Brighten the Corner Where You Are

OneScotland Community Connections: Govan An Artists’ Residency by:

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INTRODUCTION

Not all children are born with an equal chance.

One of our projects is Aberlour Youthpoint – Glasgow. Running for nine years, the service helps children and young people living in parts Because every child deserves a chance to flourish. of the city with high levels of deprivation and crime. Our youth workers engage with hardto-reach young people who are being missed by We help by: other services, by meeting them on their terriOffering a safe place to live for children who have tory – the streets. suffered abuse and trauma.

Often with chaotic home environments, the Making life easier for families where a child has a young people who are hanging about at night disability. are vulnerable in lots of ways. Many are at risk of using drugs and alcohol, committing crimes and Giving babies a brighter future by building confi- coming to harm through violent gang culture.

A simple intervention from a positive adult dence in their parents. role model, taking an interest in them and their welfare, can often be all it takes to bring about Helping families recover from drug and alcohol positive changes in their lives. addiction, so their children can thrive.

Aberlour is there for Scotland’s hidden children, when others let them down.

Working with young people to prevent their problems from spiralling out of control.

Our vision is to transform the lives of the children and families we work with and, through this, contribute to building a fairer and more equal society.

Recollective is a group of three artists dedicated to telling the stories of people in relation to the places in which they live and work.

We use words, photographs, illustrations, dialectograms and film.

We were delighted to work with Aberlour Youthpoint in Govan and to document the work of the charity, its young people and its relationship with the African Arts Centre.

We spent several months shadowing Aberlour’s youth workers and interviewing the young people about their experiences. Our research took us to the African Arts Centre itself where we observed Amu at work with the young people creating their art. We also watched the progress of the plastering and tiling project in the African Arts Centre kitchen. We spent time at Govan High School and at Aberlour’s clubs in Elderpark Community Centre. We spent time on Govan Road, Elder Park and the Graving Docks.

Aberlour Youthpoint – Glasgow uses the streetwork setting to build relationships, which leads on to further opportunities for young people to take part in, including youth clubs, group work, residential outings and one-to-one support.

Our thanks go to all the people we interviewed for this project whose ideas, insights and experiences make up the very fabric of our work. And thank you to everyone who assisted us along the way: Aberlour staff, African Arts Centre staff, Govan High School, staff and students at City of Glasgow College. Special thanks to Johnny Hendry, Kim McGuigan, Chief Amu, Andy Masterson and the young people of Govan.

Alison Irvine

Chris Leslie

Mitch Miller

More recently, Youthpoint has been running an arts project called One Scotland: Community Connections within the African Arts Centre in Govan. Funded by the Young Start Fund (a grants program offered by the Big Lottery Fund), the project sought to build integration and understanding among groups of young people from a range of cultural backgrounds.

The project used art, storytelling and music sessions to explore issues around belonging, community and identity; while practical projects included the makeover of a community kitchen, teaching construction and tiling skills to young people with no other qualifications.

One Scotland: Community Connections was documented by a trio of Glasgow artists – this is their interpretation of our project.

Marie-Claire Jones for:

Recollective is: Alison Irvine, Chris Leslie and Mitch Miller.

Writer Alison Irvine is a Saltire-award nominee for her novel which charts the social history of Glasgow’s Red Road Flats, This Road is Red (Luath).

Chris Leslie is a photographer and filmmaker and winner of a BAFTA New Talent Award whose photographs are published in Disappearing Glasgow (Freight).

Mitch Miller is an artist whose complex ‘pigeon’s eye’ drawings – Dialectograms – earned him the Association of Illustrators New Talent Award.

As a collective they have worked on Nothing is Lost, a Commonwealth Games legacy project which won the Scottish Design Award Grand Prix and as individuals they have documented a variety of Glasgow’s people and places including the Red Road Flats, Easterhouse, Govan’s crane drivers and a Showman’s yard in Parkhead. www.recollective.org.uk

Words: Alison Irvine Photography: Chris Leslie Drawings: Mitch Miller Typeset and Designed by:

©Recollective 2016

A Landmark of Govan

On the sloping grassland by the Clyde, four kids run about; silhouetted cavorting figures, whacking long grass with sticks, climbing over shrubs, changing formation, silent and quick across the distance.

Behind the boys stand the blocks of cream and red flats that form the northern edge of Govan before it hits the Clyde – Napier Street, Napier Drive – windows touching-distance from the grass, the river throwing-distance. Across the Clyde there is more wasteland. Train tracks. The backs of buildings. To the right are the SECC and the Finnieston Crane. In the other direction there are the slate grey curves of the Riverside Museum.

It’s stark, bleak, strangely beautiful: the river, the overgrown land,

the flatness, and the sky dense with clouds in the early evening light.

Across the wasteland from the frolicking boys stands a building with falling-down walls and the bones of a roof. Here, on the dry docks is where boys and girls, men and women, come to drink.

The wreck, a former pump house, has a fence around it, erected by the building company that has recently bought the land. This whole stretch of river is fenced off but people find a way through, as did Johnny and Kim who’d spotted a gap in the silver fence posts and walked along a high wall, holding back great bundles of weeds grown wild in the recent sun, stepping over broken glass and minding the drop to cans, bottles, tree roots, dead branches, bricks and metal.

The derelict building and its environs are a mix of fecundity, decay and dying industrial grandeur. Cobblestones, brick, iron. Everything is on a massive scale. Huge capstans, metal posts, holes and pits. Sheer-sided canting basins filled with river water down which

broken metal ladders dangle. Inside the roofless building Johnny reads the graffiti tags of boys he has worked with in the past and who are now in jail. Repeat offending. Drugs. He and Kim are youth workers from Aberlour’s Youthpoint project. They come to the dry docks to see the young ones, those who could be at school or college or in a club, those they might influence. Sixteen years Johnny has been coming. He says on sunny days the place is full of drinkers, sitting on the edge of the basins, legs hanging down their steep sides. The grassland between the dry docks and the pale housing is where sex is had; underage, unprotected.

Kids love this place. This is a playground with everything. Stuff to chuck, walls to spray-paint, ladders to climb, girders to hang from. From the girders dangle white cords on pulleys. There are steps down to a pit: cans, bottles, metal, junk, water at the bottom. And tiny metal steps up to the high eaves. Kids climb both sets of steps, Johnny says, often when they’re drunk. He is worried.

