Reactionary Nostalgia
In 2025, with arts venues closing seemingly every week, it’s tempting to imagine a lost age when Glasgow’s cultural infrastructure didn’t seem so totally gubbed. Indeed, thanks to a plethora of structural factors downstream of the pandemic, we’re living through more decline; the old world is dying, and the portents of the new don’t exactly inspire confidence. Yet a nostalgic perspective on the post-1990 years obscures how many of the foundations of our current cultural crisis—privatisation, short-termism, a decline in critical cultural analysis—were entrenched during this time.[1] Were things really so good in the aftermath of 1990 City of Culture and the art-world successes of the ‘Glasgow Miracle’? Or are we at risk of retreating to a reactionary nostalgia; one that narrows our cultural history into boosterist romanticism and blocks possible new paths towards collective action?
Decades of austerity, competitive scarcity models of funding, the managed decline of critical cultural journalism, and the melding of ‘arts led regeneration’ into a corporate ideology that squashes the possibility of imagining the arts without regeneration, has got us into a situation where it’s tricky to know where to start when imagining how things could be different. The malaise is not just material (venue closures, lack of investment, dwindling funding etc), but discursive: where is the space to critically unpack what’s happening to arts and culture in Glasgow? To imagine alternatives, and engage with historic moments when these felt possible?
Many people, particularly those who gained economic and cultural capital from the isolated boosts of the post-1990 model and/or rose to managerial positions in Glasgow’s hipster ecosystem, are reduced to a nostalgia for a ‘golden age’, that (though they probably did have better drugs and fewer smartphones) were in fact deeply marked by the historic shifts we sketch in this piece. Rather than cogent analysis of these shifts, and what it might take to rebuild democratic and well-funded support for the arts, recent cultural discourse in Scotland has been marked by a cross-generational friction stemming from a lack of structural and anti-capitalist critique. Some of those who benefitted from the cheaper rents, relatively low cost of living and better state support of the 1990s and 00s, transform the dominant ‘do-it-yourself’ ethos of that era into tropes about ‘graft’, ‘work ethic’ and old-fashioned ‘artistic genius’. These are deployed to both defend personal success and chastise newer cultural workers, blurring into outright cultural wars discourse (To paraphrase a range of angry Facebook posts: “bar staff at the 13th Note and Saramago are naive / ungrateful / woke for organising into trade unions to demand decent pay”) at key flashpoints in recent years. Attachment to a constructed idea of that era makes it harder to ask questions that speak from the present, questions like: What happens when ‘alternative’ DIY arts institutions ossify into establishment ones? Can we really DIY our way out of two decades of austerity? How might we build intergenerational coalitions to improve Scottish cultural life?
A nostalgic view of the post-1990 years (endless Optimo parties and transgressive art shows in abandoned industrial units!) also masks the critiques such changes faced at the time. Rebecca Gordon Nesbitt’s 2008 article for Variant, ‘The New Bohemia’, surveyed the “unprecedented move of Glasgow City Council (GCC) devolving its Cultural and Leisure Services department to a private charitable trust,” to Culture and Sport Glasgow, which in 2010 rebranded as Glasgow Life. Prior to this, Glasgow’s museums, libraries, sports facilities, and public parks were publicly funded and operated as part of the local government budget. Though far from perfect, this enabled accountability, public sector employment, guaranteed free access, and direct public funding. Resistance to the changes often pivoted on these principles being eroded: Unison mounted an unsuccessful legal challenge to this stealth privatisation-via-private-charitable-trust in March 2007. Leading the changes at the Council level was Bridget McConnell (CEO of Glasgow life from 2007–22, now CBE and Lady McConnell of Glenscorrodale), who worked closely with the Glasgow City Marketing Bureau to focus cultural policy on tourism, festivals, and events like the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Nesbitt doesn’t mince her words when concluding her overview of the changes:
More than the sum of its parts, the creation of Culture and Sport Glasgow represents the wholesale takeover of culture by business interests. It posits a strategy for economic regeneration that depends on the whims of elite tourism and its pace of consumption in a period of economic crisis. It demonstrates an ethos that is smothering this city and others like it, regarding culture solely in terms of its use value, stripped of any emancipatory potential. Far from being considered in terms of the universal creativity to which every citizen has a right, culture in Glasgow is framed in terms of passive participation and money-making potential, with the city’s burghers fast accumulating cultural capital in the process. It remains to be seen how this approach will affect the creativity of future generations as Glasgow’s cultural communities are rendered impoverished and complicit in the new Bohemia.[2]
Well, here we are, scrabbling around in the remains! One clear outcome has been a decimated music venue landscape across Glasgow, with ‘successful’ venues having to adopt the kind of short termist approaches that were baked into McConnell-vision.
