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General GCHT News
Browse our current events programme and click through directly to the booking pages.
To view in full screen, click ‘Open’ and then this symbol on the left hand side
Glasgow City Heritage Trust has announced over £360,000 of funding to support heritage projects in the city in its latest round of funding.
The funding has been awarded to 12 projects including five historic building repair projects.
The Trust has awarded a £57,344.00 Building Repair Grant towards conservation repairs to the Category A-Listed Royal Faculty of Procurators in Glasgow. Modelled on Sansovino’s Library in Venice this is a rare city centre building by architect Charles Wilson, who is better known for his work in Glasgow’s Park District. It is a key building within the Glasgow Central Conservation Area as it frames the entrance to Nelson Mandela Place. As part of the repairs programme there will also be a small exhibition about the building and Charles Wilson, guided walks around legal buildings in Glasgow and Strathclyde University Law Clinic will run legal advice clinics.
An £80,000.00 Building Repair Grant has been awarded towards conservation repairs to Smiths Hotel at 963 Sauchiehall Street. The hotel is within a Category B-Listed early Victorian tenement on the western stretch of Sauchiehall Street as it passes through the Park Conservation Area. The aim of the project is to return the property to a condition in keeping with with the wider Sauchiehall Street townscape in this key approach to Kelvingrove from Glasgow city centre. As part of the repairs programme there will also be traditional skills training offered to schools and the surrounding community, with site visits and demonstrations of the conservation work in progress.
In Hillhead, a £5,886 collective Building Repair Grant has been offered to the six owners of 3-7 Great George Street; a Category B-Listed early Victorian tenement in Hillhead. Sadly, the failing and dangerous window jambs on the tenement’s main façade have been propped with timbers for several years so the repairs are required on Health and Safety grounds, as well as to preserve the character of the handsome well-proportioned facade. As part of the repairs programme the stonemason will be training apprentices in traditional skills, while a traditional skills demonstration event will also be offered to local schools and community.
A viability study is being supported with a £5,000 Development Grant to Glasgow Building Preservation Trust to help carry out work to determine if Govanhill Trinity Church could be used as a community space. The Category B-Listed building, known locally as the Daisy Street Church and built in 1878, closed as a church in 2015 when its congregation joined forces with nearby Queen’s Park Govanhill Church. The study will look at the repair works that need to be done to the building and how it could be used in the future to benefit the community.
Other recipients include Smithycroft Secondary School which has been awarded a Traditional Skills Grant of £4,424 to provide vocational traditional construction skills training to a class of 12 pupils, providing them with the skills necessary to improve their employment prospects. As well as providing a qualification, it is hoped that the course will encourage an appreciation of the historic built environment in Glasgow with speakers and demonstrations from people in a number of traditional construction crafts as well as hands-on experience on current sites.
The Trust has also funded educational and outreach projects including phase two of the popular Ghost Signs of Glasgow project run by volunteers and On Our Streets: Protest & Celebration, a social history study of Govanhill being delivered by Govanhill Baths Community Trust.
We are delighted to announce this round of financial support for Glasgow’s historic buildings and neighbourhoods. I’m particularly pleased that we are supporting such a wide variety of projects, from small grants for domestic stonework repairs to comprehensive projects to repair significant buildings in the city centre, along with traditional skills training and projects that will support communities to engage with their local place and their heritage.
Throughout the current crisis we are still open, still listening to ideas and still providing funding for projects that protect, conserve and celebrate our city’s rich built heritage. We know how difficult this time is for our partners and colleagues and we are trying to be as supportive and flexible as possible. We want to help those who already have projects underway to continue their work where possible, and to encourage people with new projects in development to get in touch and see if we can help.
Torsten Haak, Glasgow City Heritage Trust’s Director
With total project costs of £1.4million for this latest round of support, every pound the Trust has invested has helped to secure another £3 from other sources. This funding has come from the five grant programmes run by the Trust, which is supported by Historic Environment Scotland and Glasgow City Council. Applications are open throughout the year and are considered quarterly. The next closing date is the end of July.
