the life and death of five spaces public art and community regeneration in glasgow

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2007 14: 274Cultural GeographiesJoanne Sharp

GlasgowThe life and death of five spaces: public art and community regeneration in

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cultural geographies 2007 14: 274–292

© 2007 SAGE Publications 10.1177/1474474007075363

The life and death of five spaces:public art and communityregeneration in Glasgow

Joanne Sharp

Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow

This article discusses the role of public art in the built form of western cities. Increasingly publicart is being seen as an unquestionably good thing in urban regeneration discourse, in particular forits ability to (re)create urban communities. In part, this reflects the influence of ‘new genre publicart’ approaches which privilege art as process over art as product. However, this reading of newgenre public art works can overlook the wider networks through which presence is facilitated, thevery materiality of the artistic things produced, and how they are subsequently incorporated intoeveryday life. These agendas for the critical appreciation of public art will be developed throughthe example of the Five Spaces public art project in Glasgow, Scotland.

Keywords: Community • materiality • public art • public space

I think at least something concrete will come out of this, [though] probably not as big or as

grand as what was intended.1

Recently, many cultural geographers have turned from the social sciences to the artsto understand urban experience. As Pinder has put it, there has been an excite-

ment at the alternative ways of thinking about urban space stimulated by artists’attempts ‘to transgress the boundaries between art and everyday space’.2 Culturalgeographers have studied the post-representational possibilities of such approaches,3

the effects/affects of the process for those involved in community art initiatives,4 andhave shown enthusiasm at a variety of transgressive interventions.5

There is perhaps a tendency to romanticise the figure of the artist as an outsider fig-ure. In consequence, when artists are involved in something as programmatic as urbanregeneration schemes, they are liable to be seen as irretrievably compromised:

How can artists criticize and resist the remaking of public spaces by powerful interests? How can they

question the complicity of the arts in socially divisive urban development programmes, where they are

often used merely to add gloss to urban ‘renewal’ projects through aesthetization in the form of sculp-

tures or individual art objects?6



Sharp: The life and death of five spaces

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As a result of this contradiction, there has emerged a more participatory form of pub-lic art practice, often termed ‘new genre public art’,7 wherein artists move to ‘engagewith communities and existing social struggles, to develop collaboration and dialoguewith residents, and to employ different modes of address’.8 However, those in powerhave been quick to exploit this apparent inclusivity. As community participation hasbecome an expectation in urban regeneration, so too has public art been celebratedas a way to deliver it.9 Fearing what Sennett described as ‘the retreat from public spaceinto the realm of the family and close friends’, and a public realm that therebybecomes an alienating space of ‘studied impersonality, impartiality and rationality inthe engagement with others’,10 urban managerialists have been keen to promote thedevelopment of more convivial cities.11 Public art is implicated here at many levels,but increasingly through its participatory quality. Of course, the extent to which‘participation’ is seriously pursued rather than rhetorically invoked is variable acrossprojects, but nevertheless it has become a touchstone for contemporary urban policyin its attempts to provide a sense of collective identity and ownership.12 Moregenerally, commentators such as Selwood and Hall and Robertson document a list ofclaims that they believe are made uncritically for the impact of public art. Theseinclude contributing to local distinctiveness, increasing the use of urban space,creating ownership, reducing vandalism, and improving various economic measuresof an area.13

In this article I examine public art and its role in fashioning urban public space andlife in relation to the Five Spaces project in Glasgow, Scotland. Rather than opposingformal and processual understandings of artworks, I approach the Five Spaces as builtassemblages, both product and process.14 The Five Spaces were developed by artistsand architects with community input as part of the city’s year as UK City ofArchitecture and Design 1999 (hereafter shortened to Glasgow 1999). In intention theydrew on the new genre public art approach. This article traces the development of theSpaces as ideas and material outcomes, following their conception, production andreception since 1997. To use Jacobs’ terminology, this article will therefore attempt to‘broach the question of how a [public space] comes to have “presence”, how it isstitched into place by fragmented, multi-scaled and multi-sited networks of associa-tion’15 – including international circuits of urban design, the neoliberal economics ofurban regeneration and managerialism, and methods of local control – to trace the lifeof these urban spaces and in some cases also their apparent death. To do so, it willturn to the materiality of the public art, something often downplayed by new genrepublic art approaches.

Public art and community regenerationThe contemporary presence of public art within urban regeneration and communityrenewal discourses is often traced to debate over one artwork. Richard Serra’s TiltedArc has come to embody the end of a previous mode of urban artistic practice andthe emergence of ideals of participation.16 The work – and reactions to it – have been



cultural geographies 14(2)

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so influential that public artworks developed after it are sometimes referred to as‘post-Tilted Arc’. To its critics, it is emblematic of the problems of parachuting pre-formed, unsympathetic, non-site-specific work into spaces whose particularity isignored. However, the reactions to, and discussion around, Tilted Arc demonstrate thecomplex ways in which urban space is made and imagined by the range of peopleoverseeing and inhabiting it, and illustrate the important materiality of artwork caughtup in competing discourses and practices of the city.

