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Cinema City: Glasgow Film Festival 2015
As Glasgow gets ready to celebrate a long love affair with cinema, guest blogger Lucy Brouwer prepares for Glasgow Film Festival 2015 by exploring what’s on this year – while reliving the adrenaline high of festivals past. […]
Why the playful city has serious value
The game’s afoot in the playful city. The sun has set and night is creeping across the city. As you near a lamp post a shadow appears in front of you and seems to invite you to dance. Or jump. Or run, maybe? What do you do? […]
Exploring Strange Wales with Lucy Brouwer
We follow music blogger Lucy Brouwer as she ventures out of her comfort zone into the Strange Wales Festival celebrating the centenary of Dylan Thomas, a poet who was “rock ‘n roll ahead of his time”. […]
Glasgow’s Hidden Culture: Part Three
And so we reach the Merchant City. On our Clydeside Promenade we encountered yet another aspect of Glasgow’s hidden culture, a side of the city that it has not wanted you to know about, until recently anyway. A side which is deeply rooted in its past, buried under years of commercial development and regeneration – Glasgow’s role in the slave trade. […]
Meet the ‘Glasgow Girls’ who helped make the city
Our Clydeside Promenade audio tour explores so much of the river city’s history – but what about her-story? Over the centuries, the historical representation of women in Glasgow has been somewhat slim. Achievements have been swept beneath the metaphorical rug of history. Key women are not celebrated in the same way and to the same extent as their male counterparts. […]
Introducing Clydeside Promenade: The Story of Glasgow’s Living Force
“Why, I wonder, should it feel so moving just to be here?” asks writer Peter Ross. “Well, the Clyde is not Scotland’s longest river, and it is not the most beautiful, but it is, I would say, the river which lives most vividly within the minds and imagination of the Scottish people. It carries a freight of meaning.” And it is this very meaning that we explore in our brand new audio tour, Clydeside Promenade. Venturing along the river from Govan to Bridgeton, the tour takes in stops such as Water Row, Govan Pontoon, Broomielaw, St. Andrew’s Suspension Bridge and on through wilder reaches of Glasgow Green to the East End. […]
Why fly when you can take the Orient Express?
“Surely this cannot be right.” My travelling companion is not the only one looking doubtful as we emerge from a tunnel in the dark. We’ve been told the next train to Istanbul is due to arrive but where is it? More to the point, where is the platform? […]
Edinburgh trams: soon to become a world class ride?
Ding ding. There’s another one. Word is going round, in tweets, and more importantly, out in the streets. There’s no doubt about it. Edinburgh’s tram is finally in town. And is that just the faintest whiff of excitement in the air? Watching the test runs gliding along Princes Street you can’t help wondering whether this is set to become one of the world’s great tram rides. […]
Monumental rogues
At last, a chance to look down on that old devil Dundas. Not an altogether likeable chap. Among other misdeeds, Viscount Melville helped to prolong the slave trade by 15 years yet he can be seen towering over Scotland’s capital city for miles. How come? […]
What makes a city good to live in?
Glasgow buzzes and crackles with excitement about the new business 2014 seems set to bring, Dundee licks its wounds as Hull scoops the City of Culture title, Edinburgh glows at the top of yet another quality of life listing. […]
Work in progress: street art reveals tension in Mission District
At the end of the alley we stop to watch a work in progress, tubes of paint laid out, ladder propped up against a bold and brilliant mural. Two street artists turn to watch us watching them: “A donation for materials is always welcome,” says the big one with a smile. […]
Teenage kicks at Glasgow Apollo
We last heard from Kenny Forbes, the mature student at the University of Glasgow undertaking a thesis on the famous Glasgow Apollo, some months ago. In this follow-up Q&A Kenny gives himself a hard time, asking himself: what’s the story, why is it taking so long? […]