“The first thing I always suggest for people to do when they come to Glasgow is to go to the top of the Lighthouse and get an idea of what the city looks like from above,” says Mercury Prize-nominated musician and visual artist C Duncan, when asked about his recommended starting point for exploring his city and its thriving cultural scene.
Duncan refers to the rooftop viewing platform of Scotland’s Centre for Design and Architecture, from which you can enjoy panoramic views over everything from elegant Charles Rennie Mackintosh-designed buildings to the gothic spire of Glasgow Cathedral. Its creative scene is as mixed as its architectural makeup, and people such as Duncan – who is as comfortable working with a paintbrush as he is a synthesiser – are the proof.
Descend to street level and you won’t find a much more down-to-earth creative scene anywhere else in Europe. Glasgow’s restaurants, bars and cafes offer a mixture of traditional cuisine done with contemporary flair, and spirited cosmopolitan culinary adventure and experimentation at often remarkable value for money.
Its cultural institutions – from venues and clubs to theatres and galleries – are cool and inventive enough to put Glasgow on a par with forward-thinking Berlin. In fact, it’s not just avant-garde culture that Glasgow and Berlin have in common. The two cities will host the inaugural European Championships in 2018 — an exciting new multi-sport event including athletics, aquatics, cycling, golf, gymnastics, rowing and triathlon.
More than anything, the unique Glaswegian attitude gives it an edge on any city – a warmth, a friendliness, a self-deprecating sense of humour, a natural suspicion of pretension and a willingness to strike up conversation with a stranger as if they were an old friend. If you’re a kindred spirit visiting the city, go to the right places and you can expect to be made to feel not just welcome but at home.
Music and clubbing
From Chvrches to Belle and Sebastian, Franz Ferdinand, Mogwai and Hudson Mohawke, practically no other art form carries Glasgow’s reputation around the world like music – a fact recognised in Glasgow’s status as a Unesco City of Music (the first city in the UK to receive the designation).
Be it a packed sweaty basement space such as the Hug and Pint or Nice N Sleazy, or the vast enormo-dome of The SSE Hydro arena – one of the world’s busiest music venues, routinely visited by the world’s biggest stars – crowds turn out night after night to venues of all shapes and sizes. Internationally recognised festivals such as Celtic Connections and the new TRNSMT weekender on Glasgow Green are staged throughout the year.
Sub Club
With its tight capacity below 500, low ceiling, a vibrating “bodysonic” dancefloor and monster sound system, underground club the Subbie has been the furnace of Glasgow’s famous electronic music scene since the late 1980s.
Situated in the city centre on Jamaica Street, the club’s much-loved resident nights – such as Numbers, Sensu and Subculture on Saturdays with Harri Harrigan, one of the longest-serving house music DJs in the world – are the bedrock of its appeal, while visiting DJs from around the globe take to the decks on a more or less weekly basis.
The Barrowland Ballroom
Opened back in the 1960s in its current form – with the historic Barras market situated below and around it at weekends (see BAAD below for more on that) – the East End’s iconic Barrowlands is the venue you and your favourite band deserve. Its garishly OTT light-up neon signage and walls plastered with fading gig posters have barely changed in decades. Its sprung dancefloor – which puts added bounce in a moshpit – is practically hallowed ground.
Ideally proportioned at 2,100 capacity and with consistently great acoustics and sightlines, it mixes simple functionality with intangible, dusty magic. If there’s a show on when you’re in town, do yourself a favour and go.
The Art School
Situated up a steep slope behind Sauchiehall Street atop Garnethill, Glasgow School of Art’s (GSA) student association the Vic was given a shiny new home in 2014 in the striking stone and glass Reid Building. (It is adjacent to the famous “Mack” building, Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s crowning architectural masterpiece, currently undergoing restoration following a major fire a few years ago.)
Sample street food dishes and local beers at affordable prices downstairs in the Vic cafe bar, or head upstairs to the venue where you’ll find a vibrant and varied range of gigs, clubs, art installations and crossover events underpinning GSA’s status as one of Glasgow’s key cultural melting pots.
SWG3
Visual art, live music, clubbing and so much more meet at this not-for-profit creative hub in a converted warehouse, which has the feel of being off the beaten track in some industrial hinterland, when in fact it is only 10 minutes walk from Argyle Street and the busy heart of the West End.
Around 100 artists and musicians have studios here, among them Turner Prize nominee Jim Lambie, who designed and built the Poetry Club bar and performance space. The 1,000-capacity warehouse venue – a hip blank canvas with exposed brick walls – hosts gigs and club nights by major touring artists and local heroes alike.
Visual art, craft and design
“Glasgow is small enough and intimate enough that within a day you can get a good lay of the land,” says local artist, writer and musician Ross Sinclair. He also advises getting off the beaten track a bit if you can. “Places such as Queens Park Railway Club or the Gallery Celine nearby, all these wee spaces you might say – for me they’re very often the really interesting ones where people are doing off-the-wall and unusual things.”
BAAD
“It’s part of the tradition and the history of Glasgow,” says Nicola Williams, owner of upholstery and upcycling business Glasgow Furniture Collective, speaking of the unique place the Barras Market and the surrounding Calton district hold in the city’s character and culture. She’s one of many small-business owners to have moved into the Barras Art and Design centre (BAAD) in recent years, a new eating and drinking, events and creative companies hub in the shadow of the famous Barrowlands Ballroom and the surrounding Barras Market.
The growth of BAAD and an injection of regeneration funding into this neighbourhood are helping to bring its legacy into a new era. “If it helps me having my business there, bringing people in, then that’s great,” Williams adds. “You’ll definitely hear a lot of good Glaswegian patter if you come down to the Barras.” Elsewhere at BAAD – which features business units strikingly created out of shipping containers – you’ll find everything from a barbers to an art and craft shop, several fashion designers and the highly regarded fish restaurant and cocktail bar A’Challtainn. Regular events utilising the courtyard space include a monthly vintage and flea market, and the annual Sub Club Soundsystem dance music weekender.
