The life and death of five spaces: Public art and community regeneration in Glasgow

Cultural Geographies

Volumn 14, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 274-292

  Sharp, Joanne ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Community; Materiality; Public art; Public space

Indexed keywords

ART; PUBLIC SPACE; URBAN DESIGN; URBAN DEVELOPMENT; URBAN PLANNING; URBAN RENEWAL;

EURASIA; EUROPE; GLASGOW [SCOTLAND]; SCOTLAND; UNITED KINGDOM; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 34548120303     PISSN: 14744740     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1474474007075363     Document Type: Article

References (72)

1. Interview with Housing Association Director C, 9/11/98.
2. D. Pinder, 'Arts of urban exploration', Cultural geographies 12 (2005), pp. 383-411.
3. See: S. Rycroft, 'The nature of op art: Bridget Riley and the art of nonrepresentation', Environment and planning D: society and space 23 (2005), pp. 351-71;
4. S. Pile, "'The problem of London!", or, how to explore the moods of the city', in N. Leach, ed., The hieroglyphics of space: reading and experiencing the modern metropolis (London, Routledge, 2002), pp. 203-16.
5. See: H. Parr, 'Mental health, the arts and belongings', Transactions, Institute of British Geographers 31, pp. 150-66;
6. G. Rose, 'Performing inoperative community: the space and the resistance of some community arts projects', in S. Pile and M. Keith, eds, Geographies of resistance (London, Routledge, 1997), pp. 184-202.
7. For example: A. Bonnett, 'Art, ideology and everyday space: subversive tendencies from Dada to postmodernism', Environment and planning D: society and space 10 (1992), pp. 69-86;
8. G. Rose, 'Making space for the female subject of feminism: the spatial subversions of Holzer, Kruger and Sherman', in S. Pile and N. Thrift, eds, Mapping the subject: geographies of cultural transformation (London, Routledge, 1995), pp. 332-54;
9. Pinder, 'Arts'; J. Fenton, 'Space, chance, time: walking backwards through the hours on the left and right banks of Paris', Cultural geographies 12 (2005), pp. 412-28.
10. Pinder, 'Arts', p. 398.
11. See: S. Lacy, ed., Mapping the terrain: new genre public art (Bay Press, 1995).
12. Pinder, 'Arts', p. 398.
13. In the UK, as in many other contemporary western countries, public art appears to have an increasingly prominent role in urban design. In 1993 around 40 per cent of local authorities in the UK had adopted a public art policy of some sorts, a figure that is now likely to be much higher.
14. G. Bridge and S. Watson, 'City publics', in G. Bridge and S. Watson, eds, A companion to the city (Blackwell, 2000), pp. 369, 370, drawing on R. Sennett, The fall of public man (New York, Norton, 1974). Drawing this time on US experiences, Putnam discusses similar concerns about the breakdown of social networks, social capital in apparently individualizing trends of contemporary society; see R. Putnam, Bowling alone (New York, Simon and Schuster, 2000).
15. See M. Miles, Art, space and the city (London, Routledge, 1997).
16. So much so that critics are now talking in terms of the 'tyranny of participation'; see B. Cooke and U. Kothari, eds, Participation: the new tyranny? (London, Zed Books, 2001).
17. S. Selwood, The benefits of public art (London, Policy Studies Institute, 1995);
18. S. Selwood, 'Attitudes to contemporary art', Matters 17 (2003), pp. 34-6;
19. T. Hall and I. Robertson, 'Public art and urban regeneration: advocacy, claims and critical debates', Landscape research 26 (2001), pp. 5-26.
20. c.f. J. Jacobs, 'A geography of big things', Cultural geographies 13 (2006), pp. 1-27.
21. Jacobs, 'A geography', p. 3.
22. H. Senie, The tilted arc controversy: dangerous precedent? (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2002).
23. C. Blake, 'An atmosphere of effrontery: Richard Serra, Tilted Arc, and the crisis of public art', in R. Fox and T.J. Lears, The power of culture (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 261.
24. Blake, 'An atmosphere', p. 254.
25. N. Thrift, 'It's the little things', in D. Atkinson and K. Dodds, eds, Geopolitical traditions: a century of geopolitical thought (London, Routledge, 2000), pp. 380-7.
26. Blake, 'An atmosphere', p. 284.
27. Gablik, 1995, quoted in Miles, Art, space and the city, p. 90.
28. Public Art Review, Public art: fail Special Issue. July-August (1998).
29. S. Lacy, 'Cultural pilgrimage and metaphoric journeys', in S. Lacy, ed., Mapping the terrain: new genre public art (Bay Press, 1995), p. 24.
30. Lacy, 'Cultural pilgrimage', p. 20.
