Can Glasgow’s CCA survive a bleak midwinter?

Dear readers – welcome to our first ever Monday Briefing, the newsletter that will forevermore be your essential start to the week, so crucial to your life that you will forget how you found the motivation to stare down the barrel of another seven days before the founding of The Bell. In this edition, we give you a bit of everything: a ‘Big Story’ where we delve into one local story; links to fantastic Glasgow things to do, read, and eat this week; a selection of news covered by other outlets that we think is worth knowing about; and plenty more besides. Our Briefings will sometimes break exclusive news too, and bring you key updates on stories we’ve previously covered via our signature long reads. 

But first of all, a huge thank you to everyone who has joined this mailing list already. It was just one week ago that we published our first newsletter and we already have an astonishing 1,898 Bellsters (or does 'Ringers' erm, have a better ring? Maybe 'Belters'? Let us know) in the house. If that doesn’t demonstrate the demand for more high quality journalism in this city, what does? 

Further thanks go to the literally hundreds of people who shared our weekend read: Dani Garavelli’s superb long form essay about the state Glasgow finds itself in. The response was massive and seemed to kick off another weekend of debate over whether conversations about the city’s decline are justified.

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One of you tweeted that the essay was “Balanced and sobering”. Others called it “illuminating”. Some felt the piece didn’t do enough to highlight ongoing improvement works or address current grassroots campaigns around housing. But the overall response was best summed up by Kieran Duffy, who tweeted: “Beautifully written [...] So much potential in the city centre and you just hope people with the right vision and best interests of the city will prevail.”

Big story: What’s going on with the CCA?

Top line: Glasgow’s longstanding Centre for Contemporary Arts is out of money and closing its doors – at least for four months. A multi-media arts space that’s been at the heart of the city centre since 1974, it’s played host to notable dotables from Whoopi Goldberg to Allen Ginsberg, and helped launch the careers of artists like David Shrigley and Steven Campbell. 

What we’re hearing: Officially, the CCA is “temporarily” shutting up shop from December 2024 until March 2025, to “restructure” the organisation. But insiders say there has been conflicting messaging over whether this closure really is just a pause – or a final goodbye. 

Context: The CCA has been in financial hot water for a while. The charity's 2023 accounts show it relied on donations and grants for over 80% of its total income. Creative Scotland, the public body which holds the purse strings, was by far the biggest sole source of funding, making up 87% of donations and grants. That includes the £175,000 annual subsidy that Creative Scotland provides by charging CCA only a nominal £1 annual rent to use its Sauchiehall Street premises.

• But arts funding in Scotland has been slashed in recent years, as is the story across the UK. A big chunk of the cash CCA has been getting from Creative Scotland is ‘standstill funding’ – AKA, fixed, no matter inflation or any increased costs incurred in a particular year. 
• Many arts organisations have been instructed to move towards being more self-financing through renting out building space to tenants and launching ventures to bring in extra revenue, like cafes or restaurants.

Warning signs: In 2023, the CCA admitted their finances were ‘precarious’ due to this rigid funding model and declining visitor numbers. The charity attributes the latter factor to the twin blows of a four-month forcible closure in 2018, followed by successive Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. Others have slung additional blame at the CCA’s programming. “It’s boring,” artist Tommy Lydon bluntly told The Bell. “Every time I’ve been recently the place has been deserted, the curation of contemporary art has been abysmal, boring and pretentious pish,” wrote a Redditor.  

The data: Footfall is definitely down. In 2022-2023, the CCA’s first full year back to uninterrupted operation, 53% fewer people strolled through its doors than in the last comparable 12 months (in 2017-2018). Last year also saw a workers’ dispute over the running of the CCA’s onsite Saramago Cafe Bar which ended in its abrupt closure. This didn’t just impact Saramago staff who found themselves suddenly without jobs, but also the CCA’s income. 

The reaction: These pressures are ones broadly shared by arts organisations across the region; same words, different fonts. But news of the CCA’s potential closure has caused shock, given its high profile spot in Glasgow – and Scotland’s – creative ecosystem. 

