# Transcript

COMMENTARY:

There's a different image of Glasgow today. The old image was constructed and represented through books and the media. Now there are shopping centres and wine bars in the city centre, and the Greater Glasgow Tourist Board actively promotes these and other images.

Linda Whiteford:

I have to say that I was surprised when I came here how friendly the place was, how welcoming it was. And it wasn't the dirty grimy place, it's er it has changed remarkably over the past ten to fifteen years anyway. Nowadays I would think of the beautiful architecture. It's a really wonderful city for Victorian architecture, and er over the past sort of twenty years the buildings have been cleaned up and you can see them as they were, as they were built and the Victorians really went to town in Glasgow.

My image of Glasgow has to incorporate the fact that in Gaelic, Glasgow means 'a dear green place', and we've got over seventy public parks and gardens, um that really are outstanding, and you would never think of that initially, you know, if you thought of Glasgow, ok, you've got the buildings, you've got the shops, it's a big city, it's sprawling, it's got a river, but you'd never think of it as being a green place.

COMMENTARY:

The change of image was quite deliberate. There were campaigns and events, some of which quite literally changed the face of the city. Jean Forbes lives in Milngavie, a middle-class suburb on the north side of Glasgow.

Jean Forbes:

It really all began in the middle 1980s. It was a very active Lord Provost, Mr Michael Kelly, in the 1980s, early 1980s, who decided as a, that he would take the definite step of trying to change this image.

Michael Kelly:

...so the Glasgow's Miles Better campaign is all about convincing people that Glasgow's improved, and we've really got to take it to London beacuse these are...

Jean Forbes:

And this was when our famous Mr Happy first appeared, the little, the little round sun-like figure with a big smile and it said 'Glasgow's Miles Better'.

Linda Whiteford:

I think the Miles Better campaign really got to the heart, it did the job it was supposed to do, in that it really got to the heart of the people. The people of Glasgow loved the character Mr Happy, they loved the fact that the people around the world were picking up on that logo, 'Glasgow's Miles Better', and they did begin to smile a bit better.

Gerry Mooney:

I don't think that you would have to say to Glaswegians that Glasgow was miles better, I mean they would all have known that anyway and certainly would have argued that. But really what they were trying to do was say to people outwith Glasgow that Glasgow was miles better than perhaps they had thought of, and perhaps was miles better than what the films of Peter McDougall had portrayed it as.

Nicholas Witche/1:

The Prince of Wales tried his hand at a Glasgow accent today and he and the Princess went for a ride in an open topped tram. They were in Glasgow for the city's biggest public event in fifty years, the opening of its Garden Festival.

Jean Forbes:

It was a great day out for the family. And er any time I was there it was always full of Glasgow people themselves sort of wandering about and enjoying themselves and it was a nice protected kind of place because it was, you know, it was free of traffic and there were many, many things to see and to do.

Gerry Mooney:

No, I think a large number of Glaswegians did attend the Garden Festival. Certainly I would say the bulk were probably tourists and people from outwith Glasgow, but it was somethin·g that Glaswegians actually liked and enjoyed. And it was something that they wanted to be kept within the city, you know, the sort of parkland area. But unfortunately as we'll see, it hasn't happened that way.

Unfortunately for most of the Glaswegians now, it's been left rather derelict, but there was a bit of a debate after the garden festival regarding the usefulness of the site, and certainly a number of people suggested that it should be kept as some sort of park or reminder of the garden festival itself. Which was a very popular event. As we see now, it's rather run down looking and doesn't appear to be serving much useful purpose.

Well what we have here is some of the housing that was put up on the Garden Festival site itself. And basically this is all that remains of the site. This was the main entrance to the Garden Festival, and along the riverbank here, you see some of the shrubbery and other grassland area that was created. And if we look across the other side of the river, you see again some very upmarket housing that was you know, created in the last few years, out of old dock warehouses.

COMMENTARY:

Symbolic of the old Glasgow is the area known as the Gorbals, remembered for the slums which were pulled down in the 1950s.

Gerry Mooney:

These are the multi-storey flats that are part of the Gorbals area of the city, most of them dating from the 1960s and 1970s. The Gorbals area was the first area in the city to be picked up for what was called 'comprehensive redevelopment', and this is the result of it.

Now the population of the area was reduced drastically in trying to lower the mass of housing densities that characterised the tenements, and many of the people were moved out to the outer housing estates of Castlemilk or Pollock or even to areas beyond the city.

MAN:

There's Glasgow. Forty thousand acres. And this small patch represents two thousand acres. And on that is crammed a hundred and fifty thousand of the city's dwellings. That is half the dwellings on a twentieth of the space.

MAN 2:

But that's ridiculous!

MAN:

Of course it is by any standards.

MAN 2:

What are you going to do about it?

MAN:

Knock them down!

COMMENTARY:

One of the outer estates of Glasgow is Drumchapel. Edward Stephenson lives in his father's flat on the estate, with his wife and their five children.

Edward Stephenson:

Our own house was gutted wi' a fire and we moved in with my dad. I'm not sure if it was an electrical fault, but obviously it went fire and we had to move in here. I don't know if it's been refurbished, but I mean they still got boards on the windows.

COMMENTARY:

Identity is not always linked to a country or a city. People often identify with an area or a street. The Stephensons identify strongly with the local area.

Edward Stephenson:

Definitely Drumchapel because I've more or less been brought up in Drumchapel.

Pat Jess:

Are you from Drumchapel or ... ?

Helen Stephenson:

Yes.

Pat Jess:

All your life?

Helen Stephenson:

Yes.

Pat Jess:

So you're a Drumchapel family?

Helen Stephenson:

Yes, thirty six year I'm up here.

Pat Jess:

Would you say more that you're from Drumchapel or more that you're from Glasgow?

Edward Stephenson:

Drum, Drumchapel.

Pat Jess:

Definitely?

Edward Stephenson:

Definitely.

Pat Jess:

What would you say is the image that Glasgow has now?

Edward Stephenson:

Oh, it has a better image. I mean the, the people are more friendly and everything. And we had that Garden Festival as well. We got tourists fe' all over the world that came and see that.

Pat Jess:

Did you experience the Garden Festival in any way? Did you go to it?

Edward Stephenson:

No. Well if me and my wife and children go, you're talking about what, ten pound there and back.

Pat Jess:

In bus fares?

Edward Stephenson:

Aye, in bus fares.

Martin Lewis:

The Queen has been to Glasgow to celebrate the city's new role as European City of Culture. Jacques Chirac, the Mayor of Paris, last year's Culture Capital, handed over the title. He spoke of the formidable renaissance of Scotland's largest city.

Jean Forbes:

It was a tremendous effort put into publicising the city as a place to come and visit during this particular year of 1990, and certain things the most particular being the construction of the new concert hall, they were tuned to arrive and be on the ground in 1990. Music programmes, drama, arts programmes, were all organised so that they would be there in that year, and it began on the first of January, and it just went like a fair until the 31st of December. It was a very busy year.

Gerry Mooney:

It certainly on an international level made Glasgow appear more attractive for inward investment, and I think that was the prime aim of the whole campaign anyway. But within the city itself it gave rise to a whole series of conflicts about where Glasgow was going, what was the new Glasgow about. Who was benefiting from this new Glasgow? But it was also a debate an argument about what was the old Glasgow like, because one of the attempts of the image makers in 1990 was in a sense sanitise the history of Glasgow, you know, undermine the old Red Clydeside image and create this new wonderful image in the 1990s and a number of people were very opposed to that.