Situated in Federal Plaza, Manhattan in 1981 Tilted Arc was created to challenge thebourgeois bureaucratic spaces of the modernist city: the sanitized, alienating squarecreated by the meeting of two blocks of the Federal Building. Constructed from CortenSteel, 120 feet long, 12 feet high and 2.5 inches in width, and covered with a surfaceof brown rust, Tilted Arc bisected the square tilting off both its horizontal and verticalaxes.17 Serra challenged the space of the square through a sculptural form that refusedto offer a reconciliation of architecture and sculpture but instead revealed ‘a conflictedspace that lays bare its internal divisions to its inhabitants’.18 The sculpture generatedconsiderable debate, with public reaction suggesting that it was oppressive, or that itwas inappropriate in size or design for its location. Some used this popular oppositionto push for the removal of the artwork as part of an attack on the National Endowmentfor the Arts and radical art more generally. However, public opposition to Tilted Arccould not simply be read off broad discourses of urban space or artistic practice andform. Instead reactions were often based around ‘little things’,19 such as where peoplecould sit and eat their lunch on a sunny day in the space now dominated by Serra’simposing work. Much public opinion was in agreement with Serra’s stated distaste forthe alienating square, but not with the form he had adopted to challenge it. One localworker said ‘I do not care to be challenged on a daily basis by something designed tobe hostile’, and another concluded that ‘What we need … is something to enliven ourlives, not something which reinforces the negativity of our work lives’.20

While it is possible to walk away from a work in a gallery, once works are incor-porated into lived spaces they cannot always be avoided, suggesting that public artmay have different ethics towards the public with which it engages:

What the Tilted Arc controversy forced us to consider is whether art that is centered on notions of pure

freedom and radical autonomy and subsequently inserted into the public sphere without any regard for

the relationship it has to other people, to the community, or any consideration except the pursuit of art,

can contribute to the common good.21

Debates surrounding Tilted Arc (and other works generating similar discussions) havebeen influential in shifting commissioning practice away from ‘parachuted in’ pieces(though there are exceptions22), which are now seen as ‘displacing’ place rather thanenhancing it in some way.23 Instead, context and community involvement havebecome leitmotivs. Thus so called ‘new genre public art’ focuses not on the end prod-uct but rather emphasizes the importance of the process through which peoplebecome engaged in the production of the work:




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The inclusion of the public connects theories of art to the broader population: what exists in the space

between the words public and art is an unknown relationship between artist and audience, a relationship

that may itself become the artwork.24

Such works, it is argued, can open up a ‘dialogic’ relationship between different com-munity members and design professionals.25 Thus, this is not to say that tensionsbetween public art ‘providers’ and ‘audiences’ have disappeared (regardless of howinclusive the intentions are). In particular, while new genre public art emphasizes thesocial relationships of artistic production one cannot simply ignore the materiality of theart form as end product. However effective the participatory process of artistic produc-tion may or may not be, this materiality has consequences for the art’s subsequentincorporation into the urban fabric and for its on-going ‘consumption’. Sidestepping thisissue somewhat, advocates of new genre public art tend to promote temporary works,whether performance pieces or other forms of immediate urban intervention. There isa greater challenge for those whose work is intended to make a longer term interven-tion, and for whom the artistic process is to be continued after the artist has ‘moved on’through the agency of the work itself. This was the case for Glasgow’s Five Spaces.

Glasgow’s Five SpacesFive urban spaces were developed around the city as part of Glasgow’s year as UKCity of Architecture and Design in 1999. Deyan Sudjic, director of Glasgow 1999 hasstated that these ‘Millennium Spaces’, as they were called initially, were one of the firstideas for Glasgow 1999, designed to show that Glasgow 1999 was not only aboutevents and museums in the city centre, nor generating tourist revenue and supportingbusiness interests.26 Paying homage to the touchstone of ‘participation’, the Glasgowbid for the City of Architecture and Design award stated:

Architecture and design are not enough. If a city is to serve its people, and not impose upon them, the

processes by which a city is created, and re-created, must be opened up to everyone.27

Consequently projects like the Five Spaces represented a conscious move from the citycentre to more marginal areas, and presented an opportunity for communities them-selves to set the agenda.

It is generally accepted that Glasgow succeeded in the City of Architecture and Designbidding process (including over its long-established rival Edinburgh) because of thiscommitment to communities and the use of Housing Associations to open dialoguewith them.28 Housing Associations and Co-operatives are central to Glasgow’s housingculture. They enact different degrees of community ownership, from committee-ledchange to, what one Housing Co-operative Development Officer called, ‘fully mutualco-operative so every household has a member, so everybody is involved whetherthey like it or not basically’.29 This dynamic heritage was drawn upon directly in therhetoric of the Five Spaces development. As the official record of the Five Spaces putit, Glasgow’s,



vigorous housing association movement has over the past twenty years moved from the rehabilitation of

the tenements to the construction of imaginative new housing. The next step is to address the landscape

beyond the threshold of individual houses.30

However, although the Five Spaces was to be one of the ‘flagship’ events of Glasgow1999, when 1999 arrived it enjoyed a much less significant public profile than theother spectacular (and centralized) events, such as Homes for the Future and the open-ing of a design centre at the Lighthouse.31 While the Lighthouse took nearly half ofGlasgow 1999’s budget of around £27.5 million, the Five Spaces was allocated less thanone tenth of it. Media coverage of the Spaces was similarly less prominent than for theLighthouse and Homes for the Future, so that, when asked at the end of the year, veryfew visitors, Glaswegians or even design professionals could name the Five Spaces asa prominent feature of the programme.32