Nobody has actually died beneath the broken beams of this building, he says. But only last year a boy overdosed here and died at home in his mother’s arms. So because no lives have been lost, the authorities have not prioritised the area. Nothing is done. Except for the twenty-five thousand pound fence erected by the new owners of the land, about to transform it.

There was once a power to this part of the Clyde. Money sailed to and

from these docks and men with jobs trod the cobblestones towards Govan and their houses. Now it seems that to squeeze through the fence and walk the wasteland to the derelict building is to cross some kind of line, to reach an endpoint, or to tumble off into some further trouble. Johnny looks again at the graffiti tags and says he feels he’s failed the boys he used to visit here. There are many reasons: some financial, some circumstantial.

His and Kim’s work is hard to fund and its success hard to quantify because it’s the rough end, the serrated edge of street work with the most

4 Brighten the Corner Where You Are

‘I think at this moment in time we are

challenging of young people. Aberlour has its weeknight clubs but the kind of kids that come to the dry docks don’t go to the clubs. Here, they are out of sight of Govan. Far away from pensioners who would pass with their sticks and trolleys or grandchildren in prams. Away from nurseries and schools, shops, pubs, libraries, leisure centres.

Johnny: I see a lot of young people. They’re coming from chaotic backgrounds, there’s addiction backgrounds within the family. A lot of these kids, they grow up and they’re pretty angry and it’s very, very difficult for some of these young people to see theirselves a year down the road.

Because for some of these kids, it’s a fight to get by every day, because they’re basically living by theirselves at the end of the day: they get theirselves out to school – when they do get to school. There’s not a lot of money about. A lot of these people I’m working with are a bit lost to be honest with you. They don’t see a lot in their future and there’s a lack of confidence, a lack of self esteem, that becomes, you know, some of the young people I’m working with are suicidal. It’s a combination of unemployment, poverty and just feeling trapped. And I do think a lot of young people in Govan do feel trapped.

Johnny’s words are quick and quiet. Unless, someone – he or one of his colleagues – literally pulls the boys and girls away from here, off the

streets and into a club, school, a course, college or job, it’s from here to a prison cell or hospital or rehab or worse. And Johnny feels the urgency. The gently-flowing river and the stillness of this place mocks his words. But here, where everything across the river and around the river seems flat and small, insignificant and overcome by the vast soft sky, where the silhouetted figures of the boys still romp on the grassy wasteland, is the end of Govan, the end of the line.

Tony: Aye, the Clyde. A landmark of Govan.

This is Tony. He’s wearing blue overalls with smudges of plaster on his chest and arms. His hair is black and cut close. There’s the shadow of a moustache above his lip.

Tony: My name is Tony and I’ve lived in Govan for nine years. I’m fourteen. I like P.E. It’s my favourite class.

And this is his pal, James, who wears overalls too and boots with steel toes.

For a boy with a small, young face he is tall.

James: I like to go on the quads and all that. I’m a wee bit of a petrol head.

I don’t buzz petrol or anything like that. Not that kind of petrol head. I’m just into quads.

Brighten the Corner Where You Are

5

letting them down, I really do.’

They’re on a break from their building project, talking about the river Clyde.

look at you and pure want to fight with you. You just stand back. Just in case he does do anything. That’s what I do anyway.

Tony: That wee bush.

James: My wee bush.

Tony: Your wee bush. When we used to drink we used to always sit in a wee bush in exactly the same bit.

James: The exact same bit.

Tony: The exact same bit every time.

James: And then see if I could go to sleep.

Tony: One day he fell in it and he was like that: ‘Oh this is comfy.’

James: It was like tall, soft grass, I thought, ‘Ooft, this has got to be a comfy seat, I’m going to sit on that.’

And one time we seen a junkie walking about and he had a bag and he was pure rolling the bag up and we thought he was sitting buzzing gas and then he walked up, walked to the top of Shaw Street where the camera is, and he just fell onto the ground. He was pure heavy comatose and somebody grabbed the bag and emptied it and there was all junkie needles and that. Bloody needles. And we just kicked them to the bin.

And we told the ambulance to pick him up because we phoned an ambulance for him.

Johnny: Violence. Drink. Alcohol. Drugs. It’s all the negative stuff to be honest with you. The young people didn’t bring the drugs, they didn’t bring the alcohol, they didn’t bring the unemployment. I think these young people are our responsibility, I think they’re everybody’s responsibility. I think at this moment in time we are letting them down, I really do.

Tony: Comfy. And every weekend, every time, he used to sit there.

James: I’m never there for the fights. I’m usually away.

Tony: The fights always happen early in the morning, like one o’clock in the morning.

Johnny knows Govan well. He was born here. His father worked as a crane driver at the docks. He understands the history of the place.

Johnny: Aye, there is the gang culture, drugs, alcohol problems. But it’s not any different from any other area that’s deprived. But yes, when you ask anybody about Govan that’s probably their first thoughts, the violent side of it.

Tony: Gangfights, aye. Govan and the Winey as we call it. But I don’t really know why they fight or anything. Anybody that tries to act like a hardman, coming into another scheme or anything.

James: It’s a place full of flats and hunners of like, all the teenagers and that go and hang about at the corner. And then you’ve got the night and it’s like people getting chases off police and all that heavy funny stuff.

Tony: It’s full of junkies. And drug dealers and that. And wee neds. And the shipbuilders and all. Don’t know anything else.

James: Shaw Street.

Tony: I don’t know anything that doesn’t happen in Shaw Street. A guy and a woman were fighting and then the woman hit the guy with a hammer. And then a lassie got stabbed just the other day.

James: The junkies, they’re jailbait because half the time they want to fight with you and all that. It’s heavy weird. Just pure jailbait guys. Like you’ve not done anything, you’re just standing there watching because obviously something’s happened and they just turn around at you and

Below: A Govan High pupil who participated in Aberlour projects captured during an interview with Alison Irvine and Mitch Miller

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Artwork The African Arts Centre sits on Broomloan Road.

It’s a red-brick industrial building with black window frames. Cavernous and cold it costs hundreds of pounds in electricity to heat. There’s a snack van outside and a recycled furniture warehouse next door.