31. G.H. Kester, Conversation pieces: community and communication in modern art (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2004).
32. Deyan Sudjic, Glasgow 1999 press launch, Glasgow City Chambers, 11/2/99. Sudjic was keen to avoid the criticism that Glasgow's tenure as 1990 European Capital of Culture generated via its perceived concentration on 'middle class' events in the city centre. Some have argued that 1990 ignored the experiences and heritage of the majority of Glaswegians - see for example N. McInroy and M. Boyle, 'The refashioning of civic identity: constructing and consuming the "New" Glasgow', Scotlands 3 (1996), pp. 70-87 - and privileged 'Tackintosh' or 'Mockintosh' images derived from the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh over all other Glasgow symbolism -
33. see E. Laurier, 'Tackintosh: Glasgow's supplementary gloss', in C. Philo and G. Kearns, eds, Selling places: the city as cultural capital, past and present (Oxford, Pergamon, 1993), pp. 267-89.
34. The Glasgow Bid - City of Architecture and Design 1999, 1993, p. 9
35. R. Carr, 'Architecture and planning in Scotland', archis, July (1999), www.archis.org, no pages.
36. Interview with Housing Association Director C, 9/11/98.
37. D. Sudjic, 'Preface', Five Spaces: new urban landscapes for Glasgow (London, August, 1999), p. 7.
38. Homes for the Future was a development of 150 homes for sale and rent designed by a number of prominent contemporary architects. Before residents moved in, many of these were open to the public and there was an on-site display that accompanied the development. The Lighthouse was developed around an existing Charles Rennie Mackintosh building in the centre of Glasgow, and displays changing exhibits of designs, in addition to housing a permanent Mackintosh centre.
39. DTZ Pieda Consulting, Evaluation of Glasgow 1999: UK City of Architecture and Design (2000).
40. Lucy Byatt, co-director of Visual Art Projects, the art agency which managed the artists involved with the Five Spaces, pers. comm., 1/ 2/99.
41. L. Byatt, Towards public space (Visual Art Projects with Glasgow 1999, Glasgow, Visual Art Projects Publication, 1997).
42. Glasgow 1999 Press release.
43. But see McInroy and Boyle, 'The refashioning of civic identity'.
44. Thanks to John Crotty and Ian Cochrane for their hard work.
45. I would like to thank Eric Laurier and Barry Brown for their company and insight.
46. Sudjic, Preface, p. 7.
47. Interview with Housing Association Director C, 9/11/98.
48. R. Deutsche, Evictions (The MIT Press, 1996); N. Smith, The new urban frontier (London, Routledge, 1996).
49. See A. Zieleniec, 'Park spaces: leisure, culture and modernity - a Glasgow case study', Unpublished thesis, University of Glasgow, 2002.
50. Interview with Housing Association Director A, 9/11/98.
51. Interview with Housing Association Director A, 9/11/98.
52. This suggests that Hall and Robertson's suggestion about the use of public art to provide an '"aura" of quality' has some resonance with the residents of these areas; see Hall and Roberston, 'Public art and urban regeneration'.
53. DTZ Pieda Consulting
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. C. Philo and G. Kearns, Selling places, p. ix.
57. Interview with Housing Association Director D, 10/11/98.
58. Interview with Housing Association Director C, 9/11/98.
59. D. Harding quoted in G. Gordon, 'When art goes public', Scotland on Sunday 16 June 2002, no page number, http://news.scotsman.com/ archive.cfm?id=653692002, Accessed 22/10/02.
60. Glasgow 1999, Five Spaces, p. 32.
61. Pauline Gallacher, Initiatives Director/Community Projects, Glasgow 1999, pers. coram., 11/8/99.
62. DTZ Pieda Consulting.
63. P. Gallacher, Everyday Spaces (London, Thomas Telford Publishing, 2005).
64. Housing Association Director C explained that, 'the idea is to have something a bit different and a bit more stimulating, because a lot of these kids I think don't play with imagination'.
65. This had a strong normative aim in as far as the women wanted to teach children to play in particular ways. Clearly, for some members of the community, this offered an excellent opportunity to get local children playing in a structured and controlled way and perhaps was not the forms of play which would have emerged had children been left to establish the roles themselves.
66. Glasgow 1999, Five Spaces, p. 23.
67. Deutsche, Evictions, p. 270;
68. see also P. Phillips, 'Out of order: the public art machine', Artforum December (1988), pp. 92-6;
69. P. Gallacher, pers. corr. 29/8/06.
70. Pers. corr. 29/8/06.
71. Quoted in Jacobs, 'A geography', p. 7.
72. J. Calcutt, 'Rack and ruin: the misplaced aims of public art', Matters 15 (2002), p. 11.