The Life and Death of Five Spaces Public Art and Community Regeneration in Glasgow

Cultural
Geographies
http://cgj.sagepub.com/
The life and death of five spaces: public art and community regeneration in
Glasgow
Joanne Sharp
Cultural Geographies 2007 14: 274
DOI: 10.1177/1474474007075363
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cultural geographies 2007 14: 274292
The life and death of five spaces:

public art and community
regeneration 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 public
art is being seen as an unquestionably good thing in urban regeneration discourse, in particular for
its ability to (re)create urban communities. In part, this reflects the influence of new genre public
art approaches which privilege art as process over art as product. However, this reading of new
genre public art works can overlook the wider networks through which presence is facilitated, the
very materiality of the artistic things produced, and how they are subsequently incorporated into
everyday life. These agendas for the critical appreciation of public art will be developed through
the 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
ecently, many cultural geographers have turned from the social sciences to the arts
to understand urban experience. As Pinder has put it, there has been an excitement at the alternative ways of thinking about urban space stimulated by artists
attempts to transgress the boundaries between art and everyday space.2 Cultural
geographers have studied the post-representational possibilities of such approaches,3
the effects/affects of the process for those involved in community art initiatives,4 and
have shown enthusiasm at a variety of transgressive interventions.5
There is perhaps a tendency to romanticise the figure of the artist as an outsider figure. In consequence, when artists are involved in something as programmatic as urban
regeneration 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 sculptures or individual art objects?6
2007 SAGE Publications
10.1177/1474474007075363
Sharp: The life and death of five spaces
As a result of this contradiction, there has emerged a more participatory form of public art practice, often termed new genre public art,7 wherein artists move to engage
with communities and existing social struggles, to develop collaboration and dialogue
with residents, and to employ different modes of address.8 However, those in power
have been quick to exploit this apparent inclusivity. As community participation has
become an expectation in urban regeneration, so too has public art been celebrated
as a way to deliver it.9 Fearing what Sennett described as the retreat from public space
into the realm of the family and close friends, and a public realm that thereby
becomes an alienating space of studied impersonality, impartiality and rationality in
the engagement with others,10 urban managerialists have been keen to promote the
development 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 across
projects, but nevertheless it has become a touchstone for contemporary urban policy
in its attempts to provide a sense of collective identity and ownership.12 More
generally, commentators such as Selwood and Hall and Robertson document a list of
claims that they believe are made uncritically for the impact of public art. These
include contributing to local distinctiveness, increasing the use of urban space,
creating ownership, reducing vandalism, and improving various economic measures
of an area.13
In this article I examine public art and its role in fashioning urban public space and
life in relation to the Five Spaces project in Glasgow, Scotland. Rather than opposing
formal and processual understandings of artworks, I approach the Five Spaces as built
assemblages, both product and process.14 The Five Spaces were developed by artists
and architects with community input as part of the citys year as UK City of
Architecture and Design 1999 (hereafter shortened to Glasgow 1999). In intention they
drew on the new genre public art approach. This article traces the development of the
Spaces as ideas and material outcomes, following their conception, production and
reception 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 is
stitched into place by fragmented, multi-scaled and multi-sited networks of association15 including international circuits of urban design, the neoliberal economics of
urban regeneration and managerialism, and methods of local control to trace the life
of these urban spaces and in some cases also their apparent death. To do so, it will
turn to the materiality of the public art, something often downplayed by new genre
public art approaches.
Public art and community regeneration

