Showing posts with label Glasgow Games Monitor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Glasgow Games Monitor. Show all posts

Thursday 27 November 2014

The Barras Comes Up With The Goods.


    A handful of events the should interest the good people of Glasgow and beyond.
Hi all, These events below at the Pipe Factory in the Barras on Thursday night and Saturday afternoon may be of interest. A member of the Games Monitor is presenting on the relation between 'ruins' and deliberate urban devalorisation (disinvestment) on Saturday afternoon.
Glasgow Games Monitor 2014 http://gamesmonitor2014.org/
The Pipe Factory are hosting two new events this week as part of the curatorial project East End Transmissions, curated by Francesca Zappia.
http://www.thepipefactory.co.uk/    42 Bain st Barras/ Calton
Thursday November 27th at 7pm we will present a screening and performance by Virginia Hutchison.
PLEASE ADJUST YOUR DRESS - A film produced for Accidental Mix, 2013
 Post scriptum
Today I Learned to Jump Like a Man
 It really struck me when we were talking earlier and you said that it had been prohibitively difficult to find local footage in the BBC archive. (My mum says that’s deliberate and not really that surprising). I have to agree. I then go on to tell her that I have to write an essay on the East End foundry industry to sit alongside a text I wrote about identity. (She buries people. Mostly folk from the East End. She tells me about the cremations, about pushing the button. When she first started she went to the furnace and watched through the window. I understand this necessity.)
Saturday 29th November, from 2pm, a series of lectures with Neil Gray, Vikki McCall, Kirsteen Paton and Johnny Rodger will analyse the regeneration in the East End in the last few years, and its consequences for the future of the area.
 Programme
2pm -  Exploring the lives of people living in the East End of Glasgow
By Vikki Mc Call and Kirsteen Paton
There has been an on-going and consistent focus on the East End of Glasgow at a UK level by the media, politicians and wider powerful elites. These have applied powerful discourses and assumptions on the people living in the East End, especially in areas such as Easterhouse, Parkhead and Shettleston (Mooney, 2009; Gray and Mooney, 2011). Gray and Mooney (2011: 5) especially point out that the narratives around Commonwealth Games 2014 have been constructed around the idea that they will ‘transform the East End of Glasgow’, and will work to help address long-standing social and economic problems. But how are such assumptions being received in the East End itself? The only way to know this was to explore the voices of those living within these targeted communities, which have so far been neglected. This project explored the gaps between narrative and reality of stigmatised urban areas by looking at the perceived impact of Commonwealth Games 2014 on the lives of the people living within the East End of Glasgow.
2.45pm - All history was once in the East End of Glasgow. But now it is gone. Or is it? The appearance and disappearance of Douglas Gordon’s artwork ‘Proof’ at Glasgow Green.
By Johnny Rodger
3.30pm - Spectres of Dead Labour: The Materiality of Ruins
By Neil Gray
The study of 'Ruins' has become extremely widespread in the arts and humanities of late. One tendency has been to evoke ghostly spectres, absent presences and uncanny experience in industrial ruins. These emanations, it is argued, resist rational interpretation. While not wishing to destroy ruins as sites of imagination or pregnant liminality, Neil Gray wants to demystify this reductive hauntology by evoking the 'vampire-like' spectres of 'dead labour' in the built environment of the East End of Glasgow. In doing so, he will show how ruins are an inherent and necessary part of capital accumulation cycles and how listening to these fragmentary 'transmissions' might help us detonate the slumbering time of the present with the fractious constellations of the past.
 Speakers’ biographies
Neil Gray is a writer, researcher and sometime filmmaker. He is currently completing a PhD at the University of Glasgow on 'Neoliberal Urbanism and Class Composition in Recessionary Glasgow'. He is a member of the Strickland Distribution, is on the Variant magazine editorial group, and is co-founder of Glasgow Games Monitor 2014.
 Vikki McCall is a Lecturer in Social Policy and Housing at the University of Stirling and is passionate about researching and helping improve social policy to be more effective for those most impacted by it. Part of this work has been around bridging the gap between policy and practice.
Vikki's work has included extensive research on the role of front-line workers, users and volunteers and the policy process. This has included exploring front-line worker discretion, interpretations, activities and actions. Vikki has a broad portfolio of social science teaching and research with the University of Stirling. Expertise includes housing, volunteers, devolution, poverty, inequality, gender, social problems, urban society and the cultural sector. Vikki has experience in lecturing on and conducting social research, comparative social research, qualitative and quantitative methods.
Current projects include exploring the role of volunteers in dementia care, housing and older owner occupiers, partnership and collaboration in the cultural sector, work and learning transitions of looked after children in Glasgow and Beyond Stigma: Exploring the lives of people living in the East End of Glasgow.
Kirsteen Paton is a Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds. Her research is situated under the broad category of urban sociology, taking in cities, urban space, class, crime and social policy. This is underpinned by a theoretical interest in the phenomenological and material relations of class within the context of urban restructuring which are explored through theories of neoliberalism, Western Marxist theory and new theoretical approaches in stratification: New Working Class Studies and Cultural Class Theorists.
Paton’s research draws from Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to understand the political project of neoliberalism and the reciprocal relationship between urban restructuring and the remaking of contemporary working-class culture. Recent research involves looking at the formation of modern patterns of consumption considered risky (drugs and gambling) in relation to class.
 Johnny Rodger is a writer and critic, and editor of the The Drouth quarterly Literary/Arts journal. He is Professor of Urban Literature at the Glasgow School of Art and his published books include Contemporary Glasgow (Rutland Press, 1999), andGillespie Kidd &Coia 1956-87 (RIAS, 2007), Tartan Pimps: Gordon Brown, Margaret Thatcher and the New Scotland (2010),The  Red Cockatoo: James Kelman and the Art of Commitment (2011).
 The Pipe Factory and curator in residency Francesca Zappia want to warmly thank all the donators and supporters on our Kickstarter fund project. We have reached the sum and we are preparing special gifts for you!
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk


Wednesday 12 November 2014

Glasgow Games Monitor.


A wee message from The Glasgow Game Monitor 2014:
Hi all,

      We've updated the Housing Monster event page on the site. It now has youtube clips of all the films, a list of non-academic (accessible) reading materials, and some photos of the event. Please circulate to anyone who might be interested in viewing the films or accessing the reading material. http://gamesmonitor2014.org/fighting-the-housing-monster-film-and-discussion-event-sat-nov-1st-kpc-11am-4pm/
     We've added people who gave their names at the end of the event to the Games Monitor 2014 list. The traffic is very light at the moment but if you don't want to be on the list, our apologies, just unsubscribe at the bottom of the page. Also this is an announcements list, so if anyone wants to contact the group please contact us personally or use the contact address: gamesmonitor2014@googlemail.com Thanks to everyone who came, we all enjoyed the event! We'll let you know if anything else is planned. Cheers, Glasgow Games Monitor 2014
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Tuesday 28 October 2014

Housing And Glasgow.


      An important date, mark your diary, an event organised by Glasgow Games Monitor 2014.

Glasgow City Council's treatment of the people of Glasgow.

FIGHTING THE HOUSING MONSTER:
FILM AND DISCUSSION EVENT

11.00am – 4.00pm (10.45 for 11.00
start), November 1st, Kinning Park Complex
http://gamesmonitor2014.org/fighting-the-housing-monster-film-and-discussion-event-sat-nov-1st-kpc-11am-4pm/
      The housing monster’s voracious appetite for land and rent has pushed the cost of living to breaking point. In Glasgow, public housing has been eradicated since stock transfer in 2003. Rents in the ‘social housing’ sector inexorably move closer to private-market levels. Mortgage rates continue to rise disproportionately to people’s income, and housing is the staple ingredient of the debt-based economy. Yet ‘the housing question’ seems strangely absent from current debates. This event places housing at the front of the agenda, creating a forum for debate, discussion, and resistance.
       The day will comprise three films on housing which will be used to prompt discussion about the current state of housing in the UK, and Scotland more specifically. In the morning we will discuss the current (miserable) state of housing across tenures and in the afternoon we will discuss the forms of organisation around housing that might be possible or desirable in the current era.
      We want to engage with a range of different groups. Not with the intention of generating a false unity, but with the hope that we can learn from each others’ struggles through discussion and find ways to challenge the housing monster in the present and future. It is our contention that these struggles will have to be undertaken at a range of different levels and that a plurality of struggles, both defensive and offensive, is welcome and necessary. All those with similar interests are warmly invited.
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Tuesday 22 July 2014

Escape The Games.


       Trying to find somewhere to escape "The Games"? Well you can do that and at the same time be informed on what is behind the corporate spectacle that pumps public money into the coffers of the big-business world.


