Communtiy, Action and Inclusivity

Unfortunately I couldn't be there in person for the talk but I asked Cliff to record it for me and I have just listened to it. I found it very interesting. My first project this year was about swimming pools and I spent a lot of time researching edwardian/victorian pools and it is true that hardly any of them survive. It seems that in recent years with government cutbacks important public facilities and resources such as swimming pools, libraries and community centres have been the first things to go. I find all of this so depressing but this talk by Andrew Johnston was inspiring! The community of Govanhill stood up to the council and they won, and now the baths is in their rightful hands. When you see how much of a success the baths have become it is shocking to think that Glasgow Council decided to close it to build a block of luxury residential flats. I have never been to Govanhill before but I cannot believe there is much of a market for luxury flats. Perhaps the councillors who made the decision had never been to Govanhill either and were obviously so far removed from the needs of the people who live there. 

It is the members of the community who are at the forefront of this project and this is where its success must ultimately lie. Their passion and commitment is evidently strong as this ‘wellbeing centre’ is adding to lives of not just themselves, but their family, friends and neighbours. If the project was run by commuters from outside of Govanhill I doubt the commitment would be the same. However at the same time it is this mixture of the Govanhill community and outsider groups such as the National Theatre for Scotland and the Royal Conservatoire which makes the project so exciting. I like the idea of art reaching areas it wouldn’t normally reach. I found it shocking that the life expectancy in Govanhill was 62, and therefore lower than some third world countries. It is impossible to understand how a supposedly left wing council would chose to close such an essential community resource in one of the most deprived areas in Scotland.

It is quite clear that these deprived areas benefits from the arts.  I also think that the arts benefit from these projects. At the moment I feel so caught up in my studio work that I barely have time to speak to people or read newspapers or interact in any way with my community. I feel this is really negative and like I mentioned in my previous post I find art, especially whilst studying can be very self obsessed. When I think about my future I would love to be involved in community projects and making art accessible to all kinds of people. I am aware that there is a lot of poverty in Glasgow but living in the West End/City Centre I feel completely removed from it, as this is a very middle class area. The students from the Conservatoire who put on the ‘dry swimming gala’ were probably quite similar to me before the project but they must have come away with such a better understanding of what a place like Govanhill is like and how their creative practice can inject life and positivity into a community. Maybe the Com Des tutors could think about setting a similar project for us?