Along the street and across the road are industrial units selling fencing, tiles and construction materials. At the top of the road is Rangers’ football ground, Ibrox. To the left, the houses begin and further on down the road is Govan Road with the subway station and new road layout that confuses pedestrians and motorists, but was designed so the buses could reach the new hospital.

Johnny: Well, the African Arts Centre has been an absolute godsend to be honest with you. Because we struggle for a venue at the best of times and we get this provided for free.

It is the brainchild of Amu, who carried the Sheep’s Head at the recent Govan Fair (an honour bestowed on an important citizen of Govan), whose fingers are forever covered in paint, whose grandfather taught him how to carve wooden lecterns, who once sold his paintings on the railings at Green Park Underground Station, London.

Amu: My name is Gift. I was born on Friday so any child born on Friday in Ghana is called Kofi and my family name is Amu. I was named after my granddad.

So my full name is Gift Kofi Amu-Logotse.

I’m a folklorist. I collect stories. And I do art, illustrated storytelling, illustrated art, dance drama, music and storytelling. That’s the medium of communication to engage and develop and build communities. Sustainable communities. So basically that’s what I do. And I believe that’s what I do. And that’s what I wanna do.

Johnny: Amu has got a great rapport with the young people down here which is fantastic to be honest with you. Because a lot of the young people that we work with are very challenging young people. So Amu just welcomes every young person I bring down here and he’s quite happy to work with them, so that is a bonus.

Amu places a bowl of warm water onto Laura’s desk.

He tears sheets of toilet paper from a roll and puts them flat in the bowl. He hands her a toilet roll and asks her to do the same. She does so, easily, casually, quickly, chatting and commenting as she rips. Amu puts his fingers in the water and lifts the disintegrating toilet roll. Keep going, he says.

Laura: It started off with having to draw this picture on a bit of wood. Amu showed us what the finished product’s going to look like. We’re going to be using fabrics and twigs and paints just to make it all stand out. And we use papier-mâché with toilet roll which makes it all look 3D and real kind of thing.

Laura wears a baseball cap and pink lipstick. She has the big round glasses that are fashionable with pop artists or people who work in fashion. There are braces on her teeth. Her voice is loud and happysounding. She seems comfortable. Her boyfriend, Keith, stands next to her and Keith’s sister Nicole sits at a nearby desk drawing carefully with a pencil on to a wooden board.

This is the hall in the African Arts Centre. At one end there are double doors that open to a huge dance hall.

Next to the dance hall doors, on the left, is a lacklustre kitchen with a faded floor and small worktop. At the other end of the hall are double doors that lead to the lobby and then the narrow corridor to the street. The front door is always locked. There’s a bell. The tiny door belies the space behind it. On every wall, pillar, column it seems, is a piece of art – charcoal sketches

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in frames, oil paintings, watercolour paintings, sculptures in wood, metal, papier-mâché. And underneath this art sit the young people, at desks, with their wooden boards, pencils and paintbrushes. And they work.

Nicole: It’s quiet. It’s relaxing. It’s not like the normal club where everybody’s running about. In here you know you’re coming to do something like art. Basically it was like toilet paper in hot water and you just crumpled it all together. And then you took it out the water, drained it and then mixed it in with glue and then that was like a really good way to make papier-mâché because I’ve never seen it done that way before. It makes it just as good or better.

Keith: In the African Arts Centre it’s like there’s different cultures that come here and there’s a lot more – they like their art.

They work on African scenes. A woman carrying a baby, a woman with a basket on her head and a hand steadying it. Distant hills. Trees, houses, corrugated roofs. The young people talk as they work. Laura complains that she is the only person with her hands in the toilet paper mush. Amu explains that Nicole is finishing drawing a friend’s picture onto his board.

Keith, still standing, obliges and tears some sheets of toilet roll and puts them flat into the warm water.

Amu: You see these youngsters I take them all like my children. My granddad did with us. Granddad helped us build our character. Get yourself busy. Do something. Brighten the corner where you are.

They squeeze the toilet roll over the bowl then roll the ball into a plate of glue. This, Amu tells them, pinching a piece of gluey paper between his thumb and forefinger, is what you will work with. He presses it onto Laura’s drawing board, pushing it up to but not over one of her pencil lines. Fill it in now he says, and takes another pinch of gluey paper, demonstrating how to build the picture up piece by piece, pressing the bits together with his fingers or a paintbrush.

It is exacting work and he stands back to let the young people try it for themselves.

Amu: If we do it together then we both sign it. If you see some works on the wall, it says Amu and ... and if you do it all yourself, then it’s yours.

Even if I influence you. The level of my involvement will determine whether I sign it with you or I don’t.

Laura: I’m seventeen and I’ve lived in Govan for five years. What I’m up to in Govan is, well, this art project I go to. There’s a youth club on a Thursday with Aberlour and I go to another youth club on a Friday. What else happens? Nothing really.

Johnny: Most of the clubs round about here, these kids wouldn’t get welcomed in. I’ll stress: a lot of the young people that we work with are very challenging young people.

Laura: Some are quite like misbehaviourous, if that’s a word, so they get papped out from places and they don’t behave so they don’t get any of these rewards. I don’t think that’s right, I think everybody should get it because it will keep them out of trouble.

Amu: Mainly I focus on building character. Good character. And when it’s bad character then I therapeutically try to turn it around. Not consciously. I have no programmes. I just nurture people.

Her pencil drawing complete, Nicole works diligently, pushing her papier-mâché into careful curves, outlining, head, belly, arms, sun. Keith leans over his board and listens to Amu’s words of artistic advice.

Nicole: I’m sixteen. I live with my little sister and my mum and my dad.

No, I don’t share a room. When my brother stayed with me he had his own room because he was a boy and me and my little sister shared. I like fashion and clothes and my favourite subject is business, so I think if I do business at school I can hopefully do something in that industry.

Laura: I work in McDonalds. The drive-through one in Braehead. I want to be a counsellor or a psychologist cos of all the stuff that’s happened in my life.

Keith: I work in Pizza Hut. I’ve done a course on peer mentoring and I’ve done different art projects with Aberlour. I used to stay just past the library at Elder Park Street, but now I stay in my own house. I’m eighteen.

Nicole: I like doing something knowing that it’s something I’m good at.

Keith: I like doing the art. It gives me a wee bit more to do as well.

Laura: I’ve never done anything like this before. During the week there’s nothing else to do and plus it’s like something new to try and experience.