The Five Spaces project had started in Glasgow School of Art with HousingAssociation representatives working with artists and architects who had been assignedto them. A number of the Spaces had been identified previously and the relevantHousing Associations had sought funding from other sources before Glasgow 1999arrived and offered the possibility of support. Each Housing Association had chosen apiece of open space for redevelopment into an organized space that would in someway act as a marker of community. These workshops were used to develop ways ofreworking the spaces nominated by the Housing Associations. Artists were to beinvolved in the design and conceptualization of the space and not simply producinga ‘thing’ added afterwards. This represented a shift in the usual relationship betweenartists and architects where artists were often only asked to contribute once the spaceshad been developed and to fit in to the design imposed by the architects. The artists’brief included devising methods of meeting the communities involved in order todevelop an understanding of what the spaces meant, how residents might use them,and to get a sense of what people wanted from them. It was hoped that this moreequal partnership between artists and architects would produce a more appropriate orsensitive use of space while also invigorating the economy of arts in the city.33

Artists were to be given residence in their areas and some developed ethnographies,interviews and workshops to draw in local communities and to understand the natureof the spaces they were to work in. A ‘trial run’ of spaces was implemented in 1997where the artists took up their residence and developed a plan for the spaces34, butat this stage there was no financial commitment to the development of the artists’ pro-posals. Initially there were to be over 20 of these spaces chosen by HousingAssociations around the city. The initial cut took the number to 15, then to 11 andthen, well into 1998, the number was reduced to five.

The Five Spaces were distributed in communities around the outskirts of the citycentre (see Figure 1). Each Housing Association presented a particular brief to the artistand architect selected. This had been decided upon via discussions between theHousing Associations and local residents, always heavily influenced by budgetary con-siderations. A theme which ran through a number of the spaces was that of markingplace, to distinguish the particular community from those sitting adjacent. Thus, in


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Whiteinch, artist Adam Barclay-Mill designed a tower of light to illuminate the spaceat the centre of the community, and a concrete wall announced the location. TheSpace identified in Govanhill was previously an in-between space left over from roadconstruction and was chosen in order to provide a punctuation mark in the landscape,to announce, a ‘gateway to Govanhill,’35 but on a scale for pedestrians not car driverswho have historically been the focus of much urban development in Glasgow.

Other Spaces focused more on recreating community history, governed by desires torepresent it for generations who might not know the origins of the place in which theywere growing up. The Graham Square Space had been occupied by Glasgow’s abattoir.Traces of this memory are reflected in the incorporation of the façade of the listed build-ing into the new architecture and in sculptor Kenny Hunter’s monument of a golden calf,honouring all the animals that had ended their life at the abattoir (see Figure 2). A wallof corten steel was used to form the Whiteinch Space, as a symbol of the docks nearbywhich had been the main place of work for the community before the decline ofClydeside shipbuilding in the late 20th century. A water feature was requested by resi-dents to symbolize the fact that the location of the Space had, in the past, been a horse-watering spot for people coming into Glasgow (Figure 3). The falling water was addi-tionally designed to cut off traffic noises from the slip road to the busy Clyde tunnel.

Elements of design also looked to the future of the communities involved. InSaracen Cross, the Housing Association was seeking money for new housing behindthe Space and so the artist marked in ‘footprints’ of potential buildings with plants

FIGURE 1. Location of the Five Spaces




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FIGURE 2. Graham Square with Kenny Hunter’s Golden Calf. (Photograph: J Sharp)

FIGURE 3. Whiteinch Cross. (Photograph: J Sharp)




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protected by metal cages. Hard and soft landscaping were used, reinforcing this as anin-between space. The Space chosen at Fruin Street was an abandoned area of toxicground. The design brief was for a landscape which would stimulate response, so ZooArchitects developed an innovative interactive play space for local children. Concreteand other strong fabrics were used in anticipation of the battering the Space wouldtake. Artist David Shrigley included a world map, star chart, first aid instructions,grammar and geometry to be sandblasted onto the concrete in an attempt to generatesome form of response from the local children.

The Spaces were thus caught up in, and produced through, a series of scalar net-works, each presenting different demands and expectations. The 1990 City of Cultureaccolade had marked Glasgow as a city going through a successful transformation as aresult of culture-led regeneration.36 Glasgow 1999 saw itself as developing this globalprominence, and consciously chose artists, architects, designers and critics whoseinvolvement lent international cultural credibility to the year. One of the first acts in theproduction of the spaces was to send representatives of the Housing Associations toBarcelona, a city whose design achievements were often claimed as inspiration forGlasgow’s ambitions. Thus, the design work for the Five Spaces had to resonate with acertain imagination of continental urban design, as well as local imaginations of futurepossible uses of their everyday space. Many of the Housing Associations had alreadyestablished plans for the upgrading of local spaces and saw Glasgow 1999 as an ideavehicle through which to achieve their aims, but for others, becoming involved in theFive Spaces project was a more opportunistic means of accessing funding.

Researching the spacesI have followed the fortunes of the Five Spaces for the last 10 years. Over the courseof this period I have attended meetings at the Five Spaces sites, and spoken with anumber of people involved in the delivery of the spaces. During 1999 I collected offi-cial literature on the Year of Architecture and Design and logged and analysed mediacoverage of it, in addition to attending (and, in one case, helping at) the communityopenings of the Spaces. A formal evaluation of the Spaces was established through theexamination of a number of sources. First was the official evaluation of Glasgow 1999,commissioned by Glasgow 1999 and carried out by an Edinburgh-based company,DTZ Pieda Consulting. This involved questionnaires delivered in four of the Spaces(Graham Square was left out due to the fact that it was not completed by the end of1999), in 1998 to establish expectation and in December 1999 and January 2000 tojudge ‘satisfaction’. These questionnaires were of a closed question type and so providelittle in the way of explanation for different views. This provided only an immediateresponse to the spaces, while the process of their delivery were was still ongoingand while they were still in people’s minds as ‘art’ rather than becoming a lessexplicitly signified part of the landscape. Thus in summer 2001, I arranged for 400questionnaires to be delivered to people in the streets adjacent to Govanhill,Whiteinch, Fruin Street and Saracen Cross Spaces.37 Again Graham Square was omit-ted but this time because, as a more discrete public space, it attracted few passers-by.