The contemporary presence of public art within urban regeneration and community
renewal discourses is often traced to debate over one artwork. Richard Serras Tilted
Arc has come to embody the end of a previous mode of urban artistic practice and
the emergence of ideals of participation.16 The work and reactions to it have been
275
cultural geographies 14(2)
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 preformed, unsympathetic, non-site-specific work into spaces whose particularity is
ignored. However, the reactions to, and discussion around, Tilted Arc demonstrate the
complex ways in which urban space is made and imagined by the range of people
overseeing and inhabiting it, and illustrate the important materiality of artwork caught
up in competing discourses and practices of the city.
Situated in Federal Plaza, Manhattan in 1981 Tilted Arc was created to challenge the
bourgeois bureaucratic spaces of the modernist city: the sanitized, alienating square
created by the meeting of two blocks of the Federal Building. Constructed from Corten
Steel, 120 feet long, 12 feet high and 2.5 inches in width, and covered with a surface
of brown rust, Tilted Arc bisected the square tilting off both its horizontal and vertical
axes.17 Serra challenged the space of the square through a sculptural form that refused
to offer a reconciliation of architecture and sculpture but instead revealed a conflicted
space that lays bare its internal divisions to its inhabitants.18 The sculpture generated
considerable debate, with public reaction suggesting that it was oppressive, or that it
was inappropriate in size or design for its location. Some used this popular opposition
to push for the removal of the artwork as part of an attack on the National Endowment
for the Arts and radical art more generally. However, public opposition to Tilted Arc
could not simply be read off broad discourses of urban space or artistic practice and
form. Instead reactions were often based around little things,19 such as where people
could sit and eat their lunch on a sunny day in the space now dominated by Serras
imposing work. Much public opinion was in agreement with Serras stated distaste for
the alienating square, but not with the form he had adopted to challenge it. One local
worker said I do not care to be challenged on a daily basis by something designed to
be hostile, and another concluded that What we need is something to enliven our
lives, 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 incorporated into lived spaces they cannot always be avoided, suggesting that public art
may 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) have
been influential in shifting commissioning practice away from parachuted in pieces
(though there are exceptions22), which are now seen as displacing place rather than
enhancing it in some way.23 Instead, context and community involvement have
become leitmotivs. Thus so called new genre public art focuses not on the end product but rather emphasizes the importance of the process through which people
become engaged in the production of the work:
276

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 community members and design professionals.25 Thus, this is not to say that tensions
between public art providers and audiences have disappeared (regardless of how
inclusive the intentions are). In particular, while new genre public art emphasizes the
social relationships of artistic production one cannot simply ignore the materiality of the
art form as end product. However effective the participatory process of artistic production may or may not be, this materiality has consequences for the arts subsequent
incorporation into the urban fabric and for its on-going consumption. Sidestepping this
issue somewhat, advocates of new genre public art tend to promote temporary works,
whether performance pieces or other forms of immediate urban intervention. There is
a greater challenge for those whose work is intended to make a longer term intervention, 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 Glasgows Five Spaces.
Glasgows Five Spaces

Five urban spaces were developed around the city as part of Glasgows year as UK
City of Architecture and Design in 1999. Deyan Sudjic, director of Glasgow 1999 has
stated that these Millennium Spaces, as they were called initially, were one of the first
ideas for Glasgow 1999, designed to show that Glasgow 1999 was not only about
events and museums in the city centre, nor generating tourist revenue and supporting
business interests.26 Paying homage to the touchstone of participation, the Glasgow
bid 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 city
centre to more marginal areas, and presented an opportunity for communities themselves to set the agenda.
It is generally accepted that Glasgow succeeded in the City of Architecture and Design
bidding process (including over its long-established rival Edinburgh) because of this
commitment to communities and the use of Housing Associations to open dialogue
with them.28 Housing Associations and Co-operatives are central to Glasgows housing
culture. They enact different degrees of community ownership, from committee-led
change to, what one Housing Co-operative Development Officer called, fully mutual
co-operative so every household has a member, so everybody is involved whether
they like it or not basically.29 This dynamic heritage was drawn upon directly in the
rhetoric of the Five Spaces development. As the official record of the Five Spaces put
it, Glasgows,
277