Brighten the Corner Where You Are

Amu: I have a policy whereby before I leave home I must produce a work. I have to produce a piece of work. Every day. I must start and finish something. Put a small value on it even if it’s a pound. And it’s done. Art for the day. My granddad taught me that.

The club is on a Tuesday night from six until eight. The young people walk through Govan to the African Arts Centre. Their Govan is a mix of russet tenements, new brick blocks with coloured boxy balconies, wasteland, industrial land, shops, some of which are boarded up and closed down, fast food restaurants, the shopping centre, pubs, the park and the road – Govan Road – that twists and turns itself around the bends in the river.

Laura: I either stay in the one bit or go to my boyfriend’s house.

Nicole: Lots of birds. It’s generally quiet though. I don’t really talk to any of my neighbours but the street is quiet for being next to a main road.

In the winter it tends to be messier. Cos no one wants to go out and pick stuff up in winter so it all just kind of bundles up. Sometimes you see kids out in the street if it snows. Our park always seems to be really busy in summer. Cos all the kids are out. You don’t realise how many kids live in our bit until summer and everyone’s in the park.

Laura: When I say Govan to people they just kinda look at me like really? As if it’s a pure mess but it doesn’t bother me. I don’t mind staying here. I don’t do anything wrong, nobody does anything wrong to me so I don’t have a problem with it.

Keith: Once I mention Govan to someone else they will just look at me like oh that’s a bad area. I think the young people are a wee bit more violent over here than they are somewhere else but it’s mostly the same.

Johnny: I just see so many wonderful young people down here but unfortunately they get tagged with a postcode really at the end of the day.

Amu has lived in Govan, in the same flat, for eighteen years.

Amu: Oh I love it. That’s why I’m still there. I’ve done it up. I’ve painted it all white inside and it’s my castle. Govan is up and coming.

Laura: The thing I dislike is how some people could feel intimidated by the younger ones. They threaten us.

Keith: Well, the young people outwith Aberlour they usually hang about Govan Road. All the Friday nights and that they’d get mad with it. But if it’s a nice day they’d probably go and play football or whatever.

Laura: People think that everybody, every young person from there is the same. But that’s not the case because me and most of the people I know, we’re all different, we don’t act like them, we’re not like them, we don’t cause trouble. So that’s what I think.

It is nearly eight o’clock. The African Arts Centre is still busy with Amu’s colleagues and associates, some of whom are working voluntarily – fixing things, laying a floor, jobs that need doing. Colleagues appear from rooms to tell Amu this person is on the telephone or that person is waiting for him. Johnny talks with men from the Slovakian community in Govanhill. He is arranging a football match.

And another art session draws to a close. Amu tells the young people to collect twigs, leaves, seeds, pieces of fabric, anything to add to the pictures to give height and layers. He is pleased. Laura, Keith and Nicole leave their artwork on their desks in the hall, pick up their phones and put on their jackets.

Nicole: We get to keep the ones that we make and the other ones are being kept here and one’s for Aberlour. I think all together as a group they are going to be shown at an exhibition.

Amu: I don’t know if you’re aware. They are way behind but I never said anything. I just pushed them, nudged them a little bit. And unanimously they say, ‘Oh we come in on our own time and do this, we’ll come.’ I just listen. They’re negotiating with me. Before they leave I said this place is open, you can come any time. You could see them, something just popped up! Everybody you see here want to come and do it in their own time. And I have accepted that. And when they come there’ll be somebody here even if I’m not here. Their artwork is here, the skills is now theirs, they’ve taken ownership of it. Come on!

Johnny: People have got to understand that the shipyards, I mean it was a big loss to the Govan community.

Nicole: We done a project on this. It was ages ago and I can’t remember anything about it. It was about the Govan Stones. There’s some remaining in the Govan Old Parish Church down in Govan Road.

Keith: No one ever tells me about the shipbuilding. I’m not really interested. I remember the cranes.

Laura: I know some of it. I just can’t remember everything I’ve been told.

Keith: I like that there’s a park, I like that there’s football pitches and it’s easy for me to get to work. I just dislike the fact that sometimes I can’t go to a certain place because there is young people and it’s a sort of threat if you know what I mean.

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‘I like doing something knowing that it’s something I’m good at.’

Dipping and Dabbing The small kitchen in the African Arts Centre is crowded with boys. Johnny has a painting and decorating background.

Today he is expert, teacher and youth worker in one, teaching the boys how to mix plaster. They stand, in overalls, around the mixing tub, taking a turn at using the mixing drill. From the concentration on their faces, it seems new, hard work.

Some boys need help with the drill, some spray the plaster over the sides of the mixing tub, but there is no teasing or criticism or larking around.

Andy Masterson has worked at Govan High School for twenty-five years, all in. He wears a suit and striped tie. His school pass hangs around his neck. He is here to check on the boys in overalls, to see that they are present and engaged.

Andy: I am Deputy Head for Pupil Support. My subject is Technical Education. We have set up a programme in the school which we call the pre-apprenticeship programme. That came about in response to the Sir Ian Wood report of developing Scotland’s young workforce. It’s a pretty bespoke programme, and in good old Govan tradition it’s pretty unique.

A large part of that programme is working in partnership with local industry and the local community. The programme

Brighten the Corner Where You Are 11

started with Morris & Spottiswood which is a national company who are based in Helen Street; the support from them has been tremendous. We then developed the programme and brought in community groups. A large part of that has been Govan Housing Association and through our partnership with Govan Housing Association we then got a connection with Elder Park Housing Association and Aberlour who are working closely with Elder Park. So, lots of bits of spaghetti, shall we say, on the plates, all intertwined, but we ended up with the connection with Aberlour.

Tony: It’s plastering and tiling we’re doing. Tiling the walls.

James: I’m in third year and just doing this thing. Tiling and all that. And pasting.

Tony: It was hard at first but then it just became a wee bit easier. Dipping and dabbing and all that. You would just put it on your hock thing and you just scrape it off and put it up against the wall.

James and Tony are among the boys listening keenly to Johnny, twitching to take their turn and try out what they have learned.