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However, this did not provide the full story. It is important to see what people dowith the Spaces that have been developed. After all, it may be that certain publics arenot reached by the formal evaluations, or choose not to take part. It may also be thatwhen asked directly about the Spaces, framed as ‘art’ or ‘community initiatives’ or‘something provided by the council’ people are led to certain dialogues structuringthese debates (elitist expression, issues of inclusion, notions of what ought to be pro-vided, and so on). Perhaps this is in part due to the tendency to concentrate on theworks as ‘art’ in the moment of their creation or opening rather than seeing them,more mundanely, as artefacts in the urban landscape. These things gain meaningthrough use, or just by being there, whether or not this can be articulated by thosewho interact with them. The ‘prompted’ questionnaire survey was complemented bya period of ethnographic study. In this case, two other researchers and I spent extendedperiods of time in each of the Spaces, in an attempt to see how they were actuallyused.38 This approach allowed the examination of the Spaces as everyday placeswhose origin as public art may have not have been obvious to those using them. Inthis longer term research, art is no longer articulated as such. The public art elementof the design of the Five Spaces has faded into memory and the process so importantto new genre public art has finished: the media no longer talks of them, there are nomore visits from the design profession community, and they are no longer talked ofin terms of art. The Spaces are now just part of the community landscape, involvingunreflective, prediscursive, bodily responses, whether cutting across the space to takea short cut home, sitting on a seat waiting for a friend, or children playing in the spacein ways perhaps never anticipated by the architects, artists and designers.

The life and death of Five SpacesEach of the Five Spaces have been designed in such a way as to provide a unique focusto the locality it serves. Given Glasgow’s social and economic problems, it might seemstrange that there is such enthusiasm on the part of planners for public art, rather thanspending money on what might be considered to be more pressing issues such as theimprovement of housing conditions. Glasgow 1999 was clear that the quality of theSpaces between housing developments was as important, arguing that ‘Homes in isola-tion do not create a functioning city fabric’.39 On speaking to members of Glasgow’sHousing Associations and Co-operatives, it is clear that this is not a choice that is madeat a community level. The idea that there is money for art separate from money for otherthings is taken for granted. Not one of the Housing Association Development Officersor Arts Organizers that I spoke to questioned this division of funds. Money was avail-able for art – it could not be used for heating or bathrooms – so if they did not take it,someone else would. As one Housing Association Development Officer related,

we always make them [the residents] aware of how the money comes, from which little pocket the money

come out of. It’s not a question really that they should assume that is should be spent on anything else

because they know what it’s there for.40




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It would be quite easy to offer critique that this is simply papering over the inequali-ties in Glasgow, an aesthetic improvement designed to detract people’s attention fromthe real inequalities in the city. Certainly this is one dominant critique of the use ofpublic art in urban redevelopment schemes,41 and it was a complaint raised by one ofthe Housing Association representatives interviewed. However, others were morestrategic, or perhaps pragmatic, in accepting the way in which money was made avail-able. Besides, the cultural economy of place aesthetics is not straightforward given thespecific context of Glasgow. Recreational public space has been important toGlaswegians since the city began its industrial growth. Most Glaswegians will know –and will readily tell you with some pride – that historically the city has more parkspace per head of the population than any other city in western Europe. There is alsoa culture of shared space, of tenement life, the shared hall-way, or ‘close’, and backcourt. To a certain extent this cuts across class differences in the city as the basictenement style was designed for working classes and their employers alike.Neighbourhoods have their own parks, so that there is a local significance to thenature and quality of these public areas.42 The Glasgow context therefore seemedparticularly suited to the development of new public spaces.

The Housing Association Director responsible for the delivery of Graham Square wasparticularly strong in his advocacy of art and design in the production of social housing:

tenement dwellers are used to decoration being an indicator of the quality of the housing, the quality of

where you stay so […] the ceramic tiled close [shared hallway] was middle class, and the type of closes

around here were not ceramic tiles, they were just plaster. So the committee, […] always insisted that there

were ceramic tiles in all the closes, because overnight we all became middle class. You know, it just

improved their social status. In better tenements you’d have, you know, stained glass on the window

heads, whereas it’d be plain glass in the poor tenements. So the idea of etching glass, they were quite

receptive to that. So there’s this whole concept of art as being an indicator of the quality of the area, the

quality of the dwelling you know how you perceive yourself. […] housing is not about basic shelter from

the elements, it’s about providing a sense of dignity to its inhabitants, and that’s what I think art does, it’s

one vehicle for providing a sense of dignity to the building. If you make it that little bit special you cre-

ate a feeling that it is a good building and therefore people that live in it are good people. It changes

peoples’ perceptions of themselves […] the use of public art [has been] a strategy for enhancing the […]

perception of the quality of […] property.43

Thus, this Housing Association used innovative architects and artists to offer somethingdistinctive for public sector renters. For instance, just around the corner from GrahamSquare is Bellgrove Street where small details have been developed in an attempt toprovide people a sense of identity rather than being lost as the residents of yet anothertenement in Glasgow. Tall glass windows illuminate the common stairwells and eachclose is lit at night by different coloured bulbs. When calling in a repair, manyresidents do not give an address but instead will report a problem in the ‘red close’ orthe ‘blue close’.44 What this Housing Association Director was insisting in his explanationand use of the Bellgrove Street example, was the danger in automatically being criti-cal of the use of art and aesthetics to improve the appearance of developments (ratherthan investing all possible money on more ‘fundamental’ changes). His view was that




284

public art – through its embedding in lived environments – was an everyday issuerather than something that transcended mundane concerns.