Here Forever
In the past five years in this corner of this loosely defined ‘alternative arts and music’ scene we’ve seen The 13th Note, Broadcast, The Art School, Bonjour, Ushi’s, the O2 ABC and more recently The Dream Machine (not to mention more commercial stalwarts like The Shed and The Priory) shutter their doors for a myriad of reasons: insurmountable infrastructure problems, funding cuts, self destructive union busting, profit-orientated and disinterested landlords. In some cases, the loss of such important venues has led to a selective renarrativisation of closure: take the Art School. At the time of its closure, the venue was haemorrhaging money on externally booked gigs due to historic mismanagement and the effects of two serious fires, whilst the Student’s Association’s staff were constantly dealing with venue-related issues at the expense of the student population. Yet, it was the venue’s bar workers who were blamed by some when The Art School shut in 2019,[3] for demanding better work conditions, and essentially not showing fealty to a romanticised and Bohemian (‘creativity springs from poverty’, ‘we never had it easy’) myth of Glasgow cultural life.
Clearly, Glasgow isn’t alone in terms of venue closures—between June 2020 and June 2024, a total of 480 nightclubs closed in the UK, with an average of 10 closures per month, or 2 per week. While other cities such as Manchester and London have opted to appoint so-called ‘night tzars’ to try and combat this trend, they’ve done so to mixed success. As Ed Gillett argued in The Quietus, what dance music and club culture need to survive is a collective voice, not more political appointees.[4]
An apparent outlier in the spate of national small venue closures, DIY club space EXIT opened on Maxwell Street in late 2023 and has filled a ‘The Art School/Bonjour’ sized hole, at least in terms of exciting, experimental, queer and underground oriented club programming. Tellingly though, even at its inception the club was given a short life expectancy. Originally offered a 9 month lease before the building was redeveloped (another short-lived Clydeside hotel anyone?) the slow creep of development has so far managed to buy the space a bit more time—a contracted stonemason suggested to the directors that it would take five years for the walls to adequately dry out for the proposed development to go ahead—but for the moment its artist owners are committed to staying open for as long as feasible. As this goes to print, property developers will be submitting their application to the council to redevelop the building and surrounding area. Whether a canny branding tactic or a grim recognition of prevailing economic conditions (perhaps both), EXIT have encoded this instability in their tagline ‘Not Here Forever’. This temporary framing reflects a funding landscape that rewards pop-ups and festivalisation—within which grassroots initiatives are compelled either to adapt or perish. But unignorable as this wider reality is, to what extent does ironic acceptance of this status quo contribute to its perpetuation? What would it take for EXIT, or other comparable initiatives, to say “Here Forever”?
Creative Scotland?
If scarcity and austerity take a temporal and spatial form in Glasgow’s dwindling venue landscape, they also underpin the gossipy infighting that characterises debates on arts funding. Creative Scotland—whose creation and lack of democratic oversight was so rigorously analysed by Variant over the years—is often the target of such discourse. However, the quango also benefits from the shallowness of the debates—why them and not me?”, “how are the crumbs divided?”—rather than a deeper critical analysis of what better investment in cultural life could mean. Perennial media furores about how Creative Scotland allocates public funding (increasingly driven by right-wing culture wars media) target individual artists and projects, rather than underlying structural conditions. In 2024, it was the turn of Rein, an experimental theatre production initially funded to the tune of £84k until it transpired the show featured unsimulated sex, prompting a transphobe-led moral panic. Creative Scotland freaked out, and the project’s funding was withdrawn (leaving the group of artists involved without income). How should we build an argument about the real limits and issues of Creative Scotland, without feeding such reactionary attacks?