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 Glasgow
1999, when 1999 arrived it enjoyed a much less significant public profile than the
other spectacular (and centralized) events, such as Homes for the Future and the opening of a design centre at the Lighthouse.31 While the Lighthouse took nearly half of
Glasgow 1999s budget of around 27.5 million, the Five Spaces was allocated less than
one tenth of it. Media coverage of the Spaces was similarly less prominent than for the
Lighthouse and Homes for the Future, so that, when asked at the end of the year, very
few visitors, Glaswegians or even design professionals could name the Five Spaces as
a prominent feature of the programme.32
The Five Spaces project had started in Glasgow School of Art with Housing
Association representatives working with artists and architects who had been assigned
to them. A number of the Spaces had been identified previously and the relevant
Housing Associations had sought funding from other sources before Glasgow 1999
arrived and offered the possibility of support. Each Housing Association had chosen a
piece of open space for redevelopment into an organized space that would in some
way act as a marker of community. These workshops were used to develop ways of
reworking the spaces nominated by the Housing Associations. Artists were to be
involved in the design and conceptualization of the space and not simply producing
a thing added afterwards. This represented a shift in the usual relationship between
artists and architects where artists were often only asked to contribute once the spaces
had 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 to
develop 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 more
equal partnership between artists and architects would produce a more appropriate or
sensitive 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 nature
of the spaces they were to work in. A trial run of spaces was implemented in 1997
where the artists took up their residence and developed a plan for the spaces34, but
at this stage there was no financial commitment to the development of the artists proposals. Initially there were to be over 20 of these spaces chosen by Housing
Associations around the city. The initial cut took the number to 15, then to 11 and
then, well into 1998, the number was reduced to five.
The Five Spaces were distributed in communities around the outskirts of the city
centre (see Figure 1). Each Housing Association presented a particular brief to the artist
and architect selected. This had been decided upon via discussions between the
Housing Associations and local residents, always heavily influenced by budgetary considerations. A theme which ran through a number of the spaces was that of marking
place, to distinguish the particular community from those sitting adjacent. Thus, in
278
FIGURE 1. Location of the Five Spaces
Whiteinch, artist Adam Barclay-Mill designed a tower of light to illuminate the space
at the centre of the community, and a concrete wall announced the location. The
Space identified in Govanhill was previously an in-between space left over from road
construction 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 drivers
who have historically been the focus of much urban development in Glasgow.
Other Spaces focused more on recreating community history, governed by desires to
represent it for generations who might not know the origins of the place in which they
were growing up. The Graham Square Space had been occupied by Glasgows abattoir.
Traces of this memory are reflected in the incorporation of the faade of the listed building into the new architecture and in sculptor Kenny Hunters monument of a golden calf,
honouring all the animals that had ended their life at the abattoir (see Figure 2). A wall
of corten steel was used to form the Whiteinch Space, as a symbol of the docks nearby
which had been the main place of work for the community before the decline of
Clydeside shipbuilding in the late 20th century. A water feature was requested by residents to symbolize the fact that the location of the Space had, in the past, been a horsewatering spot for people coming into Glasgow (Figure 3). The falling water was additionally 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. In
Saracen Cross, the Housing Association was seeking money for new housing behind
the Space and so the artist marked in footprints of potential buildings with plants
279
FIGURE 2. Graham Square with Kenny Hunters Golden Calf. (Photograph: J Sharp)
FIGURE 3. Whiteinch Cross. (Photograph: J Sharp)
280
protected by metal cages. Hard and soft landscaping were used, reinforcing this as an
in-between space. The Space chosen at Fruin Street was an abandoned area of toxic
ground. The design brief was for a landscape which would stimulate response, so Zoo
Architects developed an innovative interactive play space for local children. Concrete
and other strong fabrics were used in anticipation of the battering the Space would
take. 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 generate
some form of response from the local children.
The Spaces were thus caught up in, and produced through, a series of scalar networks, each presenting different demands and expectations. The 1990 City of Culture
accolade had marked Glasgow as a city going through a successful transformation as a
result of culture-led regeneration.36 Glasgow 1999 saw itself as developing this global
prominence, and consciously chose artists, architects, designers and critics whose
involvement lent international cultural credibility to the year. One of the first acts in the
production of the spaces was to send representatives of the Housing Associations to
Barcelona, a city whose design achievements were often claimed as inspiration for
Glasgows ambitions. Thus, the design work for the Five Spaces had to resonate with a
certain imagination of continental urban design, as well as local imaginations of future
possible uses of their everyday space. Many of the Housing Associations had already
established plans for the upgrading of local spaces and saw Glasgow 1999 as an idea
vehicle through which to achieve their aims, but for others, becoming involved in the
Five Spaces project was a more opportunistic means of accessing funding.
Researching the spaces