On the 27th of February 2020 Glasgow City Heritage Trust launched “Glasgow: One Stitch at a Time” – a fantastic exhibition displaying the works of textile artist Roslyn Mitchell, who combines her love for the architecture and people of Glasgow with her love of colour and embroidery to produce bright and tactile pieces of textile art.
The launch was a big success and our visitors were in awe of Roslyn’s works…
…Two months (and counting) have gone by from that night, the world and everyone’s lives have changed dramatically: our office and exhibition space is sadly closed until it will be safe to open again and we are all working from home.
We kept thinking about Roslyn’s amazing and colourful works shut in the office and so we created a little virtual tour of the exhibition for you to enjoy.
We’ve also asked Roslyn a few questions so read on to find out why she loves a doer-upper and how the ‘Cornish pasty rabbit’ encouraged her to start using architecture in her work.
How did you start?
I’ve always been creative but despite studying Interior Design, I ended up working in Finance. By September 2010, I was itching to start making again but with 3 boys aged 12, 4 and 11 months, I couldn’t justify a hobby so had to do something that paid. I dusted off an old sewing machine and started making personalised cushions and bunting. I taught myself how to do free-motion embroidery, talk about learning the hard way! I’ve always said “If I can draw it, I can stitch it” but this made for some very ‘interesting’ commissions. Let’s just say the request for me to make a cushion featuring a cuddly rabbit on a bike with a Cornish pasty was the final straw for me! Thankfully, instead of stopping making altogether, I started drawing and stitching buildings and made my first of many home portraits in 2013.
What inspires you? What are your influences?
My inspiration is the architecture and people of Glasgow and the west. I love social history and this is where the idea for the Windae Hingers came from. I’ve only just scratched the surface with these and would love to create more work with them. I’ve also always had a fascination with lost architecture and have spent many hours lost in the Urban Glasgow website. I’m mostly influenced by photography and illustration. There are wonderful Oscar Marzaroli images I would love to recreate in textiles if I had permission to. I would also love to be able to draw in the style of GCHT’s own Niall Murphy as his drawings would look amazing free-motion embroidered.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the technique you use and how did you learn?
Hand free-motion embroidery is really just painting with fabric and drawing with thread. Appliqued fabric is cut, ironed down and stitched over to hold in place. The best way I can describe free-motion embroidery is to imagine you’re drawing a picture by holding the pencil still and moving the paper. The first part of any project is the drawing. After the drawing is complete, the work is turned over and traced in reverse onto bonding material/paper, breaking the image down into all the different shapes in each colour/fabric type used. The bonding material that holds the work in place until it is stitched is ironed onto the back of the fabric, which is why it is done in reverse. After all the various shapes of bonding paper are cut and ironed onto the required fabric, the fabric pieces are then cut. This is my least favourite part of any project, so you can imagine just how much fun I had cutting approx 800 bits for my ‘People Make Glasgow’ piece! The cut pieces are then ‘jigsaw’ed in place and ironed down. After the monotony of cutting, seeing your picture come to life is brilliant. The final part is free-motion embroidery. Sometimes my work has to go back on the drawing board for perspective lines to be redrawn before stitching. The stitching part is relatively quick but there can be hours, days and sometimes weeks of work in a piece before you get to the part that people see. As for how I learned, I’m very much self-taught. I know it would have been so much quicker learning from someone else but I must admit to feeling really proud of what I’ve managed to achieve on my own.
What is your favourite building in Glasgow?
Now you’re asking! That really is a hard question. It used to be James Salmon’s British Linen Bank in the Gorbals. I’ve always loved that building, being the sole survivor of so much change in the area. And I must admit, I do have a soft spot for neglected buildings. Another one I love is the Hat Rack but my real favourites are probably buildings that no longer exist: St Enoch Hotel and Railway Station, the UCBS bakery and Alexander Thomson’s Queen’s Park Terrace.