Glasgow Autonomous Updates:

Glasgow Games Monitor invite you to a critical intervention into the Commonwealth Games. Free talks, film screenings and the Games Monitor Library………23rd July to 3rd August at Stereo and The Old Hairdressers

http://gamesmonitor2014.org/no-wealth-for-the-commons-glasgow-games-monitor-events/


 
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Monday 5 May 2014

Games Monitor Meeting.


Note from Glasgow Games Monitor:

Hi all,

     Apologies for short notice... Meeting Tonight: 7.15-9.00, Monday 5th May, Please Note!!!!! Normally we meet at John Smith House (address below), but because of the May Day holiday, we'll be meeting instead at the 'Pot Still' pub, 154 Hope Street, very nearby: http://www.thepotstill.co.uk/ We will be waiting at John Smith House until about 7.10 in case anyone comes by who hasn't seen this mail, then heading to the 'Pot Still' to start at 7.15. Meet us at either point. All welcome! John Smith House, 145/165 West Regent street, Glasgow, G2 4RZ Cheers,http://gamesmonitor2014.org/meetings/

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk






Saturday 19 April 2014

Where Have All The People Gone??


        The only way to get to grips with what is happening to Glasgow's East End, is to get down there and find out. I would imagine that if you do, and you should, the first thing you'll probably say is, "where have all the people gone?". Busy, bustling East End has been replace by a series of grandiose schemes that will push up land and house prices, excluding the ordinary people from the area. The ever creeping disease of gentrification spreads it tentacles, feeding the corporate mob and pushing the ordinary people into ghettos, out of sight of the tourists and those who can pay top dollar for their homes.
Glasgow City Council's plans for the people of Glasgow.


This from Glasgow Games Monitor:

FREE PUBLIC WALK IN THE EAST END
Saturday, 26th April, 1-5pm (12.45 for 1pm start). Meet at Bridgeton Cross Umbrella, Bridgeton
Organised by Glasgow Games Monitor 2014: http://gamesmonitor2014.org/
Regeneration is always imposed from above by local councils, government, land developers and property agents. The organisers of the Commonwealth Games 2014 and Clyde Gateway regeneration projects tell us that everyone will gain a social and economic legacy from the Games and redevelopment in the East End. But is that true?
What is that claim based on?
We say that 'regeneration' is just a sugar-coated name for gentrification: the working of land and property markets and the displacement of poor people with the aim of supposedly 'higher end' values. Large mega-events and regeneration projects like the Commonwealth Games and Clyde Gateway are prime examples of that process. Find out for yourselves! Join Glasgow Games Monitor 2014 and local residents on a public walk to investigate these claims.
In a collective 'territorial inquiry', or investigation from below, we will examine the power relations and money behind planning and policy documents, regeneration agencies, land ownership, housing privatisation, welfare 'austerity', and the organisations that claim to represent community members.
Rather than looking above for solutions to these problems, we aim to discuss and organise collectively with all those who struggle against urban injustice. We will emphasise first of all the experiences of those most directly affected by urban development (through compulsory purchase, displacement, closure of vital services, environmental disruption, road-building, etc). The lesson from similar large-scale
urban projects is that people get the best gains (in terms of social housing, services, public space and amenities) when they resist the privatising logic of 'regeneration' and organise effectively for better conditions.
ALL WELCOME. ESPECIALLY LOCAL RESIDENTS
Glasgow Games Monitor 2014: http://gamesmonitor2014.org/ Contact:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Thursday 3 April 2014

Glasgow Games Monitor.

Info from Glasgow Games Monitor 2014:
Hi all,
     Our next group meeting is on Monday 7rd April, 7-8.45pm, Unite the Union offices, John Smith House, 145/165 West Regent Street, Glasgow G2 4RZ. All welcome. 
Meeting Dates:
     Also, giving advance notice that we aim to follow up on the recently blocked HOUSING CRISIS meeting on Tuesday 22nd April. We have not yet confirmed the venue but will let you know when we have. We will also be doing a public walk/'territorial inquiry' on Saturday 29th April. 
    More details to follow soon, please add to your diaries and let others know.  Cheers,http://gamesmonitor2014.org/

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Monday 17 March 2014

The Underworld Of Glasgow's Dirty Politics.


This from Glasgow Games Monitor:
 
Hi all,
      The Housing meeting organised for Bridgeton Community Learning Campus, tomorrow, Tuesday 18th March has been blocked by the board of directors. This was clearly a politically motivated decision so we've decided to make a public statement on the blog. Please circulate widely as we think people really need to know about this.
        We are trying to re-organise the meeting in an alternate venue very soon and hope to open things up more widely to discuss the dire condition social housing is in, and the way that critical debate has been closed down via regeneration agencies.
Housing Meeting Blocked in Bridgeton:


Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk


Tuesday 4 March 2014

Glasgow Diary Date.