I have followed the fortunes of the Five Spaces for the last 10 years. Over the course
of this period I have attended meetings at the Five Spaces sites, and spoken with a
number of people involved in the delivery of the spaces. During 1999 I collected official literature on the Year of Architecture and Design and logged and analysed media
coverage of it, in addition to attending (and, in one case, helping at) the community
openings of the Spaces. A formal evaluation of the Spaces was established through the
examination 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 of
1999), in 1998 to establish expectation and in December 1999 and January 2000 to
judge satisfaction. These questionnaires were of a closed question type and so provide
little in the way of explanation for different views. This provided only an immediate
response to the spaces, while the process of their delivery were was still ongoing
and while they were still in peoples minds as art rather than becoming a less
explicitly signified part of the landscape. Thus in summer 2001, I arranged for 400
questionnaires to be delivered to people in the streets adjacent to Govanhill,
Whiteinch, Fruin Street and Saracen Cross Spaces.37 Again Graham Square was omitted but this time because, as a more discrete public space, it attracted few passers-by.
281
However, this did not provide the full story. It is important to see what people do
with the Spaces that have been developed. After all, it may be that certain publics are
not reached by the formal evaluations, or choose not to take part. It may also be that
when asked directly about the Spaces, framed as art or community initiatives or
something provided by the council people are led to certain dialogues structuring
these debates (elitist expression, issues of inclusion, notions of what ought to be provided, and so on). Perhaps this is in part due to the tendency to concentrate on the
works 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 meaning
through use, or just by being there, whether or not this can be articulated by those
who interact with them. The prompted questionnaire survey was complemented by
a period of ethnographic study. In this case, two other researchers and I spent extended
periods of time in each of the Spaces, in an attempt to see how they were actually
used.38 This approach allowed the examination of the Spaces as everyday places
whose origin as public art may have not have been obvious to those using them. In
this longer term research, art is no longer articulated as such. The public art element
of the design of the Five Spaces has faded into memory and the process so important
to new genre public art has finished: the media no longer talks of them, there are no
more visits from the design profession community, and they are no longer talked of
in terms of art. The Spaces are now just part of the community landscape, involving
unreflective, prediscursive, bodily responses, whether cutting across the space to take
a short cut home, sitting on a seat waiting for a friend, or children playing in the space
in ways perhaps never anticipated by the architects, artists and designers.
The life and death of Five Spaces