Andy: At the moment these young people are ostracised from the community, because they’re seen as bad boys and nobody wants to know them, and that will only develop further problems. We identified five young people who were pupils at the school, who appeared to be at issue, shall we say, who are at odds with the local community – vandalism, graffiti – and the whole idea was to get these young people involved in their own community, for them to put something back. A sense that they have something to offer their own community and to become part of that community again.

‘It was hard at first but then it just became a wee bit easier.

Dipping and dabbing and all that.’

James: Johnny talked to me pure ages ago and then I got interested in it because it’s the kind of thing that I like to do and it’s the kind of thing that I’d like to do when I’m older to earn hunners of money and all that. I asked Mr Masterson if I could do it and he said aye, and that’s how I’m here doing it.

Tony: Just put the, don’t know what it’s called, the plastering thing, you put it

up and then you just put the tiles on. And obviously you need to cut the tiles and measure them. With a cutter.

Andy: We are the smallest secondary school in the city of Glasgow. We have approximately 350 pupils. The school serves an area of multiple deprivation and I think we are the second highest deprivation factor in Glasgow, which will put us high up in the Scotland list and certainly somewhere on the United Kingdom for deprivation.

James: I like Govan cos everybody just goes there and then we all just hang about. You can go anywhere. But then you get some people who go oh don’t go down the Winy, you’ll get dooed. So you just don’t go down there if you’re that scared. The thing I don’t like about it is like how it’s full of junkies and all that.

There’s hunners of dog poo. We stand in it.

Tony: The view from my window’s not that good. There’s not really anything to see.

Above: Two young plasterers take a break to speak with Alison Irvine and Mitch Miller.

12 Brighten the Corner Where You Are

Left: Alison meets Chief Amu at the African Arts Centre.

James: If people know what Govan is, they’ll go oh it’s heavy full of junkies and that’s like a pure bad place, but it’s not even that bad. It’s just funny.

Tony: The best thing about Govan is you get a lot of boys your age that

you can become pals with.

Andy: I’ll be honest about this, when I said to the staff that we had five young people who were going out on the project, there was almost a cheer.

Johnny: Some of these kids don’t go to school on a regular basis or they’re causing all sorts of trouble within the school. Andy Masterson gave us the go ahead to do this project to bring young people in to do some building work. A lot of them did want to go into construction in the first place so we’ve kind of set it up like a building site to see how the kids would react, how they would work as a team, react to other people telling them instructions.

James: I did a bit of tiling before with my brother. He’s got his own company and I go out with him. He taught me how to use the digger so like I dig foundations and all that and build temporary fences for people when they’re building huge properties.

Tony: I want to be an electrician myself. For the money. I don’t know how much exactly but good money.

In the dance hall the equipment for the tiling project lies on the floor. At a word from Johnny, the boys spring from the kitchen to the dance hall and return with whatever tool has been requested. Gordon, a tutor from City of Glasgow College is leading the tiling part of the project.

Gordon: I’ve got my City and Guilds Level Four class with me. And they are working with the young boys from Govan High School as well. Well, they’d never even picked up a serrator, a serrating trowl, before so I’ve just been trying to get them off the basics. So I guess just walking through the door and not really knowing anything about tiling at all is the biggest challenge. I mean they done quite well actually.

James: It’s like building lego, just the sticky stuff and blocks basically. Not blocks, but they look like blocks once you stick them on the wall.

Tony: Aye, it’s becoming easier. I thought it was going to be really, really hard but it wasn’t actually.

Gordon: If they come through the door of the college and they showed the kind of attitude they’re showing in there, that would be superb.

Andy: My advice to them at the moment is to learn skills because these skills will be skills that they can use in the future, whether they are skills for work, life or learning, they are skills. These skills they can then develop, then hopefully we can get them through into the pre-apprenticeship programme. After two years in that we would be very, very hopeful that we can get them into apprenticeships. And that is the gateway to a very, very good life.

Amu doesn’t go into the kitchen but the boys use his office to change in and out of their overalls and he is there in the mornings to unlock the doors and let them in. They call him Chief Amu. Amu: My God. The second day. They made a statement that really excited me. They’re doing it for me. And it makes your heart melt.

Blink of an Eye

Laura and Keith stand in Elder Park, solitary figures near a tree, on a day that is poised for rain. The place is sleepy and blurred with midday mist. They are back where they used to come as younger teenagers. Keith would play football in the Linthouse section or they would go to the pond and climb on the tree that grows at a slant. They might sit in the rose gardens, near where the outdoor gym now stands or play on the roundabout or the swings. When it rained they would shelter under the climbing frame to avoid having to go home or, if it was pouring, they would go into the elegant Elder Park Library and use the computers to check their Facebook accounts.

Now, they work their shifts at McDonalds and Pizza Hut, plan for college at the end of the summer, and rarely come to the park.

Laura: I don’t go out my front door hardly. Go to his house or my nanna’s house, that’s the farthest I go. Boring! It’s too boring here!

There’s actually nothing apart from the youth clubs but then again if you work you don’t get to go to them very often.

Keith: I know.

Laura: I don’t mind the part about working but there’s nothing to do, it’s just so boring. Most of the things are in the park but that’s for younger people. What about us who are seventeen, eighteen and that? Give us stuff to do. See like down there, down Govan Road, there’s this building that was the Lyceum or something. They’re meant to be building that into a cinema, I read about that the other day, but they’re taking their time about it. See if there was a cinema there I’d probably go every day. See a movie every single day if I could.

Keith: It would probably be easier for your gran and that.

Brighten the Corner Where You Are 15

‘There are choices out there, you know.

They don’t need to go down this road of alcohol, drugs.’

Keith: I think the bad thing about being young right now is the technology. Cos when everybody else was young, like when we were younger we used to go outside – Laura: – Play in the mud and the rain.

Keith: And now we’ve got all these Xboxes, PS4s. I’m guilty, I’m guilty. I play them a lot but it’s only because it’s in the now, it’s the trend.

You need to know how to cook. You need the basics of how to handle your money, how to be responsible, can you like look after yourself, can you keep your own hygiene? Can you tidy up your own house?

Can you do other things like if you were to get a pet like a dog or whatever can you take that out as well?

Laura: He can always move into mine.

Keith: The Quay.

Keith: I will probably end up having to move into Laura’s because my house is only a studio flat and it’s like the living room and the bedroom are the one. I can’t stay at my mum and dad’s because me and my dad don’t get on.

Laura: And we’re both off work till Friday or Saturday.