From Glasgow Games Monitor:


       Neil Gray is doing a talk at the centre for human ecology 6.30, tomorrow night (wednesday), Pearce Institute, Govan: http://www.che.ac.uk/2014/02/beyond-post-politics/
      The talk will include discussion on the games and the wider gentrification of Glasgow so may be of interest to people on this list. come along add to the discussion (RSVP essential - see below).
cheers, neil http://gamesmonitor2014.org/
      Beyond Post-Politics and ‘Soft’ Urban Fixes: Developing A Politics of Space- with Neil Gray Wednesday 5th March 6.30pm The Pearce Institute, 840-860 Govan Rd, Glasgow G51 3UU (near Govan underground station)
    Join us for our latest ‘library chat’, an informal roundtable conversation in the convivial surroundings of our library in the Pearce Institute.There will be space and time for general discussion and input from all participants. Light refreshments provided.Please email info@che.ac.uk to confirm attendance. RSVP essential

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Thursday 6 February 2014

The Glasgow Looting Games 2014.


    The Commonwealth Games in Glasgow are now 40% over budget and at present the cost is £500 million. Of course you and I know that every big project ends up well over budget, as the rip-off merchants and the corporate greed machine milk the system, pushing the costs ever higher and higher. The corporate bodies walk away with the loot and we are left with the bill. Cheap land grabbing, gentrification at the expense of the local people, and fat-cats having a ball as they lap up the cream, that's what the games are all about.
        What he doesn’t say is that private investment in large-scale Games Events has for some time been predicated on making profit from land and property development. Now that the easy profits of the property boom are over – only hanging on through billions of state subsidy, ‘help-to-buy’ policies, and the continuing privatisation of social housing – private capital is showing it doesn’t give a fuck about the Commonwealth Games and sport. No wonder that no city is willing to host the Games in 2022: they know that they will only be subsidising the private property market, defending failed ‘legacy’ objectives, and having to deal with the growing public complaints and resistance over land-grabbing, gentrification and displacement.
Read the full article HERE: 


      The Glasgow Games Monitor will be speaking at the Unite Community Union Branch meting on Wednesday, 12 February, John Smith House, 145/165 West Regent Street, Glasgow G2 4RZ.
       Subjects to be discussed will be the necessity of political organisation related to the Games and Clyde Gateway projects, and building for a meeting on the East End, and citywide social housing crisis, planned for March.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Monday 16 December 2013

Petition, ATOS Kills.


     Petition:- Glasgow 2014 Ltd Organising Committee: Drop ATOS as a sponsor for the 2014 Commonwealth Games

        Glasgow Games Monitor have recently created petitions on 38 Degrees and Change.org calling for ATOS to be dropped as a Commonwealth Games sponsor.
The Change.org petition is live and if you agree with it please sign it – you can pass this link on to promote it as well:
     The 38 Degrees system is more complicated and we have to get a critical mass of people to agree to the campaign before they start running it. Please vote to help us get the campaign going on 38 degrees as well, if you have any suggestions or comments feel free to list them on the 38 degrees site:
     For background information view some of our previous posts relating to this campaign here and here.
Best wishes,
Glasgow Games Monitor

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Friday 29 November 2013

Glasgow Games Monitor Film Show.

GLASGOW (1982) FILM SCREENING
THURSDAY 12 DECEMBER, 6.30 FOR 7PM START
Kinning Park Complex (next to Kinning Park subway) 
 
      A rare screening of episodes from a series of films about Glasgow originally aired on the BBC in 1982. The series constitutes an amazing document of Glasgow, and the East End in particular, and provides a crucial historical context for understanding present-day social and environmental problems in the city.
     Episodes focus on the blight left behind from the mass demolitions of the 1960s and 1970s – the era of Comprehensive Development Areas; the closure of Beardmore’s Forge at Parkhead and with it the end of large industry in the East End; and a portrayal of the infamous Barrowfield Scheme next to Parkhead.
     For those interested in current ‘regeneration’ plans associated with the Commonwealth Games 2014 and Clyde Gateway, it is unmissable. Margaret Jaconelli, who was evicted by CPO on the site of the Commonwealth Games Village, and Neil Gray from Glasgow Games Monitor 2014, will talk about the films in relation to the present era. Followed by open discussion. Donations on door welcome.
     Organised by Glasgow Games Monitor 2014 and Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Friday 27 September 2013

Glasgow Games Monitor.


