NGS Celebrates 60 Years of People Power
by Marissa MacWhirter. January 2025.
On the outer edge of Finnieston tucked between a letting agent and a new Chinese supermarket is the bright green shopfront of one of the city’s oldest amenity groups. New Glasgow Society has occupied the same unit on Argyle Street since the 1970s. At the time its windows looked out on an industrial centre. Over the decades they watched as industry was chipped away until only the Finnieston crane remained. As lauded restaurants and trendy bars sprung up around it, the gallery and meeting space remained a custodian of the volunteers at the New Glasgow Society (NGS). They turned down repeated offers from developers who wanted to see it transformed into another upscale eatery.
The modest space with its high ceilings and whitewashed walls changes on a near-daily basis. One week a contemporary fashion store, the next a pop-up exhibition or evening talk with fold-out chairs arranged in rows across the room. The NGS mantle appears on interactive walks through a derelict Glasgow, built heritage hustings and debates on the city’s development. But what exactly is it? And why, as it celebrates its 60th anniversary, is the New Glasgow Society more important than ever?
Founded in A New Glasgow
In 1965 Glasgow was in the throes of one of Europe’s largest urban reconstruction programmes. Large swathes of the city were demolished to make way for the new inner ring road, part of the M8 motorway. New bridges and tunnels spanned the River Clyde. Tenement slums were replaced with high-rise tower blocks and the affluent relocated to new towns. In the postwar period, city planners sought to raze the city and start again. However, not everyone saw the destruction of Glasgow’s built heritage as something to be celebrated in the name of progress.
Architect Geoffrey Jarvis and renowned bookseller Robert Clow founded the NGS in 1965. Jarvis, Clow, and a provisional committee of architects, landscapers, planners and businessmen, joined together to propose plans for the north bank of the Clyde. It was rumoured at the time, that the local authority planned to build a bus station over the river. The committee drew up an alternative vision for a waterfront enriched with walkways which preserved the riverside environment. Though the ambitious plans were rejected at the time, the civic engagement drummed up by Jarvis and Clow was a catalyst. Legend has it, after a guided walk through the city centre one evening in 1965, more than 1,500 people gathered at Alexander Greek Thomson’s church on St Vincent Street and the New Glasgow Society was born.
Its members sought to preserve the fabric of Glasgow, a city they realised was one of the “finest remaining Victorian cities in the world”. Its ethos was to support progress and development while simultaneously championing the protection of the city’s built heritage. It was driven to offer solutions to local planning problems and architectural threats. Clow would go on to lead the creation of what is now the Architectural Heritage Society of Scotland. Jarvis, who was a lifelong campaigner for the conservation of historic buildings and the built environment, helped to found the Clyde Maritime Trust and its support group, Clydebuilt.
New Glasgow Society turns 60
It’s a dry evening at the end of November 2024 as more than a dozen members file into the NGS unit for the society’s first Annual General Meeting in more than a year. The volunteers who run the organisation are the first to admit that its direction has been a bit aimless since the pandemic. The society has seen a growth in awareness on social media since 2020 but covid stasis meant that it had all of this enthusiasm with no clear plan of how to harness it. But tonight, there is an air of excitement for the future. The cobwebs are to be dusted off, the Board of Trustees shaken up, and the rhetoric that 2025 will be the NGS’s year hangs delicately over the speeches.
As part of the proceedings, chairperson Thierry Lye and vice-chairperson Amanda Kerr swap roles. In her first address to the members as the new chair, Amanda explains the society hasn’t really had a strategy since 1965, but it’s now ready to establish a “proper shape” around its principle aim of “promoting and maintaining the built environment of Glasgow”. Plans for talks, debates, exhibitions and a project to digitise the NGS’s impressive archive are mentioned. Much of the society’s plans will incorporate the 850th anniversary of Glasgow itself. The one thing that’s made clear is that the future of the NGS is firmly rooted in its lively and influential history.
Over the past year, the state of the city has been ripe fodder for the press. Its decaying buildings, its dismal riverside, its glacially slow public realm improvements, the disappointing design of the green-lit student high rises. But a city in flux is precisely the environment that birthed the New Glasgow Society. “It was a reaction to the big changes in the city at that time,” Thierry explained over coffee a few weeks before the AGM. “There was a lot going on in the city, but there wasn’t really anywhere to find out what. New Glasgow Society became the body where people, like journalists, architects, public planners, lawyers and housewives, got together to pull collective voices for the city.”
In the pre-internet era, the organisation printed and distributed newsletters about planning proposals and applications. “It was a platform to give normal people within the city a voice to be able to say, this is our Glasgow,” Amanda adds. “People felt powerless. Here were all these developers coming into the city and deciding what was going to happen.”
Collective engagement allowed Glaswegians from all walks of life, regardless of class or status or profession, to take ownership and share their thoughts on how they wanted their city to look and feel. “We’re trying to make sure that people are aware that we do still exist and we are here for the people, rather than the city council or the city planners or the developers,” says Amanda.
Born in Shettleston, new chairperson Amanda’s background is in social work and community development. She joined architect Thierry on the NGS committee at a time when membership was at an all-time low. But since then, the profile of the organisation has grown rapidly. Social media has been a great tool for reaching a younger audience as well as those new to the city who want to learn more about it. “It’s a civic society so we want to make sure that whatever voices we represent are actually coming from a grassroots perspective and making sure that the voices of people in Glasgow are actually heard,” says Amanda.
As for the consistent narrative that Glasgow is a city in decay? “It’s interesting because in my experience you see things take a long time,” says Amanda. She cites the new Govan-Partick Bride as a good example of this. Thierry was on the planning committee for the major infrastructure project as far back as 2016, she explains. “You can kind of understand where the things the council is talking about now are going, in direction and vision. Whether or not you agree with the vision is another conversation,” she adds.
With architectural gems like the Mackintosh Building and the Egyptian Halls disintegrating in front of the population, Amanda says she understands why people are frustrated with the controversial Sauchiehall Street revamp or the introduction of cycle lanes. “It’s not for us to decide whether they are right or wrong, it’s just to make sure people are aware of it.”
“It’s easy to be pessimistic and negative, but what is the solution?” Thierry adds. “We bring people that can make decisions or change something together with the public and get them in a room to talk about it. And follow up with actions instead of hiding somewhere saying this is bad.”
Glasgow’s architectural layers are what make it interesting. Victorian and Georgian architecture, modern buildings and pops of Art Deco. It’s a city, not a village, Thierry says. “This city is for everybody. It’s not just for the group of people who make decisions. We want to be as democratic as possible - we want everyone to be involved. Everybody has a view on what the city should look like. And we all shape the city.”
The article originally published on The Glasgow Wrap. Click here for more.
