Hope, memories, loss & community (MA Project)

Four stories of regeneration in Glasgow

As Glasgow prepares to host the Commonwealth Games in 2014 many of the city’s poorest areas are being regenerated after years of industrial decline, poor housing and poverty. The regeneration of Glasgow is considered well overdue and is welcomed by most Glaswegians.With regeneration comes destruction and a ‘knock them down and build them up again’ ethos. Whole communities, schemes and homes in the city’s poorest areas are disappearing at an alarming rate and, to a small minority of people in Glasgow, regeneration does not necessarily mean progress.As part of my MA Documentary Photography project I documented stories of regeneration and the changing face of Glasgow over the past two years. I was awarded a distinction for the final project.

Hope: Sighthill

Documents three double multi-storey blocks several months leading up to their demolition. Interviewing former and present residents about their life’s in the flats and their expectations of a future in Sighthill after the flats were gone. View here >

Memories: Oatlands

Documents one former resident who has been relocated to a new home. Torn between being happy and thankful for a new modern home but sensing the fading memories of a lost community, he raises questions about what happens to communities relocated and dispersed through regeneration. View here >

Loss: Paddy’s Market

A flea market and Glasgow institution going back over two hundred years was typecast an eyesore and not fit for a modern Glasgow. Masked as a regeneration project by the City Council and supported by local media and misleading crime statistics, the market traders fought a hard battle to keep the market open and to save their livelihoods. View here >

Community: Dalmarnock

The site where the majority of the Commonwealth Games construction projects will take place. Much of Dalmarnock is a ghost town and the people of the area, young and old, have high expectations. The young people I spoke with are eager for the promised new employment opportunities. The old folk in the Dalmarnock Community Centre were just thankful that something positive was planned for the area after years of neglect. But behind the headlines and the PR of the Commonwealth Games, one woman is fighting eviction from her home on the very site where the athlete’s village is to be built. View here >

Using photography, video and audio this was a project aimed at capturing people’s hopes, fading memories, lost livelihoods and the disappearance of homes and communities; issues that can be largely ignored in the utopian goals of regeneration. Now that the project is complete, most of the areas I documented no longer exist. Paddy’s Market has closed and is an empty lane. The Oatlands housing scheme has disappeared entirely and the high rise flats at Sighthill are a rubble pile. This project serves not only as a documentary photography project into regeneration and the many issues it raises within today’s society, but it also serves as a unique historical record of Glasgow in transition, recorded over a space of less than two years.