Why do you use buildings for your embroidery?
I use buildings in my work because that’s where my heart lies. As a wee girl, I was always drawing buildings and have always loved ‘do-er uppers’ and poor neglected buildings. I just wish that my parents had taken photos of some of the now long-demolished buildings that we explored. When I was close to closing my business as my heart was no longer in it (especially after the Cornish pasty rabbit!), I decided to go back to what I love. Buildings. Home portraits sprung from there and although these became my bread and butter for a few years, my heart has always been in recreating the buildings of Glasgow and the west.
How do you choose which buildings to embroider?
Often the buildings are chosen for me – a commission, a suggestion or even just one I think I should do. But I must admit the ones I love are never the ones I thought I would. I also love a challenge, so I love making pieces that are either really complicated or have lots or teeny little pieces, despite the cutting!
Is there a building in Glasgow that you’d love to embroider that you haven’t yet?
There are lots! But I’ll narrow it down to 3. First is Templeton Carpet Factory. That building is just screaming out to be pieced together in little bits of fabric and I must admit to having it on my drawing board twice over the years but have never got past the sketching stage. Next would have to be Alexander Thomson’s Egyptian Halls, Thomson was an absolute genius and the detail in this building is nothing short of a masterpiece. Lastly, an Art Deco building: the old ABC cinema on Sauchiehall Street and the shapes around the foyer would be brilliant to recreate. It looks deceptively simple but there’s so much detail there that would look brilliant in fabric.
What is the first thing you will do once this lockdown is over?
After all I’ve said before, you’d think it would be either Glasgow or architecture based but no! My eldest son, Kyle, lives in Paisley and I’ve not seen him since Mother’s Day in March so it will definitely be a drive to see him and get a hug. We’ve been talking about going a cycle together so maybe a wee trip on the bikes from Paisley to Glasgow. That would be magic!
Press play with Glasgow City Heritage Trust! Enjoy our playlist of Glasgow musicians from across the decades. Representing the diverse popular music heritage of the city, we’ve brought together staff favourites from oh-so cool indie bands to sing-along pop favourites.
Glasgow’s built heritage often plays a major role for the musicians on the playlist. From Deacon Blue’s use of Oscar Marzaroli’s photograph of Glasgow for the cover of their album Raintown to Belle and Sebastian rehearsing and recording in Hyndland Parish Church, the buildings of Glasgow contribute to the music and imagery of the artists. There’s also the importance of the Glasgow School of Art which has attracted many musicians to the city and counts members of Franz Ferdinand, Travis, Frightened Rabbit and Texas amongst its alums.
Glasgow was the first city in the UK to be given “City of Music” status by UNESCO, demonstrating the importance of music as part of the city’s heritage and cultural life. Alongside the bands themselves, there’s the many venues across the city which unite music lovers. Whether it’s to get their start in the smaller clubs of Nice ’n’ Sleazy and King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, or play the iconic Barrowland Ballroom, musicians from around the world continue to flock to Glasgow.
We helped to fund a unique cross-artform documentary project to document Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom in 2018. Alison Irvine, Chris Leslie & Mitch Miller engaged with the untold stories of the Barrowland Ballroom in close collaboration with the venue, the east end community that surrounds it, and a much wider community of gig-goers, dancers and musicians whose life stories are woven into the building. The resulting book is available to buy online.
While we may not be able to enjoy live music at the moment, we hope these songs help connect you with the city and its musical heritage. Please share with us your musical memories of Glasgow by following @GlasgowHeritage on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, or nominate a historic music venue as a #GlasgowBuildingOftheWeek.
Our Kids Heritage Trails are now available online. Click on any of the images below and then you’ll be able to download and print the trails in a new easy-to-print format.
We’d love to see some pictures of you enjoying the trails – you can show them to us on our Twitter, Instagram or Facebook pages – use the hashtag #glasgowkidstrails.