Certainly there was a strong view among respondents to the questionnaire admin-istered in 2001 that this ‘care’ of urban space is important.45 Respondents to thequestionnaires used in each area insisted that ‘every area deserves good treatment, notjust [the] city centre’, it ‘gives a good impression to others driving by’ and ‘shows thatthe areas is worthy of being looked after’. The idea that care was being paid to theseareas (rather than simply providing the bare necessities) was clearly an important sig-nal to local residents offering a sense of enhanced social capital. On average 45 percent of those questioned in the communities served by the Spaces in 1999 agreed orstrongly agreed that the Space looked good, 41 per cent gave the same responses tothe prompt that the Space had ‘improved the area’, and 38 per cent that it had been‘a worthwhile project’. Fifty-three per cent felt that they would like to see more suchprojects, a figure that rose to 86 per cent for those talking about Fruin Street.46

However, by the end of 1999, formal evaluation of the Spaces suggested that theyhad not been so successful. Although there were high hopes, it seems that people’sexpectations for what the Spaces could contribute to Glasgow’s communities havebeen challenged. For example, the official evaluation of Glasgow 1999 showed thatalthough 18 per cent of people asked in 1998 thought that the Spaces would be goodfor Glasgow, by the end of 1999 this number had fallen to 9 per cent (compared to33 per cent for the Homes for the Future and 25 per cent for the Lighthouse).47 Asmentioned above, knowledge of the Spaces was low (no-one in the official evaluationcould name them as one of the flagship events, although some did remember themwhen prompted). Even among those from the areas where the Spaces were developed,knowledge of the spaces was limited: here the number who had visited any of the FiveSpaces was between 50 per cent and 60 per cent of people asked.48 In general,responses to the questionnaires delivered in 2001, demonstrated even less enthusiasmfor the Spaces.

The Spaces had come to face significant material challenges. In 2001 maintenancecontracts for the Spaces were terminated because Glasgow 1999 had only budgetedrunning costs for two years. The Whiteinch Space has fallen into disrepair such thatthe water feature and light tower were both broken and have been boarded up. TheFruin Street Space suffered much structural damage and was fenced off in the springof 2004 and then bulldozed. On these measures it would seem that these Spaces havebeen unsuccessful. In part, this was due to the provision of the Five Spaces being con-trolled by an agency tasked with the delivery of the Year of Architecture and Design.The Five Spaces ended up being temporary interventions despite their appeal to amore solid, durational materiality.

Prominent events such as Glasgow 1999 are important to local communities in theirability to raise money that would not normally be available. A number of the HousingAssociation and Co-operative representatives that spoke to me talked of having soughtmoney for redeveloping their chosen spaces before the arrival of Glasgow 1999, butthat this provided a different means to realise the developments. In addition to providing economic capital, the Five Spaces had an important role in developing the




285

cultural capital of the communities. Kearns and Philo emphasize how urban regener-ation reaches well beyond narrowly economic goals:

the more intangible phenomenon whereby cultural resources are mobilised by urban managers in an

attempt to engineer consensus among the residents of their localities, a sense that beyond the daily difficul-

ties of urban life which many of them might experience the city is basically doing ‘alright’ by its citizens.49

This is a powerful form of motivation but problems emerge when communities are letdown. It is difficult to generate enthusiasm when they have been disappointed before.In Camlachie, one of the country’s most deprived areas which proposed a space fordevelopment but which did not have the artist’s plans realized, meetings about thepotential public art project enjoyed an unusually high turn out because, as oneHousing Association representative explained, for the first time, rather than ‘experts’being bussed in briefly to tell them what is good for them, the community were askedwhat they wanted. Such communities are used to being let down, as another HousingAssociation member related: if ‘the funding had been there in place from the begin-ning and it had been guaranteed – it’s very difficult to get enthusiasm and to commitother people to something that you know one week’s there and one week isn’t.’50

The fact that the number of Spaces was cut back so dramatically so close to theanticipated start-date of the project did not inspire confidence within those communi-ties involved, and certainly did nothing for the motivation of those now excluded.When plans for Fruin Street were first presented to the community, there was scepti-cism about whether anything would happen. One boy bet a Housing Co-operativeDirector £5 that the park would never be developed. She proudly retold this story oncethe Space had been delivered as proof of the community’s success. However, this taletook on a rather different meaning once the Space lay demolished and unused.

Many involved in the delivery of the Spaces were similarly disappointed. Glasgow1999 were determined that all the Spaces would be delivered in 1999 (all but onewere) and so they put in place a property management firm to deal with the arrange-ments of making the Spaces. Thus, day-to-day ownership of the project was takenaway from the Housing Associations by Glasgow 1999 and transferred to a manage-ment firm to ensure that all of the Spaces were delivered on time. Many of the HousingAssociation members felt that this pushed them out of the decision-making processand that consequently there was a loss of ownership. Long-term problems emergedbecause of this interruption of the process. The Housing Associations were not con-sulted about small, everyday issues. For example, due to a decision made withoutHousing Association consultation, the landscaping in Fruin Street was easily vandalized.Local people felt that the Space’s design would only work if coupled with the instal-lation of a CCTV system which would ensure that those parts of the Space shelteredfrom the view of the surrounding homes would not provide a place for drug dealingand other illicit activities.51 This was not acted on. In addition, there was no plan toregularly clean the space’s graffiti board, something which might have encouraged thespread of graffiti to other surfaces in the Space. This loss of a sense of ownership hasimplications for long term care.