Laura: Plus your sister stole your room so you can’t!

Their weeks and months are fractured, structured around their work shifts which are never set. Sometimes a week surprises them and they’ll have days in a row without any shifts, other weeks their shifts are back-toback.

Keith: My dad gave my sister my room so I can’t actually move in, there’s nowhere else to go.

Laura: We go to the cinema and stuff. There’s the Odeon or there’s the town.

Keith: I used to work in the Pizza Hut in Helen Street but when I got my own house I couldn’t afford one shift a week. I’m on £5.87 but that’s only because I was there a year. I would be getting £5.54 or something if I wasn’t there a year.

I get housing benefits and I’m getting something called housing discretionary. It helps me pay my full rent and obviously the housing’s paying my rent. But I only pay £35 a fortnight to my rent which comes to £70 a month. But that’s all getting cut at the end of this year or the next year for everybody under the age of twenty-five.

Laura: Argh! I hate it all. I just don’t agree with the fact that just because you’re under twenty-five you’re not allowed to have housing benefits and all that. They don’t give the national minimum wage or the living wage till you’re twenty-five so how do they expect you to pay for stuff if they’re gonna just not give you that till you’re twenty-five? It doesn’t make sense.

Keith: We do the same job.

Laura: Exactly.

Keith: And then we pay the same fare. But we don’t get enough to pay the fare.

Laura: We have to pay an adult fare. I know. I’m raging. I should be in politics.

Beyond their work shifts their futures hover, almost tangible.

Keith: Well me and Laura are thinking about getting a house together because it’s the only way it’s going to work. I can’t move back into my mum and dad’s house. I know that my rent’s only £300 pound but obviously food and all that it’s about £500.

They speak highly of Johnny and other youth workers who have helped them when they were low.

Johnny: I think it’s just building young people’s confidence that can do it. There are choices out there, you know. They don’t need to go down this road of alcohol, drugs. If you look for the support there’s support there for you. But not all these youngsters will go and look for that support. That’s why I think it’s vital that Youthpoint Aberlour are here. We are probably the first port of call they’ll come to.

Laura: They’ve helped me through a lot of stuff. They’ve helped me find things to apply for like college and stuff. I get very stressed out and frustrated. If something doesn’t go right I get really annoyed.

Keith: I’m going back to college. Starting August. I’m doing Check in to Travel. It’s basically the start of Travel and Tourism but it’s an introduction. And it means you can work on a cruise ship, you can work in an airport, you can work abroad. I think it would be interesting because you can get a lot of money from it as well.

Laura: Just think about the money.

Keith: It is about the money. Everything’s so expensive.

Laura: I want to study people and find out why they act like things. I want to help people.

Keith: I would see myself in Govan in five years. But I don’t know if I could answer that because it is quite a long time.

Laura: I want to go abroad. I want to travel the world.

In Govan, rain threatens the park. It’s been refurbished since Keith and Laura knocked about here because a few years ago the roundabout was set on fire and vandals removed the swings from their frames. It hasn’t been

16 Brighten the Corner Where You Are vandalised since it was fixed up.

Keith: It was the older ones, aye.

Laura: For me it was half eight, nine. But not at weekends: it was like ten and I would push them till ten thirty.

Do you know what I think? When they’re theirselves and all that, they’re a lot better and nicer. See my nanna, they’re always nice to my nanna. It doesn’t matter if they’ve got a problem with me, they’re always nice to my nanna. Somebody had lost their bag and they came to my nanna’s window and said do you know whose bag this is? Most of the time they’re nice to old people.

Laura: Just older than us at the time. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. They knew what they were doing.

Now, Keith and Laura are older than the next set of kids who hang about in Govan, drinking or vandalising or standing around. And they are younger than the ‘older ones’ who have long since crossed the line from delinquent youth into addiction or unemployment or crime.

Keith: There’s some places that I don’t like to go like Linthouse because when we were younger I used to go up to Linthouse and all the neds would try and chase me and annoy me and in a blink of an eye I’d be back in the house at night.

They would call me fat, they would say they were going to stab me and batter me and stuff like that. I would have just took it as a joke. And then it started getting serious because my cousin, there was about twenty of them up at Linthouse, and they all came over and started punching him. And I couldn’t do anything because I was with my wee sister who was like eight, seven, at the time. If I was to jump in I don’t know what would have happened.

He talks without anger but also with relief that those days have passed.

Keith: It’s always been the same. If I go by the cycle path down there and I see them coming I go the opposite way. Even now. And then it’s like down in Govan, at the pubs where they hang about or at the shops where they hang about I always try and avoid them just in case they try and start anything.

Laura: Even if I was there.

Keith: They’ve done it before in a group.

Laura: They don’t like me either. Don’t know why. I don’t do anything. I just mind my own business.

Keith: I think it’s because we’re easily annoyed as well. Oh there’s Laura and Keith, we can annoy them because we’re bored, you know.

They walk on, out of the rain, towards the shopping centre. From there they will catch a bus to Braehead and choose a film to watch. As they leave the park they see Keith’s mum who asks them to babysit his little sister later in the week so that she can get to her work. She opens her diary and tells him his forthcoming shifts at Pizza Hut. She works there too.

Laura: I suppose it depends on their background.

They are still mulling over the Govan Road boys as they pass behind the housing scheme where the Elderpark Housing offices and Johnny’s office are.

Keith: And friends as well, the people they hang about with. They think that because everybody is doing it they’ll do it themselves. They can stay out till eleven o’clock when they’re wee. I had to be out till like nine or half eight.

They pass by the top of Shaw Street, walking close together, towards the shopping centre, out of the rain.

Scenes from a painting session at the African Arts Centre

Buzz Johnny is exhausted but pleased. The kitchen project is almost complete.

Mermaid-green tiles fit like bricks on the walls and the floor is tiled in brown and cream squares. All the boys have attended each day of the project. Some have been late to arrive, others Johnny has taken aside and spoken stern words to. But they are all here and present and engaged. Johnny is anxious though, knowing how easy it will be for these boys to trip up. He is bothered by who they hang about with – and it’s the younger boys in Govan whose madcap influence could lead them into serious trouble.

Tony: Wee kids vandalising and all that. Kicking in close doors, breaking stuff, all that.