Ultimately, we have to understand that—after another lost decade and in the midst of deepening funding scarcity—people are sick of being skint, and some will jump at the chance to shit on expensive sounding art projects. The working class tradition of a soft-boycott against Creative Scotland, from James Kelman to Darren McGarvey, points to the need for a wholesale overhaul of the funding models and ideas of ‘creativity’ being deployed, but one that requires a renewed form of left-wing structural critique.[5]
As a collective operating independently of Creative Scotland funding, it is easy for us to be dismissive of the significance of these events in the context of DIY, underground or simply underfunded creative work. But the reverberations of Creative Scotland’s shuddering omnicrises is felt in every corner of cultural life. ‘Authentocratic’ visions of a counterculture sustained by DJ fees, meal deals and bar tips have less practical credibility than they do dubious romantic appeal.[6] Recent debacles over Creative Scotland’s Open Fund (a decision to axe this was reversed after appeals to the Scottish Government), and multi-year funding (also overhauled in a way that seemed to be geared at coaxing government intervention at the expense of the stability and sanity of the organisations who rely on this), could be points of intervention to forward longer-term visions for a different kind of model. Instead, a recent “independent review” into the “troubled arts quango” looks primed to push for further cuts, and ever-narrowing ideas of arts and culture[7].
While this is clearly a lamentable situation for anyone attempting to make a living in the cultural sector, any adequate solution to it calls for more than the false dichotomy between keeping the funding system as it is vs. cutting it altogether. The limitations of Creative Scotland are at least partly connected to its role as a quasi-private and centralised allocator of public resources. Nostalgic myths of the post-1990s moment limit our capacity to analyse how such foundations were laid (and how this was entangled with the ‘DIY’ projects of the era), or imagine alternatives. We wonder: how could public funds be allocated in a way that was less dependent on the sensibilities of a quango, and could embody a wider range of positions and experiences? Could decentralised and universal models of funding more equitably reflect the breadth of creative work being undertaken in Scotland? Radical proposals at least merit discussion, with an aim towards renovating (rather than reverting to) familiar yet worn-out models.
The Slow Death of Glasgow Life
Simultaneously, Glasgow Life is in continually dire straits—presenting perhaps a similar opportunity for imaginative reinvention in the face of total crisis. During the pandemic lockdowns of 2021/21, the ‘Arms Length External Body’ / charity, which runs libraries, community centres and sports facilities on behalf of Glasgow City Council (GCC), closed down a majority of its venues, citing health & safety reasons. As of July 2021, Glasgow Life had lost £38m in revenues due to venue closures. Despite the lockdown ending, Glasgow Life made clear that in 2021/22, 62 of its venues would remain closed—not because of health and safety concerns, but because the “global pandemic of Covid-19 has forced significant changes to how Glasgow Life operates.”[8]
While some of these venues have since reopened, many haven’t, including notable tourist attractions like Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s The Lighthouse, and venues in places like Castlemilk, Royston and Springburn, Ruchazie, Possilpark and Ruchill have been left abandoned, with libraries closed or ‘shuttered by stealth’ (closed for full-days due to staff shortages). As a report from the SANE (Solidarity Against Neoliberal Extremism) collective details, the council’s own equality impact assessment of the closures found that there is potential for ‘displacement’ of vulnerable service users, and questioned whether the closures fell afoul of the council’s human rights obligations.[9]
Faced with a significant funding shortfall, the council is now looking to offload many of these venues permanently. In February 2021, the council launched a new scheme where expressions of interest can be lodged by community groups and commercial operators to take over council owned assets across the city through leasing or asset transfer, including closed Glasgow Life venues. The Council describes the People Make Glasgow Communities scheme as “offering the opportunity for interested organisations, groups, and individuals to become involved in the delivery of local services and projects by operating and occupying venues in their communities.”[10] touting a number of “successful such operations at community facilities” such as Molendinar Community Centre, Nethercraigs Sports Complex and Castlemilk’s Barlia Football Centre. In reality, this enables Glasgow City Council to offload the responsibility for important social and cultural services onto voluntary organisations, thereby reducing its loss-making assets in order to raise money for more commercialised investments.