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Thus, a great deal of the good that has been done through these projects – of bringingpeople in to feel a sense of communal ownership, of making networks and so on –has been undone. Harding explains the problems that emerge when acts of vandalismare not immediately righted – and here we could also add other forms of decay suchas flooding, breaking of light bulbs, and problems with water features, all issues plagu-ing the Five Spaces.

When this happens, what was initially a focus of local pride quickly degenerates to the point where peo-

ple become even more disheartened than they were before. Rectifying the damage done by vandals

immediately sends out a clear message to people in deprived areas that their welfare is just as important

to the authorities as the well-being of people living in affluent circumstances.52

The book celebrating the completion of the Spaces proudly announced in the case ofSaracen Cross, ‘What was once a barren wasteland that collected nothing but litter isnow the floral focus – a neat metaphor for the future growth and regeneration inPossilpark’.53 However, the metaphor changes when the Spaces fail to bloom, weedsappear in their place, and, once again, they fill with rubbish. The official evaluation ofGlasgow 1999 showed that the community around Fruin Street was most enthusiasticabout the potential of their Space54 and, at the close of the year, enthusiasm was stillhigh.55 Anecdotal evidence reinforces this opinion. However, by the time of the ques-tionnaires conducted in the summer of 2001, once the service contract on the Spaceshad run out and vandals were left to chip away at the fabric of the Space, respondents’evaluations of this Space were much harsher than any of the other three.

In at least two of the Spaces the hopes for lively public encounters took on a deathlypall, as these spaces themselves terminally decayed. The idea too seemed to be dying.Generally there is now hesitancy towards investing in participatory public artapproaches on the part of the Housing Associations involved with the delivery of theseSpaces, and most would not get involved again unless there was clear ownership forthe communities involved.56 The Associations do not own the Spaces and do not havea budget for their maintenance – this is held by Glasgow City Council – and yet theirinvolvement with the production of the Spaces has meant that people in the local com-munity blame the Associations for the failures of the Spaces. The physical fabric of theSpaces outlived the process of their production and thus their materiality took on newmeaning through on-going processes of incorporation into everyday life.

Public art is dead, long live public artThe Fruin Street Space illustrates this most dramatically, and not just through its ulti-mate demolition. The development in Fruin Street was most obviously trying to engagechildren (many of whom struggled with conventional schooling) and engender someresponse in an otherwise dispossessed group. Members of the Housing Co-operativeexplained to me that when the park was first opened, it seemed that the children hadforgotten, or possibly had never known, how to play ‘properly’, as up until this pointthey had only had the street as a playground. It seemed that they did not know what




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to do with the space that they had been given.57 As a result, the Housing Co-operativebought play equipment such as skipping ropes and a number of women took it inturns to teach the children how to play.58

Graffiti was also central to the Space’s on-going life. One of the ways that the Spacewas designed to provoke a response from the children was through Shrigley’s engrav-ings. This element of the design became involved in particularly revealing exchanges.Against the wishes of some members of the Housing Co-operative, a graffiti wall wasincluded. This was in part an attempt to contain what was seen as an inevitable formof local expression but there was a fear that by sanctioning this activity in the spaceit would be difficult to control its further spread.

The graffiti did indeed spread from the wall onto more or less all the surfaces in thepark and this provoked a difference in interpretation between some of Glasgow 1999staff and the Housing Co-operative members. One of the Initiatives Directors ofGlasgow 1999 seemed very pleased with children’s graffiti on the World Map thatShrigley had had carved into the concrete surface because of its inventiveness.Interventions included: ‘I MOSCOW to the shops’, ‘I’ll colour in with my newUKRAINES’, and ‘LONDON’s birning’ (in addition to some sectarian additions to themap of Britain and Ireland) (see Figure 4). For many involved with Glasgow 1999,these interventions demonstrated that the park had worked to provoke a response, notone that was simply negative, but one which illustrated an engagement with the mate-rials that had been inscribed into the concrete. The book published by Glasgow 1999to mark the opening of the Five Spaces noted that ‘Witty plays on words by children

FIGURE 4 Annotations to Shrigley’s concrete design at Fruin Street. Interestingly all assumed itwas the children who had made these additions. (Photograph: J Sharp)



have begun to appear alongside the official inscriptions’.59 For the women in theHousing co-operative however, this was simply an indication of vandalism.

Different people want the city to be different things for them. What these momentsof activity suggest is that the art here is not so much about representing communitybut about the processes through which communities are activated and stimulated intoaction. Deutsche argues that in terms of inclusionary practice, ‘such procedures maybe necessary, in some cases even fruitful, but to take for granted that they aredemocratic is to presume that the task of democracy is to settle, rather than sustain,conflict’.60 She is arguing that the art in public art needs to be something that gener-ates debate, something active rather than something fitting so seamlessly with what isthere already that it becomes invisible. This explains the excitement with which theannotations to the concrete in Fruin Street were met by some of those involved indelivering the Spaces. Success in this context is getting a response, whether this isactive involvement or just rethinking where you live, your neighbours and community.Like most public art, then, Five Spaces has sought to challenge people not to be passivein the spaces through which they conduct their lives. At one level, the arguments overyoung people’s use of the Fruin Street Space – cast as both vandalism and spiritedguerilla art – are illustrative of the liveliness as well as death of this place.