James: Wee neds. Wee boys that stay in Govan. We just carry on fighting and stuff. Just battering and all that for a carry on. And they’re funny cos they’re pure mental. They’re off their head. Pure shouting, pure causing havoc, just making us laugh cos they’re wee dafties.

If James and Tony are on Govan Road at night, they are bound to meet up with the younger boys.

James: Kick about in the streets when we’re not in the club. Just walking about and all that cos there’s nothing else to do.

Tony: There’s youth clubs, like Johnny’s.

James: The Elderpark club. It’s just basically to get the weans off the streets and all that. We can go in there when it’s raining. I just sit and play pool and that.

Tony: There’s a wee club in the Pearce Institute sometimes.

James: And sometimes I play football.

Tony: At my school there’s a big pitch thing up there. Just climb the fence and go get a game of football. Or White Scheme pitch. Like a scheme that’s white and it’s a pitch on the White Scheme.

Brighten the Corner Where You Are 19

James: We go to the Pyramids.

Tony: A good place to hang about.

James: Aye.

They know too, about the point at which records get wiped and under-age cautions and bookings disappear. At this point they can start again, if they want, and nobody will know, no forms will need to declare their history.

But to mess up this fresh canvas has far more and worse consequences now. They know that.

Tony: You just jump about with your pals.

James: It’s just backs. You know, like pyramids. Shapes. It’s behind the Lyceum.

James: I’ve been offered drugs one time. I’ve been offered Mandy. Said no but. That’s too jailbait.

Tony: It is.

Tony: Kicking about.

James: Wee guys always come up – oh do you want to climb up a pal’s roof or something. It’s something to do.

Fireworks. Just get a firework, snap the stick off it, light them and fling them. Just light it and throw it up in the air. And you shout chicken to see who runs away. Then it just lands near you and just hear it go woosh. And then one time my pal he lit the rocket and then he flung it up and it went under the motor and then I ran away and then it came back out under the motor and it exploded at the back of me. It was pure funny.

It was some buzz. Good bit of adrenalin.

James: I was just cutting about, out with my pals, and then guys were drinking and they just offered us Mandy. I’d end up getting grounded.

Tony: More even than that.

James: End up lying in a ditch dead.

Tony: Weed. It’s the most commonest thing going.

James: Everybody. Everybody smokes it.

Tony: That or hash. And coke.

It’s funny. We don’t usually do it on the streets, just a bit of spare ground. Just in case we end up damaging something really serious.

James: Alcohol? Get a jump and that from a junkie if you want one.

You’d go like that to them: Here mate, want to go to the shop for us?

Tony: Hard because all you do is get pulled up by the police who try to blame you for stuff that you’ve not done and all that. If you’re a group of five then they just tend to search you. Waste your time. Drugs. Weapons and all that. Cos Govan’s known for that. And they say if you don’t tell about somebody who’s done something and you know who it is they’ll say they’re going to take you home.

Tony: And they say can I get a pound off it or something.

There are hotspots on the Govan Road. An off sales shop where kids can buy bottles, cans, single cigarettes. Outside, a man sets a crate of beer on the floor and staggers towards some children who are taunting him.

For weeks now, bus shelters along one stretch of Govan Road have been smashed. There was trouble at the Govan Fair, long after Amu’s procession. This time, word has it, it wasn’t the young team; it was an older guy, throwing his weight around, causing trouble. The boys know about it though.

James: And they end up bumping you.

Tony: So they can get drugs. They’ll end up killing themselves anyway so...

James: I used to do it then I stopped doing it.

Tony: I don’t drink.

James: Just getting caught then realising the consequences.

Tony: I actually do have pals I’m worried about.

James: They don’t listen to us. They just go oh it’s all right. I’m not doing anything to you. But if they keep on going down that way they’re going to end up –

20 Brighten the Corner Where You Are

Tony: A junkie.

James: Taking the wrong thing. Something bad’s going to happen.

The boys talk quietly about recent deaths. Boys. Older men. Dying in front of each other. Leaving children or bereft mothers behind. Their voices are casual. Their shoulders are indifferent, fingers fidgeting with ginger cans as they speak.

Tony: We’re probably worse than them but we don’t take anything.

James: We just want to have a good time not ruin our lives.

Tony: They’re heading to get in the jail when they’re older.

James: It’s their mas don’t give them enough punishment when they get caught doing it so they think it’s all right.

Tony: They get away with murder.

James: I’ve only been booked and searched and that. Nothing serious.

Tony: What I done was beyond stupid. It was at the Centre. Govan Centre. Govan Cross.

James: Should have just ran away. Should have just ran mate.

Tony: I just got under pressure and didn’t know what to do.

James: I wish I was there.

Tony: You’d have been greeting. I just saw them and I didn’t know what to do. Two of my pals got caught and they says run and a van came and then about three more...

They searched everybody there. They found a knife in a tree.

It had my prints on it so I couldn’t get away with anything. They just grabbed hold of your wrist.

I was all right until I got in the van cos I thought I was going to get away with it because they only got one fingerprint but they says they caught me on camera so I was done. I got charged with an offensive weapon. Just like a steak knife. They put me in a holding cell.

Johnny was going to help me out if I had a Children’s Panel but luckily I got away with it and nothing happened. Cos I told the truth.

James: It’s not happened to me yet. But one time I told my ma I got booked and she went mental – just cos I got booked!

‘You want to make them proud.’

Tony: I wasn’t really scared of the police. I was scared of my ma. My ma nearly killed me after I got took home.

James: You don’t want to make them fall out with you. Cos then I’ll probably get kicked out the house. Which would be a disaster. She’s done it to my brothers before. And my sister. She hasn’t done it to me yet.

Tony: You want to make them proud. Just don’t want to let them down.

Tony blinks away the memory and the boys return to the kitchen to paint white emulsion on the ceiling and tops of the walls above the mermaidgreen tiles.

Don’t Fling Rubbers Sports Day. The classrooms of Govan High School are deserted. Outside, a girl sits behind a desk playing music which blares through large speakers. Other girls stand beside her. One dances. Beyond the school, on the sports pitches, boys and girls are playing bubble football. Players wearing inflatable transparent ball suits bounce into each other in order to get the ball. Off the ball, boys and girls bounce into each other too, knocking each other over.

Andy Masterson points towards one of the pitches and explains that Tony and James are over there somewhere.