Each of the Five Spaces have been designed in such a way as to provide a unique focus
to the locality it serves. Given Glasgows social and economic problems, it might seem
strange that there is such enthusiasm on the part of planners for public art, rather than
spending money on what might be considered to be more pressing issues such as the
improvement of housing conditions. Glasgow 1999 was clear that the quality of the
Spaces between housing developments was as important, arguing that Homes in isolation do not create a functioning city fabric.39 On speaking to members of Glasgows
Housing Associations and Co-operatives, it is clear that this is not a choice that is made
at a community level. The idea that there is money for art separate from money for other
things is taken for granted. Not one of the Housing Association Development Officers
or Arts Organizers that I spoke to questioned this division of funds. Money was available 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. Its not a question really that they should assume that is should be spent on anything else
because they know what its there for.40
282
It would be quite easy to offer critique that this is simply papering over the inequalities in Glasgow, an aesthetic improvement designed to detract peoples attention from
the real inequalities in the city. Certainly this is one dominant critique of the use of
public art in urban redevelopment schemes,41 and it was a complaint raised by one of
the Housing Association representatives interviewed. However, others were more
strategic, or perhaps pragmatic, in accepting the way in which money was made available. Besides, the cultural economy of place aesthetics is not straightforward given the
specific context of Glasgow. Recreational public space has been important to
Glaswegians 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 park
space per head of the population than any other city in western Europe. There is also
a culture of shared space, of tenement life, the shared hall-way, or close, and back
court. To a certain extent this cuts across class differences in the city as the basic
tenement style was designed for working classes and their employers alike.
Neighbourhoods have their own parks, so that there is a local significance to the
nature and quality of these public areas.42 The Glasgow context therefore seemed
particularly suited to the development of new public spaces.
The Housing Association Director responsible for the delivery of Graham Square was
particularly 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 youd have, you know, stained glass on the window
heads, whereas itd be plain glass in the poor tenements. So the idea of etching glass, they were quite
receptive to that. So theres 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, its about providing a sense of dignity to its inhabitants, and thats what I think art does, its
one vehicle for providing a sense of dignity to the building. If you make it that little bit special you create 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 something
distinctive for public sector renters. For instance, just around the corner from Graham
Square is Bellgrove Street where small details have been developed in an attempt to
provide people a sense of identity rather than being lost as the residents of yet another
tenement in Glasgow. Tall glass windows illuminate the common stairwells and each
close is lit at night by different coloured bulbs. When calling in a repair, many
residents do not give an address but instead will report a problem in the red close or
the blue close.44 What this Housing Association Director was insisting in his explanation
and use of the Bellgrove Street example, was the danger in automatically being critical of the use of art and aesthetics to improve the appearance of developments (rather
than investing all possible money on more fundamental changes). His view was that
283
public art through its embedding in lived environments was an everyday issue
rather than something that transcended mundane concerns.
Certainly there was a strong view among respondents to the questionnaire administered in 2001 that this care of urban space is important.45 Respondents to the
questionnaires used in each area insisted that every area deserves good treatment, not
just [the] city centre, it gives a good impression to others driving by and shows that
the areas is worthy of being looked after. The idea that care was being paid to these
areas (rather than simply providing the bare necessities) was clearly an important signal to local residents offering a sense of enhanced social capital. On average 45 per
cent of those questioned in the communities served by the Spaces in 1999 agreed or
strongly agreed that the Space looked good, 41 per cent gave the same responses to
the 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 such
projects, 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 they
had not been so successful. Although there were high hopes, it seems that peoples
expectations for what the Spaces could contribute to Glasgows communities have
been challenged. For example, the official evaluation of Glasgow 1999 showed that
although 18 per cent of people asked in 1998 thought that the Spaces would be good
for Glasgow, by the end of 1999 this number had fallen to 9 per cent (compared to
33 per cent for the Homes for the Future and 25 per cent for the Lighthouse).47 As
mentioned above, knowledge of the Spaces was low (no-one in the official evaluation
could name them as one of the flagship events, although some did remember them
when 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 Five
Spaces 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 enthusiasm
for the Spaces.
The Spaces had come to face significant material challenges. In 2001 maintenance
contracts for the Spaces were terminated because Glasgow 1999 had only budgeted
running costs for two years. The Whiteinch Space has fallen into disrepair such that
the water feature and light tower were both broken and have been boarded up. The
Fruin Street Space suffered much structural damage and was fenced off in the spring
of 2004 and then bulldozed. On these measures it would seem that these Spaces have
been unsuccessful. In part, this was due to the provision of the Five Spaces being controlled 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 a
more solid, durational materiality.
Prominent events such as Glasgow 1999 are important to local communities in their
ability to raise money that would not normally be available. A number of the Housing
Association and Co-operative representatives that spoke to me talked of having sought
money for redeveloping their chosen spaces before the arrival of Glasgow 1999, but
that 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
284
cultural capital of the communities. Kearns and Philo emphasize how urban regeneration 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 difficulties 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 let
down. It is difficult to generate enthusiasm when they have been disappointed before.
In Camlachie, one of the countrys most deprived areas which proposed a space for
development but which did not have the artists plans realized, meetings about the
potential public art project enjoyed an unusually high turn out because, as one
Housing 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 asked
what they wanted. Such communities are used to being let down, as another Housing
Association member related: if the funding had been there in place from the beginning and it had been guaranteed its very difficult to get enthusiasm and to commit
other people to something that you know one weeks there and one week isnt.50
The fact that the number of Spaces was cut back so dramatically so close to the
anticipated start-date of the project did not inspire confidence within those communities 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 scepticism about whether anything would happen. One boy bet a Housing Co-operative
Director 5 that the park would never be developed. She proudly retold this story once
the Space had been delivered as proof of the communitys success. However, this tale
took on a rather different meaning once the Space lay demolished and unused.
Many involved in the delivery of the Spaces were similarly disappointed. Glasgow
1999 were determined that all the Spaces would be delivered in 1999 (all but one
were) and so they put in place a property management firm to deal with the arrangements of making the Spaces. Thus, day-to-day ownership of the project was taken
away from the Housing Associations by Glasgow 1999 and transferred to a management firm to ensure that all of the Spaces were delivered on time. Many of the Housing
Association members felt that this pushed them out of the decision-making process
and that consequently there was a loss of ownership. Long-term problems emerged
because of this interruption of the process. The Housing Associations were not consulted about small, everyday issues. For example, due to a decision made without
Housing Association consultation, the landscaping in Fruin Street was easily vandalized.
Local people felt that the Spaces design would only work if coupled with the installation of a CCTV system which would ensure that those parts of the Space sheltered
from the view of the surrounding homes would not provide a place for drug dealing
and other illicit activities.51 This was not acted on. In addition, there was no plan to
regularly clean the spaces graffiti board, something which might have encouraged the
spread of graffiti to other surfaces in the Space. This loss of a sense of ownership has
implications for long term care.
285
Thus, a great deal of the good that has been done through these projects of bringing
people 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 vandalism
are not immediately righted and here we could also add other forms of decay such
as flooding, breaking of light bulbs, and problems with water features, all issues plaguing the Five Spaces.
When this happens, what was initially a focus of local pride quickly degenerates to the point where people 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 of
Saracen Cross, What was once a barren wasteland that collected nothing but litter is
now the floral focus a neat metaphor for the future growth and regeneration in
Possilpark.53 However, the metaphor changes when the Spaces fail to bloom, weeds
appear in their place, and, once again, they fill with rubbish. The official evaluation of
Glasgow 1999 showed that the community around Fruin Street was most enthusiastic
about the potential of their Space54 and, at the close of the year, enthusiasm was still
high.55 Anecdotal evidence reinforces this opinion. However, by the time of the questionnaires conducted in the summer of 2001, once the service contract on the Spaces
had 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 deathly
pall, as these spaces themselves terminally decayed. The idea too seemed to be dying.
Generally there is now hesitancy towards investing in participatory public art
approaches on the part of the Housing Associations involved with the delivery of these
Spaces, and most would not get involved again unless there was clear ownership for
the communities involved.56 The Associations do not own the Spaces and do not have
a budget for their maintenance this is held by Glasgow City Council and yet their
involvement with the production of the Spaces has meant that people in the local community blame the Associations for the failures of the Spaces. The physical fabric of the
Spaces outlived the process of their production and thus their materiality took on new
meaning through on-going processes of incorporation into everyday life.
Public art is dead, long live public art

