People MAKE Glasgow: Portrait of a creative city

One of the things I most enjoy exploring in my documentary photography is the relationship between work, place and people. I’m especially interested in the creative work of makers; how a place informs that work, and how making, in turn, might start to shape a place.

You may remember that four years ago, Kate and I explored this theme in our previous documentary title, Shetland Oo (2016) – a book exploring and celebrating the work of wool in Shetland.

In many respects, People MAKE Glasgow can be seen as an extension, or companion of this earlier project – a documentary exploration in words and images of the relationships between people, a place (the city of Glasgow) — and the creative activities and communities that define that place’s distinctive character. Like Shetland Oo, People MAKE Glasgow, gave me the opportunity to focus on creating portraits of makers whose work might be overlooked, or who (under narrow contemporary definitions of craft, art or creativity) might not even be considered makers at all.

Glasgow is an ideal city to explore the themes of place and labour: it has a rich artisanal history (explored in detail in Kate’s introductory essay) and a distinctive identity that’s open, welcoming and outward-looking. It also has important connections for me personally, not only as my adopted home, but also as someone whose paternal family hails from Bridgeton in Glasgow’s East End.

At this point in time, when ideas of sustainability and slow process have taken on a new urgency in the context of the climate crisis; when global populations have begun to question the viability of continued, untrammelled growth and the excesses of consumer culture; and when every town and city has to ask itself how its high street could and should look in the future, it is heartening to discover that Glasgow’s enterprising, creative communities are full of interesting answers to these pressing contemporary questions. 

The diverse makers, small businesses, community ventures and social collectives featured in People MAKE Glasgow provide a glimpse of new paths that we might take, and suggest some different, more resourceful, ways of doing things. 

My aim in this project was to celebrate the diversity, creativity and, importantly, the dignity of the work carried out by Glasgow’s makers. Though I had many ideas about how the project might eventually look as I headed out to shoot my first images, the project evolved organically, as Glasgow’s intertwined and mutually supportive creative communities gradually revealed themselves to me. I’ve learned so much along the way – about people, about their sense of place, about what it means to make things, and about the great city of Glasgow itself. And to all the makers I’ve had the pleasure of photographing for this project, I say thank you.

People MAKE Glasgow: Portrait of a creative city is available HERE.

Explore a selection of images from the project in the People MAKE Glasgow: Portrait of a creative city gallery HERE.

See signwriter & lettering artist, Rachel E. Millar, making the book cover for People MAKE Glasgow HERE.