meetings of the Glasgow galleries group, where representatives of the galleries would get together and talk about ways to promote and cross-promote,” he says.
Most of Street Level Photoworks’ funding comes from Creative Scotland (the public body that supports the arts, screen and creative industries) and Glasgow Life.
“Funding has diminished, but they have managed to keep it the same for the next couple of years, which is an achievement,” Dickson says. “Glasgow City Council has done really well in protecting and supporting the arts.”
Dickson says that while artists are helped by the cheap studio spaces in Glasgow, there are other core factors that have contributed to the city’s artistic success.
“There’s a network of organisations that support artists here, not just by showing their work but also by providing production centres,” Dickson says. “Glasgow has an infrastructure that supports the making of art.”
Next to Street Level Photoworks is the Transmission Gallery, a volunteer-run space that runs an exhibition programme, events, talks, parties and gigs. Transmission has facilities to make art too: everything from woodworking equipment, to a video-editing suite, even an archive and library.
“The gallery was founded in 1983 by a group of artists who had been through the Glasgow School of Art and felt that the existing galleries in town were inaccessible to the multitude of artists who worked in the city,” says Andrew Black, a committee member.
The gallery’s “art for all” ethical agenda means that artists can become a member for just £20 a year, £10 for students/unemployed, or can simply donate in kind. On top of the membership payments, the gallery receives funding from Glasgow Life.
Pivotal moment
Glasgow’s generous and supportive artistic ethos has spawned a number of famous artists, and no less than six Turner Prize winners. The first was Douglas Gordon, who slowed down Hitchcock’s film Psycho to an eerie timeframe of 24 hours. He won the Turner Prize with this work in 1996.
The creation of that work epitomises something about Glasgow’s art scene: making something big out of very little. And central to that is Glasgow School of Art’s environmental art course.
Set up in 1985, the course is thought of as pioneering in art education, and it became the catalyst for an ever-more experimental art scene in the city. A core principle is that the context for making work is as important as the work itself.
Black pins the city’s artistic success on the organic nature of what that art course brought. He says that tenement flats are generally big, and it’s possible to work and exhibit in them. “There’s a history of artists putting on shows in whatever space is available to them, without institutional support,” says Black.
By the late 1980s, culture was beginning to be used as a tool for regeneration across the city, and in 1990, the city was given the title of European City of Culture.
“Historically, I would say we should look to the 1980s when, as it had done in the past, Glasgow set about reinventing itself around a new industry – cultural tourism – by embarking on a journey to use culture for regeneration,” says Miller.
With its revolutionary fine art education, DIY art happenings, and Turner Prize nominees and winners under its belt, the city had really upped its game by the 1990s.
The Burrell Collection, which houses a collection of more than 8,000 objects gifted to Glasgow by Sir William Burrell in 1944, opened in 1983 in Pollok Country Park. The museum is closed until 2020, as it goes through substantial refurbishment. Then, in 1996 another important art space was unveiled: the Gallery of Modern Art in the city centre.
But before all these was the Third Eye Centre. Set up in 1975 and rebranded as the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) in 1991, it provides a series of spaces for events, thinking, showing and making.
“We basically run a hub,” says Francis McKee, the director of CCA and the first director of the Glasgow International Festival, from 2005-08. “We programme six exhibitions a year, and let anyone use our spaces for events,” he says. He means it. Everyone – from scientists, to the Red Cross, to sex workers discussing topical industry issues – has run events there. “We hold more than 1,000 events a year.”
In many ways CCA is a microcosm of Glasgow’s cultural melting pot. “The people we want putting on events here don’t have much money, but if you put them all together you get a whole bunch of things happening that should be happening,” says McKee. “If there were fees involved these people would have to go elsewhere.”
There isn’t such a strong art market in Glasgow – maybe because art has always been free to see there just isn’t the culture of spending money on it. But McKee thinks this is absolutely key, because the artistic emphasis remains on experimenting and making, not selling.
Even Glasgow City Council’s marketing bureau is branded on the theme as “People Make Glasgow”.
It seems to be that age-old bedrock in shipbuilding – making stuff – combined with the ultimately generous funding structure and reliance on culture to regenerate that has got Glasgow to where it is now. That unique cultural outlook should stand the city in excellent stead to continue to lead the national cultural scene.
Govanhill Baths: cultural regeneration
Glasgow has a rich history of cultural regeneration and the Govanhill Baths are a tremendous example. They opened in 1917 in the Gorbals, one of the economically poorer areas of the city.“There were three swimming pools, a Turkish suite, a bathhouse and a wash house nicknamed ‘the steamie’,” says Bruce Downie, the theatre manager at the baths. “There was the whole health and hygiene package here.”
The steamie closed in the 1960s as washing machines became commonly available,
but the pools and the baths stayed in operation until 2001.
“Then the council, which ran the baths at the time, decided to close them down,” Downie says. “Local people were outraged and wanted to save it, so they occupied the building for five and a half months. There was a picketline out front, with police and security. It turns out that this was the longest occupation of a civic building in British history.
“Eventually the council sent the police in to evict the occupiers, and that looked like it would be end of the story. But shortly after that Historic Scotland put a Grade B listing on the building, which meant that it couldn’t be demolished and could only be sold to someone who wanted to maintain its character and preserve its heritage. So the occupiers decided to form the Govanhill Baths Community Trust.”
It took another six years of negotiation before the council recognised the trust as a proper organisation.
And finally, in 2012, the trust was given the keys to the building.
A £100,000 grant from the Scottish executive helped to make the entrance functional and install plumbing and toilets.
“We now have about £4m to fund the next phase, which will fix the leaking roof, make the building windproof, watertight and functional again, as well as open the two smaller pools,” Downie says.
Now, the centre is run as a resource used by and for the community.
“Apart from running our own theatre productions here, we make the space available for community events, theatre companies, anyone who needs an interesting unusual space – we just work out a price that works for both parties,” Downie says.
“We have had a huge variety of events, from theatre to music, film, art and sound installations.”
National Theatre Scotland ran a production in one of the pools in 2012, and the last two Glasgow International art biennials have used Govanhill Baths as a venue. The theatre programme has driven visitor numbers, helped fill the donation box and raised awareness, Downie says.
The Museums Association Conference & Exhibition is in Glasgow from 7-9 November. It will include evening social events at Kelvin Hall, the Riverside Museum and the Gallery of Modern Art.