At the point where Sauchiehall Street begins to get jaggy and intense some 30
of us have gathered outside the Glasgow Dental Hospital. We’re here to listen
to the author, Chitra Ramaswamy read from her book, Homelands: History of a
Friendship.
In this, the ribbons of her life story are braided with those of Henry
Wuga, a 97-year-old Holocaust survivor who came to Glasgow in May, 1941.
The old Glasgow Refugee Centre, which once stood behind the Dental Hospital,
was where Mr Wuga began to make his life in the city and as, Ms Ramaswamy
reads, the ghosts of this grimy, anointed old street converge around us.
Members of the Garnethill Choir sing ‘Die Gedanken sind frei’, (Thoughts are
Free).
The noise of the Saturday morning traffic seems to fade as Ms Ramaswamy
brings the old Refugee Centre back to life. “The river of history is running fast.
Though the building, originally part of a terrace of Georgian villas called Albany
Place has been here a century, it’s already a throwback to a vanished time. A
time when Sauchiehall Street was the residential address of wealthy
merchants many of whom made and inherited their fortune through the
transatlantic slave trade.
“A time when the street meandered like a river and was named after a water
meadow of willows. Now, Sauchiehall Street has been straightened and
widened and almost all of Albany Place has been submerged by the incoming
tide. Entire houses are interred in the street as the bombastic style of
architecture sweeps through the second city of the empire: the tenements.”The story, like Sauchiehall Street, is also jaggy and intense, but it’s beautiful
too and beautifully written.
This little cameo is one of 24 public artworks that have occurred every hour
since lunchtime the previous day, continuing through the night. They’ve been
made by two young Glasgow artists, Craig McCorquodale and Molly Jack as part of a six-month residency on the street in which they’ve engaged with residences and businesses to make their living art. It’s been made possible by
Glasgow Life and funded by the Heritage Lottery fund as part of the Sauchiehall
Street Culture and Heritage District.
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Normally, the mere mention of installations and re-imaginings and the curating
of experiences will send me running in the opposite direction from a terrain
often occupied by talentless, preachy chancers. But this is real and uplifting.
And besides, having often lamented Sauchiehall Street’s steep decline in recent
years, it just feels good to see something joyful and uplifting happening here.
I’m getting optimism.
Throughout the day and night, artworks have appeared on this street capturing
the memories and experiences of the people who have made it shimmy and
thrum through all the fires and in defiance of the wrought-iron sarcophagus
which has entombed it. Some, like Chitra Ramaswamy’s haunting rendition
have drawn an audience; others will appear as fleeting glimpses of curious
words written on familiar buildings.
My own favourite is a song lyric written by Spandau Ballet’s Martin Kemp
which peeps out from the foot of the street which once housed Maestro’s
nightclub. “With a thrill in my head and a pill on my tongue. Dissolve nerves
that have just begun listening to Marvin (all night long).” Mr Kemp must have
been jouking about this place at the same time as me, but not until he had
expressed his deep fondness for Sauchiehall Street to Michelle McManus on
her Radio Scotland show, had I known this.
Through last night there was live piano music where the old Locarno Ballroom
had stood and at Lauder’s Bar, where Sauchiehall Street rises, a projection
artwork on a gable end paying tribute to Barry McCue, a projectionist at the
GFT for 30 years.
And then, for the first time since the bulldozers and wrecking balls levelled the 02 cinema, we had cause to smile as a montage bearing footage of old concert
gigs danced among the ruins.
Sauchiehall Street, you see, is where many of us Glaswegians crossed from
youth into experience. It’s where our adult firsts occurred. As I listen to
Chitra Ramaswamy tell of her student encounters on this street I recalled my
friend Marie Therese Burns performing a filling on me under examination
conditions for a final-year dental assignment.
Across the road is where Ghandi’s used to be where I had my first Indian
restaurant experience. Just a few doors along was the Loon Fung where I had
my first Chinese meal. In Maestro’s or the Ultratheque or Night Moves or
Zanzibar’s is where my first proper romance unfolded followed a few short but
sweet weeks later by my inevitable first chucking.
How often have you begun chatting about this street as an ice-breaker with
strangers and still be talking about it half an hour later as you discover that
your memories are theirs too?
The experience of engaging with real Glaswegians to make these artworks has
been a rewarding one for Molly Jack. “The process of the past six months has
been to gather people’s thoughts on the street. There’s anger at the state of
Sauchiehall Street and we wanted to reflect that, but we also went into it
wanting to celebrate its history. We wanted to focus on the people that have
worked here and what I learned is how much they wanted to celebrate culture
and art.
The entire process in the last 24 hours has been incredible and people
have shown how much they love this place and to tell you about it.
Craig McCorquodale is also aware of not pretending the challenges don’t exist.
“Two things can be true at once,” he said. “Sauchiehall Street is facing a lot of
challenges right now and people feel angry and disaffected by it. But at the
same time, people also have very rich memories of it and they matter too.
“As Glaswegians we’re really good at moaning about things and bashing the authorities: we’re cynical. Look, so much of it is upsetting to see and we’re not
PR people for Sauchiehall Street. We are artists interested in working in
difficult and challenging spaces. It’s fertile ground for us, wading into this
territory and asking these difficult questions.
“But we’ve been overwhelmed by the generosity of people eagerto share their
stories with strangers like us. Last night, we met four couples who had met at
the Garage nightclub. They were just overjoyed that their lives were being
understood as valid and that their stories were essential. I think it’s those
moments in cities where you reject anonymity and look people in the eye and
say “You matter”.
They had hung a four-metre banner from the top floor of a flat across from the
site of the ABC. On the banner they’d told the story of a woman they’d met
who used to climb out of her window and down the drainpipe when she was
18 in 1969 to get to the Electric Gardens, now The Garage. She had said to
them: “I never knew that my story would ever be told, let alone be made into
art on this street.”
Karen Shaw is the project manager for the Sauchiehall Street Culture and
Heritage District. “We want to uncover the street through people’s amazing
stories,” she says. “These are about the street’s retail heritage, its visual arts
and design, its theatre heritage. How do we engage with as many people as
possible? This street is everyone’s street. It still has a vibrant residential
population in Garnethill and Hill Street.
“This is about taking a different approach to heritage. How do we bring
Sauchiehall Street back to life after its recent challenges? People have to work
together on this because not one agency can ever hope to address what needs
to be done on its own.