Mixed messaging: That’s ‘if’ the CCA goes under. No one seems to know exactly what’s happening, in part because funding is so uncertain. Whispers around Glasgow’s art scene last week was that some staff had been told the closure was permanent. A lone email sent to cultural tenants two weeks ago informed them it would be four months; as did the later public statement released by the organisation. Retail tenant Martin Vincent said he was given the news in an individual meeting with a CCA staff member but when we asked for more details regarding what he’d been told about closure timeframes, Mr. Vincent grew worried.

“I’m worried you’ll twist my words,” Mr. Vincent said, citing “rumours” going around. “If the CCA has made a statement, that’s what’s happening”.

Creative accounting: One tenant The Bell got on the phone speculated that the tentative March reopening date was linked to Creative Scotland’s fund allocation calendar. If so, this is a problem that goes all the way up the chain to Westminster. 

• The Scottish government says they can’t decide on how much funding the arts sector will get – having promised to increase arts spending by £100m by 2028 –  until the UK government has set out their annual budget at the end of October.  
• This trickle-down uncertainty resulted in Creative Scotland’s decision last week to delay their multi-year funding announcement from October to January 2025, having already faced a summer of panic amid budgetary cuts.  

This multi-year funding announcement is when arts organisations and freelancers across the country find out who will be getting three years of committed cash from the quango. For arts initiatives and freelancers already stretched to the brink, the lack of confirmed future finance prevents planning for upcoming months, forcing the hand of many – like the CCA. 

Bottom line: The CCA is less a canary, and more a really loud foghorn in the ongoing arts-sector-squeeze coal mine. This problem is not going away; public service arts organisations are not suddenly going to become commercially sustainable ventures of the type needed to plug the shortfall in state funding. But as they prepare to shut up shop for the winter – or perhaps longer – CCA head honchos also face questions about how this crisis unfolded. We’re working on answering them; if you’ve got any intel you’d like to share, get in touch with moya@glasgowbell.co.uk.

Your Bell briefing

🏅 Job opportunity: want to run the 2026 Commonwealth Games? After fighting tooth and nail to host a “pared down” 2026 Commonwealth Games, now Glasgow has to urm, actually do it. Which means hiring an entire team to deliver the event, just two years away. The Herald reports recruitment agency Livingston James has been tasked with filling over seven key management roles, including a Games CEO and COO. Get your applications in here.

🎇 Council error means Southside fireworks ban is off: Glasgow City Council has apologised to Pollokshields residents after an admin blunder means an area-wide ban on fireworks will not come into force for Bonfire Night. Reported by Glasgow Live, the Southside neighbourhood was set to trial a ‘firework control zone’ between 1-10 November, preventing both public and private use of fireworks – including sparklers. But the council didn’t issue a legal notice in time, which means fireworks can fly free. Pollokshields Greens councillor, Jon Molyneux described the news as “disappointing” and said the council needs to “urgently work with partners to rebuild trust”. Public consultation on a city-wide ban of fireworks is currently underway. 

💨 Glasgow’s Indian communities are breathing bad air: New research has found that some of Glasgow’s ethnic minority communities are disproportionately bearing the worst levels of air pollution in the city. Data from the Glasgow Environmental Monitoring of Indoor and Outdoor Air (GEMINOA) project revealed that members of Indian communities in the city are far more likely to be exposed to pollutants than their counterparts from other demographics. One in three people of Indian heritage were found to live in areas with the worst air quality. Read more on the study via Air Quality News.

Home of the week

Have you finally stopped fighting the status quo and decided to move to the Southside? This two bed tenement in Pollokshields could well be the key to your cosmopolitan dreams. It’s got charm, it’s got elegance, it’s got as many bathrooms as bedrooms so you don’t have to fight over the shower, and it’s mere metres away from Tramway if nodding intelligently at ‘yoga-esque’ performance art is your pastime of choice. £215,000.