Once again, the cosy old myth of Glasgow as a socialist enclave is undermined by the plainly dodgy carry-on of its Council and affiliated bodies. People Make Glasgow, just as long as they don’t interfere too much, or in the wrong way. Fortunately, initiatives such as The Glasgow Against Closures campaign, formed in 2021, have ignored this unwritten rule and taken steps towards genuine community involvement in the city’s management. Their three linked demands call for an end to closures, a halt on ‘Big Society’ asset transfers (i.e. keeping venues in public ownership), and to ‘End Glasgow Life’ by bringing staff and assets back under direct council control. The campaign is savvy in articulating a longer history of public ownership and working class involvement in cultural life, one that is not about nostalgic myths or ‘Glasgow Miracles’, but publicly accessible culture and collective organising.
Conclusion
In this piece, we’ve offered a brief sketch of changes in Glasgow venues, Creative Scotland and Glasgow Life in the years since Variant‘s reporting on these topics. We’ve argued that a renewed engagement with critical analysis and cultural history can help us escape the kinds of reactionary 1990s nostalgia that has dominated cultural discourse in Scotland over the last decade. Rather than understanding those who benefited personally and financially through that time as products of a cultural moment defined by commercialisation and privatisation (along with the material conditions underlying this), we’ve been left with self-mythologies of magical blooming creativity, individual artistic genius, and ‘hard graft’. Critiquing such impulses is key, but there are also many practical steps we can take: making links between the DIY underground and wider campaigns around venues, supporting worker organising across venues and hospitality, building better infrastructures to support cooperative and worker-owned creative ventures, creating non-corporate outlets for discussion and organising. We should combine such moves with building a political project that can push for more investment in culture (whilst debating the limited ways this idea is deployed), better democratic oversight, and renewed public ownership. Perhaps we could think of this as a shift towards ‘communalised leisure’; perhaps you have a better way of phrasing things. Either way, the nostalgia encapsulated by the (now) old bohemia gets us nowhere: we need new critique, new organising, new history.
Communal Leisure is a loose collective of musicians, artists, promoters, and writers who run a website where people can share non-profit and DIY events in Glasgow.
Rebecca Gordon Nesbitt, “The New Bohemia”, Variant vol.2, issue 32 (2008), pp.5-8 (https://www.variant.org.uk/32texts/CSG.html) ↑
Rebecca Gordon Nesbitt, “The New Bohemia”, Variant vol.2, issue 32 (2008), pp.5-8 (https://www.variant.org.uk/32texts/CSG.html) ↑
The Art School’ went into liquidation in 2020, but the venue has recently been reopened under the direct management of GSA and Dundee University Students Association. ↑
https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/black-sky-thinking/amy-lame-night-czar-night-time-economy/ ↑
For Kelman’s critique of arts funding in literature, specifically related to his experiences with the Traverse Theatre, see his interview with William Clark in Variant Volume 2, Number 1 2, Spring 2001, Page 4. Available at: https://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue12/Kelman.pdf
Darren McGarvey, aka the rapper Loki, has critiqued Creative Scotland in various outlets, titling his final 2025 album under the Loki name ‘Not Funded By Creative Scotland’: https://misterlokiscotland.bandcamp.com/album/not-funded-by-creative-scotland-2 ↑
Joe Kennedy, Authentocrats: Culture, Politics and The New Seriousness. (London: Repeater, 2018) ↑
See Andrew Learmonth, ‘Government orders review into scandal hit Creative Scotland’ The Herald, 4th September 2024: https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/24563181.government-orders-review-scandal-hit-creative-scotland/ ↑
See Glasgow Life, ‘Update on Maryhill and Whiteinch Libraries’, 22nd April 2021: https://www.glasgowlife.org.uk/news/update-on-maryhill-and-whiteinch-libraries ↑
SANE briefing Report, Glasgow Strife, June 2021: https://www.sanecollectiveglasgow.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Glasgow-Strife.pdf ↑
Glasgow City Council, ‘25-year lease of Molendinar Community Centre to local charity approved by council’, 7th October 2024: https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/article/10467/25-year-lease-of-Molendinar-Community-Centre-to-local-charity-approved-by-council ↑