SWG3 Studio Director Gaz Mac on bringing Glasgow communities together with graffiti

National World - LocalTV

SWG3 in Glasgow hosts spaces for street artists to indulge their passions while also offering funded programmes in order to bring art and colour to the city.

Transcript

00:00 Do you have a favourite piece of street art in Glasgow?

00:02 No.

00:03 No?

00:04 That'd be too biased.

00:06 I started graffiti like 1983, '84.

00:10 Somebody called me Gaz Mac, one of my mates, back in '84.

00:14 It was kind of the only guy in the village that was doing graffiti at that time.

00:17 It was one of these things that grew and grew and grew, you know.

00:20 It sort of spiralled from there, really.

00:24 And I met Andrew Fleming Brown, aka Muttley, here back in 2003, 2004.

00:32 And it was just this mad young lad that wanted to build artist studios and build a venue.

00:39 I got involved with this place.

00:41 The very first event we done at SWGC was a graffiti event.

00:44 It was a graffiti jam, as you call it.

00:46 If you had bought a studio, this has just opened.

00:48 It's been a game changer for us.

00:51 We've actually accomplished and achieved a lot of funding off the back of this.

00:54 Funding for it, it's a fully funded programme.

00:56 We've got Yarburt's Grid on the go.

00:59 That's Glasgow Riverside Innovation District.

01:01 We're doing a lot of work with that.

01:02 That's identifying place-making ideas for communities and involving those communities

01:09 to make these walls, these spaces, theirs as opposed to ours,

01:14 as opposed to Yarburt's or the graffiti writers'.

01:16 We were actually asked to identify 20 sites.

01:21 We ended up achieving something like 45 sites between Govan, Partick, York Hill.

01:28 And that's growing again.

01:30 We have a writers' room here.

01:32 We've got a paint store here.

01:34 The writers' room is for graffiti writers.

01:37 And they can drop in whenever they like.

01:39 They buy their paint on their membership.

01:42 As opposed to it being just a paint shop.

01:45 We try to engage with the writers a bit more.

01:48 There's a kind of educational side to that.

01:51 It's a safe space, especially for women.

01:54 There's been a lot of that going on in the background.

01:56 Why women are not doing graffiti or so much street art out on the streets.

01:59 It's just because it's not safe.

02:01 We're looking at involving way more women into the festival next year.

02:05 I think we're a catalyst at that.

02:07 As opposed to an all-women festival or an all-women gallery.

02:11 That doesn't sit right with anybody.

02:13 I don't think that's doing anybody any good.

02:15 Whereas bringing them in and mixing it as much as possible.

02:19 People with disabilities.

02:22 Actually, maybe even the blind.

02:27 Getting artists to actually describe their work.

02:29 There's so many different things we want to put in addition to this.

02:34 So is it for everybody.

02:36 I think we've always had that menschie in Glasgow.

02:40 Even back to mosaics, etc.

02:43 Old industrial, working class murals in Glasgow.

02:48 That's always been there.

02:51 I think this is just a new way of doing it.

02:53 I think the whole street art thing, the world over, is like a new renaissance.

02:57 And the people's approach to it as well.

03:02 As soon as it goes up in a neighbourhood, it's theirs.

03:06 It's not the artists that have done it.

03:08 And there's that ownership from those communities.

03:11 I think that's a success.

03:14 And places like Glasgow that could do with brightening up anyway.

03:19 Aberdeen, New York, Edinburgh, down at Leith, etc.

03:23 All these places are really starting to build up.

03:26 Now the Ayrshire coast, you can see it at Dross and Solcoats, etc.

03:32 They're popping up everywhere.

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