Salary: £20,000 per annum
Full-time, 35 hours per week
Glasgow City Heritage Trust has been supporting the repair and restoration of Glasgow’s historic environment since 2007. Over the last 12 years, we have invested £12 million in the conservation, enhancement and promotion of Glasgow’s built environment, helping around 2,000 people and organisations to repair their historic buildings.
Our historic environment plays an important role in successful neighbourhoods and high streets which are vital as a local point for social and economic interactions and sustainable communities.
In addition to encouraging maintenance and repair of the historic built fabric, the Trust’s remit includes providing local skills training and fostering understanding of the historic built environment in communities. Understanding your local heritage results in pride in the historic assets which in turn means that people will look after their built environment.
An exciting opportunity has become available for an entry-level professional to support the implementation of the Trust’s traditional skills and material programmes for the benefit of all people living and working in and visiting Glasgow.
You will be time-served in a traditional building trade, ideally with experience in more than one trade OR educated to degree level or equivalent in a relevant area (such as architecture, conservation, construction, surveying) plus practical conservation experience.
For further details or to apply, please go to www.glasgowheritage.org.uk. Please don’t hesitate to contact the Director Torsten Haak under 0141 552 1331 for an informal discussion.
The deadline for application submission is 20 September 2019 at 12:00 noon. Shortlisted candidates will be informed by 26 September 2019. Interviews will be held on 2 October 2019.
Wednesday 5th June 2019 | 12.30-1.30pm | 54 Bell Street, Glasgow
The shopfronts and signs of the 1920s and 30s are characterised by materials such as Vitrolite, bronze, faience, and terracotta, which present their own considerations and challenges as they age. Dr. Lindsay Lennie, one of Scotland’s foremost authorities on historic shopfronts, gives a specialised talk on the materials and methods of this brief but significant time period, and discusses conservation solutions to conserving interwar shopfronts.
All GCHT CPD sessions are recognised by the IHBC, and attendees can obtain a CPD certificate upon completion.
A light lunch will be provided.
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All sessions are recognised by the Institute of Historic Building Conservation (IHBC) as being capable of contributing to the obligatory CPD requirements of Full Members (see www.ihbc.org.uk)
Ghost Signs of Glasgow is a new project by Glasgow City Heritage Trust which will be unearthing the stories behind old signs and shopfronts of the city. Ghost signs, the fading remains of old painted signs on buildings, provide an invaluable insight into Glasgow’s architectural, social and cultural history. Many ghost signs hide in plain sight hidden by the urban landscape around them, leaving a tangible part of Glasgow’s heritage vulnerable to being lost forever.
The project will be revealing, researching and documenting ghost signs in Glasgow in order to create an online archive and to expand our collective knowledge about these remnants of Glasgow’s past. We will be organising guided walks, talks and workshops, and making a map of these signs and shopfronts across the city. With the help of volunteers, the project hopes to use social media to engage people with Glasgow’s historic environment and encourage communities to share their memories of the city.
Follow @Ghostsignsgla on Instagram, Twitter & Facebook for updates or email ghostsigns@glasgowheritage.org.uk
Looking to volunteer? Contact us at ghostsigns@glasgowheritage.org.uk
Robin Webster & Will Knight
Date: 6th March – 31st May
Venue: Glasgow City Heritage Trust, 54 Bell St, Glasgow
Friends & Family View: April 26th 6-8pm, no RSVP required
Exhibition open to all 10am-5pm Monday to Friday
For Glasgow Landmarks artists Robin Webster and Will Knight will present a series of paintings, drawings and prints at Glasgow City Heritage Trust. The buildings that the artists have chosen to record are not ‘landmarks’ in the traditional sense – the canonical buildings people would normally associate with Glasgow – such as The Glasgow School of Art, University of Glasgow, or the SEC ‘Armadillo’. Rather, they are Glasgow’s ‘other’ landmarks best known by locals, such as the tunnel rotundas, Jaconelli’s café and the Barras Market.
