When Franz Ferdinand sang of going to a party at Glasgow’s Transmission gallery in their 2005 hit single, Do You Want To? the libidinous lyric was not only a cheeky nod to the band’s roots in the city’s underground art scene. It was also an example of how that DIY scene had flourished enough to go global by way of several Turner Prize winners as well as Franz Ferdinand themselves.
Back then, Transmission’s King Street home was one of a cluster of artist led spaces occupying rough and ready premises on and around Trongate in the Merchant City. As is the way with areas that become a home for artists, cheap rents had attracted a natural influx of artistic activity that worked from the ground up in a self-made cultural village – please, let’s not call it a hub.
In September 2009, following around £8 million worth of long-term public investment, what had originally been a series of three six storey B listed former Edwardian warehouses opened as Trongate 103. This took the idea of the area’s original cultural village and gave the old spaces a major makeover.
Designed by Elder & Cannon Architects, the renovation tailored their vision to each tenant’s needs. As well as Transmission, these included Glasgow Print Studio, Street Level Photoworks, Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre, Project Ability, Project Rooms, and Glasgow Media Access Centre (GMAC). All organisations had come from the grassroots and been developed over many years to become vital hotbeds of non-mainstream activity that fed into and often showed the way for Glasgow and Scotland’s artistic infrastructure.
Funders included Glasgow City Council (£5.75m), Scotland’s then arts funding body the Scottish Arts Council’s National Lottery Fund (£1.5m), Scottish Enterprise Glasgow (£500,000), and the Merchant City Townscape Heritage initiative (£750,000). Those at what was then Glasgow City Council’s arms length body, Culture and Sport Glasgow – now Glasgow Life – spoke of Trongate 103 becoming an engine room of a sustainable cultural community for the next thirty years. As described by the Herald at the time, Trongate 103 was ‘a top-down idea, but with bottom-up collaboration from companies and artists involved.’
Almost sixteen and a half years on, and just over the halfway mark for the original lifespan envisaged for Trongate 103, while its residents appear to be operating successfully, the landscape has changed. This isn’t just physically in an ever-gentrifying Merchant City, but politically and economically too, with cash-strapped local authorities attempting in vain to balance the books.
The negative effects of such changes seems to have been borne out with reports this week that all of Trongate 103’s cultural tenants have been served with what has been described as non-negotiable eviction notices. Received on February 27, the notices apparently declared that all tenants must vacate the building in just four weeks time.
This came to light after an email was sent out by GMAC to its supporters highlighting the move. The email also accused the building’s owners, City Property – Glasgow City Council’s arms length property company - of ‘attempting to shift the building from the originally agreed subsidised cultural model to a fully commercial footing.’ If this turns out to be the case, all the idealistic talk in 2009 from Culture and Sport Glasgow of engine rooms and creating sustainable artistic communities for decades to come will have been rendered meaningless.
The current situation, however, appears to be less straightforward. As the Herald reported, City Property have stated in response to GMAC’s email that lease renewals are standard practice, and negotiations for Trongate 103 have been ongoing for some time. City Property also state that Trongate 103 tenants have already been made aware that for new lease agreements to take effect, the serving of a notice to vacate is standard practice.
Despite such an apparent sleight of hand, each organisation within the building exists under different circumstances and different levels of support, and any rent increase is likely to hit some harder than others. This could easily price them out of the building and possibly out of existence.
Whatever happens next, the situation raises issues of how grassroots artistic activity is valued beyond pure economics. The recent closure of the CCA may have been an accident waiting to happen for several years, but its demise remains an example of the fragility of the artistic ecosystem. As too does the eviction of DIY company Theatre 118 from their premises on Osborne Street, a stone’s throw from Trongate 103. Despite the different situations dictating the fortunes of each institution, their loss or potential loss recalls a cartoon by Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry from several years back.
Perry’s four-panel artwork demonstrates the life cycle of a building, from the dilapidated home of old industry, with broken and boarded up windows, to being converted into studio spaces, then a creative hub with a café. The final image shows off the building’s transformation into what the sign on the front of the now radically redeveloped des-res hails as ‘Bohemia Apartments’.
Perry has no connection with Glasgow or the once much-vaunted ‘Glasgow Miracle’ that suggested something celestial in the air was fostering so many Turner winners, but his cartoon could have been made here. The process he pictures has always existed, but has become much more pronounced in the last few decades. This isn’t just in Glasgow, but in every major city where property developers rule the roost and money talks.
Up until now, Trongate 103 has managed to navigate the seemingly contradictory top down/ground up ecology the Herald described in 2009. While nobody is suggesting it will close down or go the way of Perry’s Bohemia Apartments, the question remains for all those pulling the purse strings - at arms length or otherwise - of what they want for their money. Do they want the sort of grassroots art and culture that Trongate 103 was created for to continue to develop and thrive as it has done since the centre’s inception? Or would they rather the Transmission parties immortalised by Franz Ferdinand fall silent, and only those who can afford to pay big bucks move in? Well, do ya?
The Herald, March 4th 2026
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