The art of politics

It is easy to wonder whether Mark O’Neill knows how lucky he is. Not only is he the only person I’ve ever known who has managed to include an apostrophe in his email address, he’s the Head of Arts and Museums in Culture and Sport Glasgow, the charity which turns over £90m annually on cultural projects, including £70m a year from the city itself. Glasgow has “the highest per capita spend of any city in Britain on culture and sport”, O’Neill proudly points out, with £23 per head spent on museums alone. He is backed by an enlightened Economic Development Department, which has “quite a sophisticated understanding of economics and the arts… It’s about developing a sustainable, rich policy of life that works for local people but brings others in as well.” Glasgow has clearly benefitted from this support, rising above its pre-1980 reputation as a dirty, dull and dangerous place to its consistent position in the past few years among the top five most visited tourist cities in the UK.
O’Neill would certainly argue that this negative reputation was never deserved. He has worked in the city since 1985, coming from his native Ireland to set up a local history museum in one of the poorest parts of the city. He has a background in social history, and says, “I think my interest in visual art has been very much from a kind of interdisciplinary perspective.” He started working for the City Council Museums in 1990, and, as he adds with a chuckle, “eight restructurings later I had made my way to the top”. One of his most significant projects was setting up the St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, whose gallery explores the art of the world’s six main religions (Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism). “My interest has been in the human meaning, and how it overlaps with the aesthetic, and how they interact,” he explains. “That’s my personal interest, but that chimes in very much with the Glasgow tradition.” He reminds me that the city’s most famous painting is Dali’s ‘Christ of St John of the Cross’, purchased in 1951.

Identity parade
We discuss identity. Developing a sense of place and reflecting the lives of the people who live there has become a strong theme in parts of the UK, particularly through arts-led regeneration projects. O’Neill asserts that Glasgow’s arts institutions aim to work with the local artistic and political traditions, and for the benefit of local people. “I think there’s still a huge prestige from metropolitan, famous artists,” he says. “One of the ways you badge a city is by saying ‘we’re part of the high prestige international circuit’. That’s what [the Guggenheim Museum in] Bilbao did. It didn’t foster a local artistic ecology. Glasgow’s really lucky – there’s a really strong artistic community here, and so we’re building on that as well as the city’s long radical political tradition.” One result of this is the biennial programme on contemporary art and human rights which runs at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA). However, this year’s exhibition, which aims to celebrate and raise awareness of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, has run into problems, with a row brewing over alleged censorship.
O’Neill’s current pride and joy is the Trongate development (AP200), which puts a new twist on the type of regeneration project which relies on artists to bring an area up, and then prices them out of the market for working and living space. Trongate, which at 8,000 square metres is twice the size of BALTIC in Gateshead, covers five floors of an entire city block, and lies at the edge of the inner city. Artists and arts organisations had moved in to take advantage of low rents in buildings owned by the city. “Instead of throwing them out, the city, working with us at Culture and Sport, agreed to bring all the organisations spread out across all the buildings into one, refurbish the building and lease it back to them.” Trongate houses a number of well-established organisations, including the Glasgow Print Studio and Project Ability, which has worked for 20 years with people with learning disabilities. There’s also a strong Russian element, stemming from the arrival of dissident Russian artist Eduard Bersudsky, who calls himself a ‘sculptor mechanic’, and whose work includes dark, Gothic animatronic figures with a strong political edge. He set up a Puppet Theatre, which is one of the ways that the Glasgow public can access the building – the others being the Print Studio Gallery and a café run by the Russian Cultural Centre. O’Neill assures me that “there isn’t a Russian strategy – it’s just a coincidence, but it reflected the receptivity of Glasgow to outside influences and outside artists”.
Money matters
At £7m, O’Neill considers Trongate “incredibly good value”, citing favourable building costs. He is clear about the benefits: “you’re talking three to four hundred professional training opportunities between all the artists’ studios, and the training the print studio provides,” he says. However, the city’s Economic Development Department is not necessarily always looking for direct economic benefits – a state of affairs which will arouse jealousy in the breasts of many local authority arts officers. “They believe that cultural activity contributes to the quality of life in general,” he claims. “It creates a vibrant city for local people, and for the people who commute into the city – it makes them stay here, and spend more money.”
But does the Glasgow experience prove that investment in the arts works – not just in developing contemporary arts, but also in economic sense? O’Neill is cagey about that. “I think there’s considerable evidence – ‘proof’ is probably a bit of a stretch.” But that hasn’t stopped the company splashing out £72m on the new Riverside Museum, a transport museum designed by top architect Zaha Hadid and due to open Spring 2011. “We can demonstrate that economically that will have an impact,” he says, “but it’s as much about the morale of the city. It’s a statement of ambition and an assertion of its presence on the world stage, but crucially it will be for local people.” So the Glasgow model will continue – basing cultural development on facilities which will work for local people first, both artists and the general public.
Research remit
After all this activity, O’Neill is now embarking on a six-month research sabbatical. Even this is aimed at underpinning future developments for Culture and Sport Glasgow. “With the financial crisis, we reckon we need to spend more time thinking about what we do, how we make a difference, how we can measure what impact we have, and how we can communicate the complexity I’ve described in a simpler way,” he explains. The process should result in a research strategy for the whole company, which encompasses 2,500 staff and, as well as arts and museums, covers libraries and community facilities, sport and events, social renewal and economic strategy, and infrastructure.
So should we all be moving to Glasgow? “Do! It’s great… it’s fantastic!” urges O’Neill, but then adds, in an uncharacteristic dying fall “…although, the weather…” – proving that even his enthusiasm has its limits.