Trongate 103: Creating Space

The new development on the block cornering King Street and Argyle Street is very exciting. Trongate 103 has brought together a variety of Glasgow’s East End art institutions and built them a shiny wood-glass-steel centre complete with bespoke facilities for each. Crucially, it has a door facing onto Argyle St, an act of outreach or audience development that should hopefully mean more casual punters dropping in on their way for a shop in Wean’s World.

The organisations included in the build are Glasgow Print Studio; Streetlevel Photoworks; Transmission; Glasgow Centre for Media Access; Cafe Cossachok (and the Russian Cultural Centre); Glasgow Independent Studios and Project Room; Sharmanka; and Project Ability. Basically, a bunch of independently run, generally artist-initiated organisations, each with its own territory, its own audience and its own origin story. These are people who have made a great deal out of not very much and are rightly proud (and therefore unwilling to relinquish control) of their own identity. It is a miracle, then, that everyone seems so happy with Trongate 103. Admittedly, Transmission have kept a separate entrance and seemed a bit pissed off with various things. But then the development hasn’t really changed that much for them, whereas for others the difference in both facilities and visibility is astonishing.

Take Glasgow Independent Studios. They used to be up an anonymous stairwell near the St Enoch car park, with an ancient lift and rattling windows. It used to be intimidating, even for those in the know, to cross the threshold, so in terms of exhibitions’ audience there was a sense that this was preaching to the choir. Now, they have heating, a floor full of pristine studios, walls set at 8ft to maintain a sense of community rather than individual cells, and even (to the delight of at least one tenant) 3 female toilets that actually work. Their Project Room exhibition space has been placed on the first floor alongside galleries for Project Ability, Glasgow Print Studio and Sharmanka. This presents both an opportunity and a challenge, stopping the Project Room being a quiet corner in which an early-career artist can explore their practice, and making it a destination gallery with a window facing onto Argyle Street. Scary stuff.

All the institutions (bar, of course, Transmission) are similarly transformed in terms of facilities, prominence and location. Trongate 103 has been nine years in the making, created in a partnership between the tenants' association and the city. It is a bold move, a utopian arts hub that signals state approval of the artist-led leftfield. Government involvement in the arts can so often sap it of its energy, creativity suffocated under a mound of bureaucracy. There is a sense here, though, that that won’t happen. The tenants’ association has been involved in every step of the planning, and they have already won battles with the developer.

Putting all these organisations together is designed to pool resources, increase visibility, improve facilities and ultimately aid collaboration. It will also, almost certainly, lead to bitch fights, in-fighting, maybe entire tribes of artists going to war with each other in their beautiful gallery spaces. Basically, it’s going to be great.