The Fruin Street Space illustrates this most dramatically, and not just through its ultimate demolition. The development in Fruin Street was most obviously trying to engage
children (many of whom struggled with conventional schooling) and engender some
response in an otherwise dispossessed group. Members of the Housing Co-operative
explained to me that when the park was first opened, it seemed that the children had
forgotten, or possibly had never known, how to play properly, as up until this point
they had only had the street as a playground. It seemed that they did not know what
286
to do with the space that they had been given.57 As a result, the Housing Co-operative
bought play equipment such as skipping ropes and a number of women took it in
turns to teach the children how to play.58
Graffiti was also central to the Spaces on-going life. One of the ways that the Space
was designed to provoke a response from the children was through Shrigleys engravings. 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 was
included. This was in part an attempt to contain what was seen as an inevitable form
of local expression but there was a fear that by sanctioning this activity in the space
it would be difficult to control its further spread.
The graffiti did indeed spread from the wall onto more or less all the surfaces in the
park and this provoked a difference in interpretation between some of Glasgow 1999
staff and the Housing Co-operative members. One of the Initiatives Directors of
Glasgow 1999 seemed very pleased with childrens graffiti on the World Map that
Shrigley had had carved into the concrete surface because of its inventiveness.
Interventions included: I MOSCOW to the shops, Ill colour in with my new
UKRAINES, and LONDONs birning (in addition to some sectarian additions to the
map 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, not
one that was simply negative, but one which illustrated an engagement with the materials that had been inscribed into the concrete. The book published by Glasgow 1999
to mark the opening of the Five Spaces noted that Witty plays on words by children
FIGURE 4 Annotations to Shrigleys concrete design at Fruin Street. Interestingly all assumed it
was the children who had made these additions. (Photograph: J Sharp)
287
have begun to appear alongside the official inscriptions.59 For the women in the
Housing co-operative however, this was simply an indication of vandalism.
Different people want the city to be different things for them. What these moments
of activity suggest is that the art here is not so much about representing community
but about the processes through which communities are activated and stimulated into
action. Deutsche argues that in terms of inclusionary practice, such procedures may
be necessary, in some cases even fruitful, but to take for granted that they are
democratic 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 generates debate, something active rather than something fitting so seamlessly with what is
there already that it becomes invisible. This explains the excitement with which the
annotations to the concrete in Fruin Street were met by some of those involved in
delivering the Spaces. Success in this context is getting a response, whether this is
active 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 passive
in the spaces through which they conduct their lives. At one level, the arguments over
young peoples use of the Fruin Street Space cast as both vandalism and spirited
guerilla 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 fabric 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 chickenwire
cages filled with large stones, used to form the basis of landscaping, were too easily
pulled apart and their contents used as missiles, and the concrete-carved inscriptions
became illegible through heavy abrasion and additional inscription. Such physical
decline 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 about
the state of the space that they pressed the council for action.61 It would appear that
this 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 conventional in form, and importantly, designed in such a way as to facilitate observation
from the surrounding homes, and with a clear plan for future upkeep. A local youth
worker felt that there was a real sense of community opinion having influenced the
process which he suggested might have emerged from the confidence generated by
their prior experience of involvement with the Five Spaces.62 Although the materiality
of the Space did not succeed, perhaps the changes wrought by the process of its
delivery (with its emphasis on community power and ownership) ultimately have.
Learning to tell new stories