GoMA
If you’re struggling to find Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), just ask a local to direct you to the big stately looking building behind the statue of the Duke of Wellington with the traffic cone permanently placed on his head.
Inside GoMA – Glasgow’s foremost centre for contemporary art – you can find pieces by David Hockney, Andy Warhol and Scottish painter John Bellany among the permanent collection, and temporary exhibitions that typically seek to expand – and in some cases may risk exceeding – your interpretation of what art is. Marlie Mul’s This Exhibition is Cancelled, for example, is simply an empty gallery, intended to encourage visitors to question the value and function of cultural institutions.
Trongate 103
A cluster of creativity to explore at one address on the Trongate, this bright, spacious warren of exhibition spaces, workshops, production facilities and artist studios incorporates Glasgow Print Studio, the Transmission Gallery, Street Level Photoworks and Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre, among others, over six stories in a former Edwardian warehouse in the Merchant City. A visit is a great way to take in a whole variety of different artistic outputs in a single place, with plenty of other galleries, such as GoMA and the Modern Institute, within easy walking distance too.
The Lighthouse
Once you’ve admired views over the Glasgow rooftops from the viewing platform atop the Lighthouse centre for design and architecture, work your way down through the building – situated in the old Glasgow Herald newspaper offices in a lane off of Buchanan Street in the city centre, the first public commission completed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh back in 1895 – and absorb more of Glasgow and Scotland’s built heritage. Check out exhibitions that could be themed on anything from iconic art nouveau interiors and furniture design to photographic studies of Glasgow’s long-gone factories, mills and shipbuilding industry.
The Mackintosh Interpretation Centre, or “Mack” Centre, stands in permanent testament to one of Glasgow’s most famous sons. If you’re feeling particularly energetic, and aren’t scared of heights, the Mackintosh Tower is accessible via a stunning helical staircase from the third floor, and offers yet more illuminating views over the city skyline.
The Hidden Lane
Tucked away behind the buzzing bars and restaurants of the Finnieston “strip” on Argyle Street in the West End, this quiet, quaint cobbled lane houses around 100 studios, which are home to a buzzing community of artists, designers, musicians and other creatives.
In these colourful and charmingly wonky buildings, there’s everything from recording studios to badge makers, jewellery designers, furniture upholsterers, music rehearsal spaces and an antique store. Pause for cake and a cuppa at the Hidden Lane Tearoom and check out the latest exhibition at the Hidden Lane Gallery.
Theatre and performing arts
“One thing I love about Glasgow is its ability to celebrate popular culture and high art at the same time,” says Jackie Wylie, artistic director of the National Theatre of Scotland. “There’s a complete lack of snobbery and elitism about having a good night out.”
Commercial theatres such as the King’s and the Theatre Royal bring in big crowds for major touring productions, and at Christmas pantomimes arrive by the dozen to entertain families on stages throughout the city. At the same time, Glasgow manages to sustain a thriving cutting-edge experimental performance scene through its open-minded left-field venues, such as Tramway and Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA), and festivals such as Take Me Somewhere and Sonica.
Citizens
Nothing says accessibility like affordability, and the venerable and much-loved Citz puts that right at the heart of its appeal with a limited-number of 50p (as in half-a-pound) tickets available for some performances, and always reasonable prices for all other tickets. Consider that big-name thesps including Helen Baxendale, Tim Roth, Sean Bean, Alan Rickman, Robbie Coltrane and Gary Oldman have tread the boards here over the years, and that’s some seriously good value. About £20m of redevelopment money is set to be ploughed into facilities by 2020, bringing the 1940s building into the 21st century.
Tramway
It seemed only appropriate that a city that has produced many a Turner Prize winner over the years should host the Turner Prize ceremony in 2015, and that the Tramway – a multi-arts space that commissions, produces and presents a broad range of contemporary arts projects – should be the venue. The former Pollokshields tram depot is a vast blank canvas for artists with big ideas (the largest gallery, Tramway 2, is a massive 1,011 square metres in size). As a performance space it offers similarly limitless possibilities, with two theatres and a studio welcoming plays, dance pieces, sonic art happenings and other boundary-blurring experiences.
Tron Theatre
Whether you’re coming for a play or other performance, or just to hang out in the bright glass-fronted cafe bar, the Merchant City’s Tron Theatre – like many venues in Glasgow, such as the CCA or the Tramway for instance – is a great access point to creative Glasgow. “You don’t need to know what art is to feel welcome in these spaces,” says Wylie, “and that’s part of the Glasgow character – being friendly and welcoming.”
As both a producing and receiving theatre, it presents a diverse array of plays and other performances, be they touring productions, adventurous new works by young writers or shows for kids. The Tron is also a hub for various festivals throughout the year, including Celtic Connections, the Glasgow International Comedy Festival and the Glasgow Jazz Festival, opening it up to new audiences all the time.
For each of the places described above – whether concert halls and arenas or art-house cinemas and mixed-purpose cafe-bar-venues – there are at least two or three others deserving of a mention almost as much. Take this as simply your starting point for exploring creative Glasgow. Which is to say nothing of the city’s many exceptional places to eat and drink, meriting of a separate article all by themselves.
Don’t be shy about striking up conversations with venue staff or other locals you meet wherever you go – you’ll most often find people to be friendly and enthusiastic about recommending other places to try, and giving you insider tips on what’s happening while you’re in town. Test that unique Glaswegian attitude to the full, and make yourself at home.