Media picks

Friends are like mayflies: Few of Glasgow’s sons are as silver-tongued as Andrew O’Hagan, who this week authors a series of personal essays on friendship for BBC Radio 4. Episode one opens with the sound of Bob Dylan’s ‘He Was a Friend of Mine’, woven into a story about O’Hagan’s childhood pal, the chestnut-haired Mark. Their friendship was like “a cool glass of water after a fever, an all-time refreshment that was meant to last”. The Mayflies author turns his sharp wit to the sort of human experiences we all take for granted, adroitly counterbalancing the personal with the universal in his trademark incisive style. 

Hyperpop, posthumously: Almost four years on from her death, the ripples cast by Sophie Xeon during a life tragically cut short, continue to emanate outwards. We unearthed this rare interview from the 2019 Grammys, in which her vitality, humility and self-possession are on full display. In a review of her posthumous album ‘SOPHIE’, released last month, the New Yorker captured the now bittersweet experience of listening to the experimental pop producer’s music: “There was a time when everyone said that Sophie sounded like the future; to me, this album sounds like the present continuous. It sounds like Sophie’s behind the table, in the club, like she’s turning up the voltage toward euphoria, like the crowd is moving still.” 

Boyle on Bar-L: Tomorrow sees the release ‘Inside Barlinnie’, a BBC series set against a wider backdrop of the Big Hoose’s long overdue closure. It features a sit down interview with writer and artist Jimmy Boyle, who at the ripe age of 80 reflects on his time inside Scotland’s biggest prison. Ahead of that, we enjoyed this 2016 article in the Guardian, released to mark the reissue of his 1977 memoir A Sense of Freedom. ‘Now, far, far from Barlinnie, the former hard man of the Gorbals is reflective, his thoughts those of a 72-year-old who has seen life at its most savage and its most compassionate. “I ask myself what was that all about? All that violence, theft, anger and hatred for territorial gain when in fact none of us own anything.”’

Things to do

Tuesday

🪕 If you haven’t yet had the chance to check out the trad music session at Ryan’s Bar – the Govanhill outpost of the Old Toll – then you’re missing out. Expect all the Old Toll classics (dim red lighting, expensive but delicious porters served by the flagon), but paired with live Scottish and Irish tunes, and the occasional jig from further afield. Go along and play along, or if, like many of the Bell staff, you are musically inept, then just go along and get merry. Entry is free, porter isn’t.

Wednesday

🎤 Renfield Lane’s trendiest tavern (sorry Stereo) is hosting the second edition of 'I’ll Scratch Yours', a showcase of Glasgow’s ‘most exciting’ new writing and performance talent. The Old Hairdressers hasn’t actually announced the line-up yet, so we’ll have to take their word on this one. Tickets cost £10, and the inaugural event sold out, so you’ll want to get them quick.

Thursday

🎥 And speaking of the CCA, on Thursday evening the art centre will be screening the Japanese surrealist road-trip flick 'Bye Bye Love' as part of their programme for the Scottish Queer International Film Festival (SQUIFF). Directed by Isao Fujisawa in 1974, the once long-lost film is now celebrating its 50th anniversary in style, with a special screening featuring a recorded message from the director, and an introduction by film critic Xuanlin Tham. Tickets are pay what you can, and can be purchased here.

Friday

♠️ This week, Questo are bringing their outdoor escape game to Glasgow. 'The Testing of Thomas' promises to be an interactive storytelling experience, complete with puzzles, riddles, and cryptic codes. The event starts at Kelvingrove Art Gallery, and leads you through Kelvingrove Park and Glasgow University, finishing off at the Botanic Gardens. Tickets are available here.

Saturday

🥧 And finally, this Saturday you can join Eatery Shawlands for a night of Scottish pie and pairings. Expect five different Scottish pies – from haggis and black pudding to chicken Barmoral – each paired with the perfect drink. The evening runs from 5pm until 7pm. See Eventbrite for more information.

If you're reading this and you haven't yet joined our free mailing list, click here to get Glasgow's new quality newspaper in your inbox every week.