But everyday life in Fruin Street proved destructive to the Space. The physical fab-ric suffered severe wear, in part due to heavy use by the children it was designed for,and from others it was not, and in part due to more intentionally destructive acts.Sculptures were scuffed, then chipped, then destroyed altogether. The chickenwirecages filled with large stones, used to form the basis of landscaping, were too easilypulled apart and their contents used as missiles, and the concrete-carved inscriptionsbecame illegible through heavy abrasion and additional inscription. Such physicaldecline meant that local residents feared that the play space had become too dangerous.It was fenced off and then bulldozed.

But this did not mark the end of the space. Local residents were so unhappy aboutthe state of the space that they pressed the council for action.61 It would appear thatthis time the regeneration of the space has followed community interests more closely.It has once again been enlivened, opened again as a play park, this time, more con-ventional in form, and importantly, designed in such a way as to facilitate observationfrom the surrounding homes, and with a clear plan for future upkeep. A local youthworker felt that there was a real sense of ‘community opinion having influenced theprocess’ which he suggested might have emerged from the confidence generated bytheir prior experience of involvement with the Five Spaces.62 Although the materialityof the Space did not succeed, perhaps the changes wrought by the process of itsdelivery (with its emphasis on community power and ownership) ultimately have.

Learning to tell new storiesJust as Rabinow came to term the bureaucratic capture of Le Corbusier’s skyscraper as‘middling modernism’,63 perhaps the bureaucratic capture of artistic redesign of public


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spaces, like the Five Spaces, is ‘middling postmodernism’. While it avoids the decontextu-alizing trend of modernist design, it has not been able to escape the bureaucratization ofurban managerialism. The very networks through which the spaces were made possibleundermined their success: expectations of delivery as part of the international marketingof Glasgow that was 1999 moved issues of day-to-day control of the Spaces fromHousing Associations and led to decisions that undermined their local embeddedness.This, coupled with budget cuts, produced spaces that were out of touch with what thecommunities wanted. The Housing Associations were left with things they did not wantand without a budget to manage them. The material conditions of the Spaces deteriorat-ed further. Perhaps the most important lesson from this particular story is that too muchwas expected of Five Spaces. The Glasgow 1999 blurb built up expectations of the bigthing that is public art and, when these were not met, a number of critics blamed theseprojects for not making enough of a difference. Calcutt ridicules such expectations:

Expecting public art to solve social problems is either naïve or cynical. In attempting to critically evaluate

public art projects such as Five Spaces we should bear in mind that fact that the production of art arises

within and is subject to many of the same social, political and economic pressures that affect its recep-

tion (the increasing privatisation and commercialisation of the public sphere, the fragmentation of unified

social and political agendas into the specialised concerns of competing interest groups – each with their

own social and cultural priorities, and so on).64

And while new genre public art can help to work through community inclusion, giv-ing people a renewed sense of ownership and confidence, this is in no way assured.Some public art has been tremendously successful while other examples have failed.The delivery of the Five Spaces has been tied up not only within processes of publicart and community, but also within networks of international design expectations,requirements of neoliberal urban managerialism, struggles over local governance and,ultimately, the unavoidable materiality of the work.

AcknowledgementsI would like to thank all of the people who generously gave their time over the (long) courseof this research, especially Lucy Byatt and Pauline Gallacher. Thanks to Les Hill for preparingMap 1, to Vee Pollock and Phil Crang for their encouragement and insight, and to the refereesfor their thoughtful comments.

Biographical noteJoanne Sharp is Senior Lecturer in Geography at the University of Glasgow. Her inter-ests are in cultural, postcolonial and feminist geography, and she is currently lookinginto the ways in which art and design have been used in community regeneration in dif-ferent parts of the UK. She can be contacted at: Geographical and Earth Sciences, EastQuad, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK; email: [email protected].




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Notes1 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; S. Pile, ‘“The prob-lem of London”, or, how to explore the moods of the city’, in N. Leach, ed., The hieroglyph-ics of space: reading and experiencing the modern metropolis (London, Routledge, 2002),pp. 203–16.

4 See: H. Parr, ‘Mental health, the arts and belongings’, Transactions, Institute of BritishGeographers 31, pp. 150–66; G. Rose, ‘Performing inoperative community: the space and theresistance of some community arts projects’, in S. Pile and M. Keith, eds, Geographies of resist-ance (London, Routledge, 1997), pp. 184–202.

5 For example: A. Bonnett, ‘Art, ideology and everyday space: subversive tendencies from Dadato postmodernism’, Environment and planning D: society and space 10 (1992), pp. 69–86; 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 cul-tural transformation (London, Routledge, 1995), pp. 332– 54; 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.

6 Pinder, ‘Arts’, p. 398.7 See: S. Lacy, ed., Mapping the terrain: new genre public art (Bay Press, 1995).8 Pinder, ‘Arts’, p. 398.9 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 authoritiesin the UK had adopted a public art policy of some sorts, a figure that is now likely to bemuch higher.

10 G. Bridge and S. Watson, ‘City publics’, in G. Bridge and S. Watson, eds, A companion to thecity (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 concernsabout the breakdown of social networks, social capital in apparently individualizing trendsof contemporary society; see R. Putnam, Bowling alone (New York, Simon and Schuster,2000).

