Red Road: Past, Present, Future - Exhibition
The Red Road flats have been present on the Glasgow skyline for almost 50 years. Now they are being demolished. Red Road: Past, Present, Future is an exhibition exploring the impact of those iconic high rise flats. Funded by Glasgow Housing Association and Glasgow Life, it features artworks and commentary created by the Red Road communities, in response to the rise and fall of the city’s most visible tower blocks.
Exhibition runs from the 28th February 2013 - 4th May 2014
The People’s Palace
The People’s Palace and Winter Gardens is a short walk from the heart of the City, and lies within the grounds of historic Glasgow Green. It can be reached:
By subway: Fifteen minutes’ walk from St Enoch subway station.
By train: Fifteen minutes’ walk from Argyle Street, Bellgrove and High Street train stations.
By bus: First Bus services 16, 18, 40, 61, 62 and 263 all stop near Glasgow Green.
Use the Traveline Scotland journey planner to plan your trip by public transport.
Facilities: Museum shop, cafe, toilets, wheelchair access, nearby pay and display
Opening Hours: Monday CLOSED, Tuesday to Thursday and Saturday 10am–5pm, Friday and Sunday 11am–5pm. The Winter Gardens is open daily 10am–5pm
Map
Iseult Timmermans: End of The Red Road
In partnership with the Red Road Flats Cultural Project, Street Level Photoworks present a unique exhibition of photographic work created at the Red Road flats.
This exhibition contains a selection of work by Iseult Timmermans, focusing on the lives of people living in the Red Road flats, where she has been working since 2004. It includes portraits, creative photography from the collaborative programme, documentary images from inside the last inhabited flats at 10 Red Road Court and the sealed off depths of the underground entertainment complex. The exhibition explores both the capturing of reality and the creative playing with representation as a way of preserving a sense of the place and the people that have passed through it.
Iseult has co-ordinated the Red Road Community Studio for the past 2 years and involved hundreds of current and ex-residents of the flats in a series of creative photography projects and events. The Community Studio closed on 31st January 2012, as 10 Red Road Court is to be the next block handed over to demolition contractors. The Red Road flats are iconic in Glasgow - once the tallest in Europe and the showcase of Glasgow Housing Corporation’s social housing policy - they now stand poised on the brink of demolition. The history of the Red Road Flats is much more than the powerful architecture, and the aspiration of housing policy - it is a history of changing populations, an intricate web of stories and the many thousands of individual lives that have crossed the path of the Red Road.
Street Level Photoworks have been delivering award winning collaborative arts programmes for over 15 years. www.streetlevelphotoworks.org
Previous work undertaken at Red Road can be seen at: www.multi-story.org
Red Road Day at Peoples Palace
Come along to the People’s Palace on Sunday 26th February and help us explore Red Road’s history. There will be three different projects to get involved with, plus the chance to relax and chat over a cuppa.
The three projects are:
Street Level Photoworks: Portrait Archive and Blow-down project – an on-going visual history project with current and ex-residents which will document people’s reactions to the first demolition. Get your portrait taken at the Red Road photo booth!
Glasgow Museums: Museum staff want to add objects from Red Road to the museum collections and develop a display about the history of the flats to go in the People’s Palace. What do you think should be in the display? Come and share your ideas.
422:tv: The film crew want to interview residents (past and present) of the Red Road flats and include their stories in a film about the flats. Glasgow Housing Association will show the finished film to tenants who are going through the demolition process in other parts of Glasgow. If you would like to be interviewed, please contact Isobel McDonald to arrange a suitable time. The interview will probably last around 30 minutes.
The Street Level Photoworks and Glasgow Museums activities are drop-in events in the Winter Gardens, so just come along at any time between 11 am and 4 pm for these activities.
We would love to see your old photos as well – so do bring along anything you would like to show us.
We will provide refreshments.
If you will not be able to come along, but would like to get involved in any of these activities, please let us know what you are interested in, and we will be in touch.
Contact: [email protected]
Red Road Underground Exhibition
The first Red Road Underground exhibition opens on the 1st February 2012 and runs until the 2nd March at the New Glasgow Society, Glasgow.
Leslie and Miller have been invited to exhibit at the recently revamped New Glasgow Society gallery in February 2012, to coincide with the demolition of the first two slab blocks in the same month. The show Red Road Underground will show previously unseen material concerned primarily (but not exclusively) with the underground leisure complexes built at Red Road.
EXHIBITION EVENTS:
Saturday 18th February, 2-5pm
(PUBLIC EVENT, FREE) Red Road Beneath the Surface: Artists Talks with Chris Leslie, Mitch Miller and Alison Irvine, author of This Road is Red. Artists Chris Leslie and Mitch Miller welcome novelist Alison Irvine, author of This Road is Red. Working through their respective disciplines of photography, illustration and the novel, all three artists have responded to the challenge of depicting the complex and rich history of the Red Road Flats. Here they will discuss how they approached the subject matter, the challenges (and opportunities) of working in such an environment and how the finished work reflects their experiences. There will also be an opportunity to buy copies of This Road is Red and have them signed by the author.
Friday 2nd March, 6.30-8.30pm
(PUBLIC EVENT, FREE) The Roots of Red Road: Discussing the wider legacy of the Red Road Flats. Join Johnny Rodger, lecturer in History + Theory at the Mackintosh School of Architecture (GSA) and invited guest speakers for debate and discussion on the wider cultural and political legacy of the Red Road Flats. When architect Sam Bunton dreamed of American style tower-blocks in 1960s Barmulloch he both identified with and distinguished himself amongst a pan-European trend for Modernist high rise residential developments. Now regarded by many as a wrong turn in urban planning and housing policy, the legacy of High Rise continues to provoke strong feelings and lively debate. A chance to hear from the experts on how Glasgow fits into the wider history of modernist architecture, and put your own questions to the panel.
Doors Open Day
On the 17th and 18th of September 2011 Red Road Flats welcomed over 1500 visitors as part of Glasgow’s annual Doors Open Day programme.
The Flats were by far the most popular new destination. Over the course of the weekend residents, former residents, neighbours, former staff, people who built the flats and those who were simply interested came together to reminisce and take in the views. Many former residents came along and shared their memories. We had a lot of fascinating discussions around building them, growing up in the flats and the demolition plans.
