Draft:Easterhouse Festival Society



The Easterhouse Festival Society was formed in Autumn 1977, partly influenced by the similar and earlier initiative, the Craigmillar Festival Society formed in Edinburgh. The aim of the Society was to inspire community action and bring people from the community together. Easterhouse was a fairly socio-economically deprived area of Easterhouse, for example, suffering from a significant gang culture in the 1960s-1990s.

'The Easterhouse Project'
Easterhouse had a history of social problems related to deprivation and gang violence. In 1968 singer and actor Frankie Vaughn visited Easterhouse estate and he was so concerned about the problem of gang violence that he co-ordinated, with the police, a knife amnesty. Vaughn provided funding, from the proceeds of shows he played in Glasgow, to set up The Easterhouse Project to support young people away from gangs. The Easterhouse Project was opened in 1968 by Lord Kilbrandon. Between 1969-1970 researcher Gail Armstrong conducted interviews with young people who used the Project, with the aim being to understand the perception of gangs and the Easterhouse area. In a 1971 study, Gail Armstrong and fellow researcher Mary Wilson argued that concern about the lack of amenities and housing conditions in estates like Easterhouse became focused on, and overshadowed by, gangs. Armstrong and Wilson (1971) summarise the intervention of Frankie Vaughn as such: "It appears that groups most successful in solving the ‘problem’ of Easterhouse were those which had the power to publicise and activate their own definitions of the situation – namely the Glasgow administration who faced the problem of their own control ideologies being discredited by the existence of the [Easterhouse] project."

- Armstrong and Wilson

Indeed, the Easterhouse Project was met with negative and sceptical press coverage. The first leaders of the Project were artists Graham Noble and Archie Hind, and they fostered a collaborative ethos that emphasised the involvement of the young people in running the Project, working with the organisers and trustees. However, the Project's first publication stated "unpalatable though it has been to accept by many, the way 'through' to the youngsters has proved to be one largely on their own terms.' Noble and Hind focused on the way in which art could facilitate discussions about the wider social context, and explained: "I was interested in drawing and painting and I think that was also seminal in the sense that the belief grew that through the arts then you could work with young people in circumstances like Easterhouse where there was a great deal of deprivation and poor education and therefore always the belief that the personal development of the individual was what was important and the material was less important. So I think that was one of the main things I picked up from that experience …"

- Graham Noble

The Project emphasised the need for social investment in young people, and concerns around funding added to continued negative press coverage. The Easterhouse Project closed in 1971 before reopening as a project run by police. The Project, however, helped to highlight Easterhouse as an area for grassroots community development and certainly Easterhouse further became known for a community newspaper The Voice in the 1970s, and the Easterhouse Festival Society during the late-1970s and 1980s.

The Easterhouse Festival Society
The Easterhouse Festival Society was formed in Autumn 1977, after a meeting was facilitated by community leaders Jim McCrossand and the Rev. Ron Ferguson. As written in the Easterhouse Festival Society's first annual report (1978), the aim of the Society was to: "celebrate the life of the community, to raise questions about our community and take action, to give youngsters something to do, to bring all sections of the community together. It would also show the authorities that we as a community appear to organise things for ourselves."

- Easterhouse Festival Society

The first festival took place in the summer of 1978, with a focus on art and events were organised both by the society and independent local groups. Events included were a Pageant, Folk Weekend, 'Welly Chucking", and the "Helping Hands Competition".

Following the success of the first summer festival, the Society expanded to support a number of different areas of community life. For example, the Society was involved in employment creation schemes, and by 1980, the Society itself employed approximately 46 people. The Festival Society received district and regional council funding through the Urban Aid Programme, the Scottish Arts Council, and other community education groups such as the Gulbenkian Foundation. This helped fund initiatives like Provanhall Holdings, which was a community company offering opportunities for employment and workshop training for local people.

Impact
At the 1979 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Society's art group won a Fringe 1st award for a play it produced. The Easterhouse Festival Society was the subject of an episode, aired on April 28th 1979, of the BBC docuseries Open Door.

Lochend Road Mosaic Mural
A major impact of the Society was the creation of the 'mosaic', and this artwork helped attract a lot of positive publicity to the work of the Festival Society and Easterhouse community. The mural represented Liberty and consisted of small ceramic tiles compiled together, and a photograph of the mural was featured in the April 1984 issue of Glasgow City Council's newspaper The Bulletin. At the time, the mosaic was one of the largest of its kind in the UK measuring 240 feet in length. When the mosaic was in construction, it was exhibited to Princess Diana when she visited the area in February 1983. The mosaic and the publicity that surrounded it, is credited with giving the Easterhouse housing estate some "get up and go", as quoted in the local newspaper The Voice. The Lochend Mosaic was officially unvieled in June 1984, with local performers like 'Big Rory' in attendance.

Disbandment and Future
The Easterhouse Festival Society was essentially phased out when community arts projects were taken over by local authority arts and service delivery agendas in the 1980s. Dr Liz Gardiner founded Fablevision to carry on the legacy of the Society and Gardiner explains: "when the Easterhouse Festival Society collapsed, mainly due to a mixture of this lack of understanding and local politics/rivalries, Fablevision was born with an initial focus of working in thematic areas of social context."