11 See M. Miles, Art, space and the city (London, Routledge, 1997).12 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).13 S. Selwood, The benefits of public art (London, Policy Studies Institute, 1995); S. Selwood,

‘Attitudes to contemporary art’, Matters 17 (2003), pp. 34–6; T. Hall and I. Robertson, ‘Publicart and urban regeneration: advocacy, claims and critical debates’, Landscape research 26(2001), pp. 5–26.

14 c.f. J. Jacobs, ‘A geography of big things’, Cultural geographies 13 (2006), pp. 1–27.15 Jacobs, ‘A geography’, p. 3.16 H. Senie, The tilted arc controversy: dangerous precedent? (Minneapolis, University of

Minnesota Press, 2002).17 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. 261.18 Blake, ‘An atmosphere’, p. 254.



19 N. Thrift, ‘It’s the little things’, in D. Atkinson and K. Dodds, eds, Geopolitical traditions: acentury of geopolitical thought (London, Routledge, 2000), pp. 380–7.

20 Blake, ‘An atmosphere’, p. 284.21 Gablik, 1995, quoted in Miles, Art, space and the city, p. 90.22 Public Art Review, Public art: fail Special Issue. July–August (1998).23 S. Lacy, ‘Cultural pilgrimage and metaphoric journeys’, in S. Lacy, ed., Mapping the terrain:

new genre public art (Bay Press, 1995), p. 24.24 Lacy, ‘Cultural pilgrimage’, p. 20.25 G.H. Kester, Conversation pieces: community and communication in modern art (Berkeley,

University of California Press, 2004).26 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 generatedvia its perceived concentration on ‘middle class’ events in the city centre. Some have arguedthat 1990 ignored the experiences and heritage of the majority of Glaswegians – see for exam-ple N. McInroy and M. Boyle, ‘The refashioning of civic identity: constructing and consum-ing 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 otherGlasgow symbolism – see E. Laurier, ‘Tackintosh: Glasgow’s supplementary gloss’, in C. Philoand G. Kearns, eds, Selling places: the city as cultural capital, past and present (Oxford,Pergamon, 1993), pp. 267–89.

27 The Glasgow Bid – City of Architecture and Design 1999, 1993, p. 928 R. Carr, ‘Architecture and planning in Scotland’, archis, July (1999), www.archis.org, no

pages.29 Interview with Housing Association Director C, 9/11/98.30 D. Sudjic, ‘Preface’, Five Spaces: new urban landscapes for Glasgow (London, August, 1999),

p. 7.31 Homes for the Future was a development of 150 homes for sale and rent designed by a num-

ber of prominent contemporary architects. Before residents moved in, many of these wereopen to the public and there was an on-site display that accompanied the development. TheLighthouse was developed around an existing Charles Rennie Mackintosh building in the cen-tre of Glasgow, and displays changing exhibits of designs, in addition to housing a perma-nent Mackintosh centre.

32 DTZ Pieda Consulting, Evaluation of Glasgow 1999: UK City of Architecture and Design (2000).33 Lucy Byatt, co-director of Visual Art Projects, the art agency which managed the artists

involved with the Five Spaces, pers. comm., 1/2/99.34 L. Byatt, Towards public space (Visual Art Projects with Glasgow 1999, Glasgow, Visual Art

Projects Publication, 1997).35 Glasgow 1999 Press release.36 But see McInroy and Boyle, ‘The refashioning of civic identity’.37 Thanks to John Crotty and Ian Cochrane for their hard work.38 I would like to thank Eric Laurier and Barry Brown for their company and insight.39 Sudjic, Preface, p. 7.40 Interview with Housing Association Director C, 9/11/98.41 R. Deutsche, Evictions (The MIT Press, 1996); N. Smith, The new urban frontier (London,

Routledge, 1996).42 See A. Zieleniec, ‘Park spaces: leisure, culture and modernity – a Glasgow case study’,

Unpublished thesis, University of Glasgow, 2002.


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43 Interview with Housing Association Director A, 9/11/98.44 Interview with Housing Association Director A, 9/11/98.45 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 andRoberston, ‘Public art and urban regeneration’.

46 DTZ Pieda Consulting47 Ibid.48 Ibid.49 C. Philo and G. Kearns, Selling places, p. ix.50 Interview with Housing Association Director D, 10/11/98.51 Interview with Housing Association Director C, 9/11/98.52 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 22/10/02.53 Glasgow 1999, Five Spaces, p. 32.54 Pauline Gallacher, Initiatives Director / Community Projects, Glasgow 1999, pers. comm.,

11/8/99.55 DTZ Pieda Consulting.56 P. Gallacher, Everyday Spaces (London, Thomas Telford Publishing, 2005).57 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’.58 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 excellentopportunity to get local children playing in a structured and controlled way and perhaps wasnot the forms of play which would have emerged had children been left to establish the rulesthemselves.

59 Glasgow 1999, Five Spaces, p. 23.60 Deutsche, Evictions, p. 270; see also P. Phillips, ‘Out of order: the public art machine’,

Artforum December (1988), pp. 92–6;61 P. Gallacher, pers. corr. 29/8/06.62 Pers. corr. 29/8/06.63 Quoted in Jacobs, ‘A geography’, p. 7.64 J. Calcutt, ‘Rack and ruin: the misplaced aims of public art’, Matters 15 (2002), p. 11.



the life and death of five spaces public art and community regeneration in glasgow

Documents

role of public art

spaces public art project

newgenre public art

community art initiatives

individual art objects

remaking of public spaces

urban space

urban communities