Just as Rabinow came to term the bureaucratic capture of Le Corbusiers skyscraper as
middling modernism,63 perhaps the bureaucratic capture of artistic redesign of public
288
spaces, like the Five Spaces, is middling postmodernism. While it avoids the decontextualizing trend of modernist design, it has not been able to escape the bureaucratization of
urban managerialism. The very networks through which the spaces were made possible
undermined their success: expectations of delivery as part of the international marketing
of Glasgow that was 1999 moved issues of day-to-day control of the Spaces from
Housing Associations and led to decisions that undermined their local embeddedness.
This, coupled with budget cuts, produced spaces that were out of touch with what the
communities wanted. The Housing Associations were left with things they did not want
and without a budget to manage them. The material conditions of the Spaces deteriorated further. Perhaps the most important lesson from this particular story is that too much
was expected of Five Spaces. The Glasgow 1999 blurb built up expectations of the big
thing that is public art and, when these were not met, a number of critics blamed these
projects for not making enough of a difference. Calcutt ridicules such expectations:
Expecting public art to solve social problems is either nave 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 reception (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, giving 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 public
art 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.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all of the people who generously gave their time over the (long) course
of this research, especially Lucy Byatt and Pauline Gallacher. Thanks to Les Hill for preparing
Map 1, to Vee Pollock and Phil Crang for their encouragement and insight, and to the referees
for their thoughtful comments.
Biographical note
Joanne Sharp is Senior Lecturer in Geography at the University of Glasgow. Her interests are in cultural, postcolonial and feminist geography, and she is currently looking
into the ways in which art and design have been used in community regeneration in different parts of the UK. She can be contacted at: Geographical and Earth Sciences, East
Quad, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK; email: jo.sharp@ges.gla.ac.uk.
289
Notes
1
2
3
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Interview with Housing Association Director C, 9/11/98.

D. Pinder, Arts of urban exploration, Cultural geographies 12 (2005), pp. 383411.
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. 35171; S. Pile, The problem of London, or, how to explore the moods of the city, in N. Leach, ed., The hieroglyphics of space: reading and experiencing the modern metropolis (London, Routledge, 2002),
pp. 20316.
See: H. Parr, Mental health, the arts and belongings, Transactions, Institute of British
Geographers 31, pp. 15066; G. Rose, Performing inoperative community: the space and the
resistance of some community arts projects, in S. Pile and M. Keith, eds, Geographies of resistance (London, Routledge, 1997), pp. 184202.
For example: A. Bonnett, Art, ideology and everyday space: subversive tendencies from Dada
to postmodernism, Environment and planning D: society and space 10 (1992), pp. 6986; G.
Rose, Making space for the female subject of feminism: the spatial subversions of Holzer,
Kruger and Sherman, in S. Pile and N. Thrift, eds, Mapping the subject: geographies of cultural transformation (London, Routledge, 1995), pp. 332 54; 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.
Pinder, Arts, p. 398.
See: S. Lacy, ed., Mapping the terrain: new genre public art (Bay Press, 1995).
Pinder, Arts, p. 398.
In the UK, as in many other contemporary western countries, public art appears to have an
increasingly prominent role in urban design. In 1993 around 40 per cent of local authorities
in the UK had adopted a public art policy of some sorts, a figure that is now likely to be
much higher.
G. Bridge and S. Watson, City publics, in G. Bridge and S. Watson, eds, A companion to the
city (Blackwell, 2000), pp. 369, 370, drawing on R. Sennett, The fall of public man (New York,
Norton, 1974). Drawing this time on US experiences, Putnam discusses similar concerns
about the breakdown of social networks, social capital in apparently individualizing trends
of contemporary society; see R. Putnam, Bowling alone (New York, Simon and Schuster,
2000).
See M. Miles, Art, space and the city (London, Routledge, 1997).
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).
S. Selwood, The benefits of public art (London, Policy Studies Institute, 1995); S. Selwood,
Attitudes to contemporary art, Matters 17 (2003), pp. 346; T. Hall and I. Robertson, Public
art and urban regeneration: advocacy, claims and critical debates, Landscape research 26
(2001), pp. 526.
c.f. J. Jacobs, A geography of big things, Cultural geographies 13 (2006), pp. 127.
Jacobs, A geography, p. 3.
H. Senie, The tilted arc controversy: dangerous precedent? (Minneapolis, University of
Minnesota Press, 2002).
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.
Blake, An atmosphere, p. 254.
290