This from Glasgow Games Monitor

Unmasking the myths of the Glasgow Commonwealth Games

East End Eye

     The ‘East End Eye’ is the paper voice of Glasgow Games Monitor 2014. On top of our online presence, we distribute 5,000 copies per issue in the East End and across Glasgow.
     If you know of anything which you think should be reported, or if you would like to contribute yourself, then please contact: gamesmonitor2014@googlemail.com
Issue One: eastendeye_issue 1
Issue Two: eastendeye_issue 2
Issue Three: eastendeye_issue 3
Issue Four: eastendeye_edition4
Issue Fiveeastendeye_issue5
Issue Six: eastendeye_edition6

A new post, and issue 6 of the East End Eye now online!
http://gamesmonitor2014.org/2013/09/20/councillors-fury-at-controversial-games-sponsor/

http://gamesmonitor2014.org/east-end-eye-paper/

    Anyone who would like to help distribute and support the Save the Accord campaign for a new day care centre, please let us know!

     We also have a meeting at Kinning Park Complex at 7.00 on Tuesday 1st October. All welcome:
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Wednesday 31 July 2013

Showcase Glasgow, Hide The Learning Disabilities.


        We are on the final preparations from the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, 2014. We have been informed that this is an opportunity to showcase Glasgow. There will be journalists and TV cameras everywhere, well not exactly everywhere. Our lords and masters in the Kremlin in George Square will not want to showcase the demolition of the Accord Centre in the East End of Glasgow. This was a centre for young people with severe learning difficulties which has been demolished to make way for a bus park for the games. Hardly shows a caring attitude from the cabal called the Glasgow Council, certainly one that they will not want to showcase, but one that we, the ordinary people should certainly shout from the rooftops. 

IMG_4904
     This is a transcript of an extensive Glasgow Games Monitor 2014 interview with carers from the East End Carers group/Save the Accord campaign. The Accord centre was a day care centre for young adults with severe learning difficulties that has now been demolished to make way for a bus park for the Commonwealth Games 2014. No adequate replacement has since been made available. The East End of Glasgow currently has no stable and sustainable facilities for learning disabled people. Carers and users from the Accord centre describe in detail the history of their campaign, providing an important corrective to the misinformation produced by Glasgow City Council. They also voice the negative impact of ‘modernisation’ policies of ‘self-directed support’ (SDS) and personalisation on service users and their carers, and their personal thoughts on the supposed benefits of urban regeneration due to the Games and the Clyde Gateway development projects.
Read the full article HERE.

ann arky's home.

Sunday 11 March 2012

POVERTY GAMES TORCH, GLASGOW


           Between the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics, billions of pounds of public money is being handed over to the corporate world, so that they can can have a bean feast at our expense, while at the same time councils are being forced by the government, to cut vital services, increase unemployment and are being party to a deepening housing crisis. We are supposed to get excited at the sight of “VIPs” being chauffeured around, wined and dine, while we are meant to stand at the roadside waving flags. Hooray for the council, they're having a party, and we are paying. Of course you might get a chance to see some of the sports on tele, and when the party's over we will still be sitting in crap houses, with no social services and facing unemployment, if you have a job, and fuel poverty if you don't or if you're a pensioner. Rise up Glaswegians and show your anger and disgust at a system that has all the money in the world for a 10 day party and overseas wars, but nothing for the ordinary people.



"Poverty Games” torch comes to Glasgow –
Thurs 15 March, 1pm Dalmarnock
        Glasgow Games Monitor is hosting visitors from the Vancouver Poverty Olympics campaign here next week, to ‘hand over’ their Poverty Olympics Torch. The purpose of the event is to highlight the gross inequity produced by Games events: while millions in public money is spent on a 10 day party, the city faces massive cuts in local services, increasing unemployment and a deepening housing crisis.
        The event is a mock ‘torch relay’, to take the Poverty Torch through the worst affected streets of Dalmarnock. Starting at the Velodrome on London Road, the torch will be ‘handed over’ to Glasgow by visitors from Vancouver and taken down Springfield Road to pass the sites of massive land speculation as well as brutal evictions of residents, shopkeepers and local service users from the Accord Centre.
         Meet at 12.45pm for a 1pm start outside the new Velodrome on London Road (opposite Celtic Park), finish by 2.30 at the Accord Centre.
All welcome, please circulate widely.