There is a sense of ‘otherness’ in the landmarks that the artists depict, both looking beyond the city’s usual landmarks both in their choice of buildings and the way that these places have been recorded – through other, more organic mediums using pen and watercolour or screen printing, which go beyond traditional methods of critiquing or recording buildings, such CAD drawings, scale models and photographs traditionally used by architects. Contemplating Robin Webster’s watercolour drawings, screen prints, and collages and Will Knight’s scale watercolour drawings we can appreciate these ‘other’ methods of recording architecture which are no less valuable in terms of what we learn about the subjects.
The exhibition is an exploration of the notions of tradition and the canonical works of architecture to help expand our understanding of what is a landmark and what is valuable in terms of our collective heritage. The artists’ subjective approach to the recording of buildings in this exhibition opens up discussions on the nature of experiencing architecture and of ‘landmarks’ themselves – which is contingent on the individual’s own subjective experience and familiarity with the urban landscape.
The exhibition will be open from 6th March – 26 April 2019
Glasgow City Heritage Trust
54 Bell Street
Glasgow
G1 1LQ
Professor Robin Webster OBE PRIAS RSA RIBA FRSA
Robin is an architect, but also the son of Gordon Webster and the grandson of Alf Webster, two very distinguished Glasgow stained glass artists, and the was brought up in a house that was also his father’s studio and workshop, so an enthusiasm for art has rubbed off. He is a partner in the firm of the award winning CameronWebster architects in the city, along with his daughter and son-in law. He has drawn and painted all his life, mostly for his own pleasure, but also exhibiting at the Royal Scottish Academy, The Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, and at various other galleries throughout the country.
He was born in Glasgow but spent more than twenty years in London practicing with Robin Spence in the architectural firm of Spence + Webster, winning a number of architectural competitions and building his own steel framed courtyard house there. He has also taught widely, and took the chair of Architecture at the Scott Sutherland School of Architecture in the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, where he was Head of School for twenty years, returning to Glasgow in 2005.
Alasdair Gray remarked in his Novel “Lanark” that Glasgow suffered from not enough being written about it, or pictures painted of it. This exhibition is a small attempt to remedy this, and focuses on buildings in Glasgow, including some that were “at risk” but have been repaired with the help of the Glasgow City Heritage Trust, where Robin has been a consultant and was also one of the founding Trustees. He is currently the Treasurer of the Royal Scottish Academy, and in 2018 he was elected President of the Royal Incorporation of Architects.
Will Knight
Glasgow based artist Will Knight trained at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, which stimulated his interest in the significance of people and place, and the role that the environment plays in both reflecting and shaping community and cultural identity.
Will has developed his investigations of domestic, commercial and industrial buildings through recording, measurement and drawing by hand, ever since his Masters Research on Glasgow Tenement Bakeries. The architect Sarah Wigglesworth has informed this technique, as Wigglesworth says, ‘To capture something as large as a building on the size of a piece of paper, architects work to a reduced scale, using symbols and codes to represent the world’.
Unlike the survey drawings of an archaeologist, generated to provide an accurate record of a site as left by its inhabitants, Will’s drawings are produced in dialogue with the people who shape these places as their own. Will produces drawings that accurately show the nature of a space, or place, and the forensic details record its character; encouraging the viewer to engage in, and explore, thesubject matter as a new way to consider the spaces and places we inhabit. His drawings act as a lens and provide a framework for debate, a catalyst for a wider discussion as opposed to an end in itself.
Will has previously exhibited work on Independent Newsagents at the New Glasgow Society, and a series of Section Drawings Through Gibson Street at the Woodlands Workspace. Last Summer he won the Summerhall Award at the RSA Open Exhibition, and is working on a series of drawings for an exhibition at Summerhall in Edinburgh this Autumn.
The drawings here are a selection of works that attempt to record and recognise the breadth of scale, scope and style of the city’s built heritage from Victorian Villas to art deco cafes.