19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
N. Thrift, Its the little things, in D. Atkinson and K. Dodds, eds, Geopolitical traditions: a
century of geopolitical thought (London, Routledge, 2000), pp. 3807.
Blake, An atmosphere, p. 284.
Gablik, 1995, quoted in Miles, Art, space and the city, p. 90.
Public Art Review, Public art: fail Special Issue. JulyAugust (1998).
S. Lacy, Cultural pilgrimage and metaphoric journeys, in S. Lacy, ed., Mapping the terrain:
new genre public art (Bay Press, 1995), p. 24.
Lacy, Cultural pilgrimage, p. 20.
G.H. Kester, Conversation pieces: community and communication in modern art (Berkeley,
University of California Press, 2004).
Deyan Sudjic, Glasgow 1999 press launch, Glasgow City Chambers, 11/2/99. Sudjic was keen
to avoid the criticism that Glasgows tenure as 1990 European Capital of Culture generated
via its perceived concentration on middle class events in the city centre. Some have argued
that 1990 ignored the experiences and heritage of the majority of Glaswegians see for example N. McInroy and M. Boyle, The refashioning of civic identity: constructing and consuming the New Glasgow, Scotlands 3 (1996), pp. 7087 and privileged Tackintosh or
Mockintosh images derived from the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh over all other
Glasgow symbolism see E. Laurier, Tackintosh: Glasgows supplementary gloss, in C. Philo
and G. Kearns, eds, Selling places: the city as cultural capital, past and present (Oxford,
Pergamon, 1993), pp. 26789.
The Glasgow Bid City of Architecture and Design 1999, 1993, p. 9
R. Carr, Architecture and planning in Scotland, archis, July (1999), www.archis.org, no
pages.
D. Sudjic, Preface, Five Spaces: new urban landscapes for Glasgow (London, August, 1999),
p. 7.
Homes for the Future was a development of 150 homes for sale and rent designed by a number of prominent contemporary architects. Before residents moved in, many of these were
open to the public and there was an on-site display that accompanied the development. The
Lighthouse was developed around an existing Charles Rennie Mackintosh building in the centre of Glasgow, and displays changing exhibits of designs, in addition to housing a permanent Mackintosh centre.
DTZ Pieda Consulting, Evaluation of Glasgow 1999: UK City of Architecture and Design (2000).
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.
L. Byatt, Towards public space (Visual Art Projects with Glasgow 1999, Glasgow, Visual Art
Projects Publication, 1997).
Glasgow 1999 Press release.
But see McInroy and Boyle, The refashioning of civic identity.
Thanks to John Crotty and Ian Cochrane for their hard work.
I would like to thank Eric Laurier and Barry Brown for their company and insight.
Sudjic, Preface, p. 7.
R. Deutsche, Evictions (The MIT Press, 1996); N. Smith, The new urban frontier (London,
Routledge, 1996).
See A. Zieleniec, Park spaces: leisure, culture and modernity a Glasgow case study,
Unpublished thesis, University of Glasgow, 2002.
291

43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
Interview with Housing Association Director A, 9/11/98.

Interview with Housing Association Director A, 9/11/98.
This suggests that Hall and Robertsons suggestion about the use of public art to provide an
aura of quality has some resonance with the residents of these areas; see Hall and
Roberston, Public art and urban regeneration.
DTZ Pieda Consulting
Ibid.
Ibid.
C. Philo and G. Kearns, Selling places, p. ix.
Interview with Housing Association Director D, 10/11/98.
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?id653692002, Accessed 22/10/02.
Glasgow 1999, Five Spaces, p. 32.
Pauline Gallacher, Initiatives Director / Community Projects, Glasgow 1999, pers. comm.,
11/8/99.
DTZ Pieda Consulting.
P. Gallacher, Everyday Spaces (London, Thomas Telford Publishing, 2005).
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 dont play with imagination.
This had a strong normative aim in as far as the women wanted to teach children to play in
particular ways. Clearly, for some members of the community, this offered an excellent
opportunity to get local children playing in a structured and controlled way and perhaps was
not the forms of play which would have emerged had children been left to establish the rules
themselves.
Glasgow 1999, Five Spaces, p. 23.
Deutsche, Evictions, p. 270; see also P. Phillips, Out of order: the public art machine,
Artforum December (1988), pp. 926;
P. Gallacher, pers. corr. 29/8/06.
Pers. corr. 29/8/06.
Quoted in Jacobs, A geography, p. 7.
J. Calcutt, Rack and ruin: the misplaced aims of public art, Matters 15 (2002), p. 11.
292

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