Later, they appear in the doorway of his office, seemingly unruffled from their time in the bubble suits, comfortable and relaxed in this formal area of the school. Their teacher tells them to go to a room across the corridor. There, they talk about the kitchen at the African Arts Centre.

Tony: My mum says she was proud of me. Putting a full kitchen in with my pals.

James: I told my ma I was doing it and she thought it was good. I told my brothers and sisters. My ma thought I was dogging school because of it. She was like that: see if I find out you’re dogging school, you’re grounded boy!

Tony: I was best at tiling. It was just the best bit.

James: I want to say everything but I don’t want to be full of myself.

Tony: All of us were.

James: Tiling. Because that’s the most fun.

Tony: Proud. We started off we didn’t know anything and then...

James: We finished it and we figured out we could do stuff like that. We figured out we were capable.

Tony: Johnny was brilliant. He was just showing us what to do. Having a laugh at the same time, but.

James: It was just me and Johnny. I don’t know where they were. I think they were out getting the lunch or something. The ladders were sitting on the tiles because he was painting something and then they just, they slid down the tiles and then he fell off it. And then he sat there like that – James puts his head in his hands.

James: – for about two minutes. I was just sitting laughing at him. Aye he was pure embarrassed. So I told everybody.

James and Tony laugh. They recall other times of fun in the kitchen – ac cidental splatterings, the intentional painting of overalls, banter with Paddy, another youth worker – but they insist they worked hard.

Johnny: I could say they turned up spot on at nine o’clock but in reality it didn’t happen. Some of them did. Some of them didnae. But they turned up every single day, sometimes an hour and a half late, which is not acceptable once you go out in the big world. But with this project, first of all we didn’t think they would last a day and they continued right through. They finished and were looking for a wee bit more.

They’re looking for me to start another project. I want to be positive with them. I want these kids to look at what they’ve done and feel positive. Ignore the negative parts.

Andy: We are absolutely delighted. And it’s proof that working with these young people can change things. Now what we have to do as teachers when the boys come back into school is to build on that.

22 Brighten the Corner Where You Are Tony: Aye, I’ve been to school more.

Andy is more circumspect. It would be wrong, he says, to say that all the boys have attended school more, and it wouldn’t be the truth. Of the five boys who did the project, only two, James and Tony, are at school today.

But they are hopeful and have more plans to keep the boys engaged.

James: I want to do more projects because they’re better. I don’t like going to school. I like going to my projects.

Tony: And working.

James: Cos I feel as if I’m learning more. But then again I need to go to school because it matters.

Andy: The other part of this project was to see if they could commit themselves, could they show us that they are capable of trust and generating that trust. And that’s what they’ve done.

Tony: They want us to start doing plumbing.

James: Aye, that’s what they’re starting at.

Andy: The idea now is when they move from third year into fourth year, to get them involved in our construction project and to start getting their skills further developed and get them heading towards employment.

Because that’s how you’re going to change Govan: more people employed, and these young people in particular feeling part of their own community.

Johnny: At the Govan Stones, there’s a derelict piece of land. It’s been a dump for years and years, headstones and all sorts of material just dumped. I’ve asked the Govan boys, do you think this could be a project for us? To clear it up. A building project. You’ll be working side by side with construction workers.

James and Tony are positive about their futures.

Tony: Qualifications. And I could do training and get a real job.

James: A mechanic or working on the oilrigs or working with my brother.

Tony: Away from here. Definitely away from here. With a family and a job. Because I don’t want to bring up my weans and all that here. In case they end up like any other wee neds.

James: Just keep your head down. Do your work, don’t do anything stupid. And if you’ve got opportunities to do projects like this, do it. You’ll get a good job, you’ll get good money. You’ll be able to buy quads and all that. And hunners of petrol.

Tony: Just be good and try and not get into jail and all that. Try to stay away from all the crime.

They have been asked to design and produce some artwork to go on some freshly-painted pillars in one of the corridors in the school. They have plans.

James: Cos there’s like four big massive columns and there’s wee windows in between them and there are four symbols on the Govan High badge. Four symbols on the shield. Put all the symbols on the columns and there’s a big bit where we can put the big massive shield on it and then just put quotes or something on the other ones like: I’m here to learn. Do your homework. Don’t fling rubbers.

Memory-Making

Tony: Govan.

James: Govan.

Tony: Aye, it’s changed. It’s become better over the years but it’s not the best. It’s not the best it could be.

James: Every time something funny happens I feel as if I’m going to remember this when I’m older. Cos good stuff happens in Govan. Funny stuff happens in Govan.

Keith: I would just like a lot more for the young people to go and do.

A lot more things than just hang about Govan Road and annoy people pretty much.

Tony: No alcoholics on the street or anything.

Johnny: I’ve just got two young people a job this week and it’s been life changing for them. Just to see them walking down the street, head held high, they just feel good about theirselves, you’d think they’d won the pools.

Laura: I’m going to be doing NC Higher, level Six, Social Sciences. After that I can go into psychology itself and see how far I get.

Johnny: I mean, I’m working with twenty kids here and if I get one or two of these kids going down a better path, I think that’s more than worthwhile.

Gordon: If they were to take something from this – we do joinery, we do plastering, tiling – they’d be more than welcome to come to our college and pursue it a bit further.

Andy: It’s a fantastic place and I personally have always found the Govan people very friendly people. I’d be delighted if I meet some of these young men in five or ten years time in the pub and they say to me, Eh, Mr Masterson, I owe you a pint! That would make my day, because then I would see young people who actually are getting on with life and doing well.

Amu: I see this as a memory-making thing. I don’t call it teaching. It’s a memory-making event. You can give them a positive memory and if they like it and it’s with them, they will remember it. If it’s a negative one they will use it in the same way. So it’s important not to expose them to excessive negative memories and that’s what I do. I promote positive memory.

Nicole: Go down to the river, the Clyde, that overlooks the Riverside Museum because at night that’s really nice. Go down Elderpark Street, walk through the cycle path. Let’s say you would go up along Govan Road and then right along until you see the shopping centre. Then you would take the left to where the car park is and just go right down until you can’t walk any more. And then you will just see it. Because all the buildings are really nicely made and the lights are also nice. Some are white but some are a whitey-bluish and it’s really nice against the water and all that. It’s actually really nice at night.

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