Games’ End Mitch Miller Foreword Collective’s All Sided Games set Whether in or around a From taking part in weekly craft out to find new ways to work with Commonwealth Games venue, classes at Piershill, doing the families in their locality, seeking out All Sided Games and in particular rounds with staff at Meadowbank, areas of mutual interest by thinking Mitch’s work, raises questions to sitting around a fire with young and acting, through the production around the relationship between people at Baltic Street, Mitch’s time and presentation of art. From June two areas that are co-ordinated spent on All Sided Games, working 2013 until April 2015, Mitch Miller at both governmental and local alongside Collective staff and project produced Games’ End, a series of council level, under the auspices partners, afforded everyone involved three new ‘dialectograms’ – highly of ‘culture and sport’. Engagement a ‘dialectic’ enquiry into the world annotated drawings of places which with individuals and groups who live around, our differences and what we capture the stories of the individuals in areas geographically considered have in common. who live, work or use the places. to be in ‘multiple deprivation’ result These records of time and place, in differing amounts of resources Mitch’s project traced the route now hang in the main office in expended to increase cultural and of the Commonwealth Games in Piershill, Hall 6 in Meadowbank and sporting activity in these areas – Scotland from past to present, in the playground on Baltic Street, a participatory art project or a starting in Edinburgh in the area of offering those who live, work, play large-scale infrastructural project, the former host venue of the 1970 or simply pass through, a marker of being catalysts for ‘change’ in very and 1986 Commonwealth Games, the more ephemeral and transient different ways. Meadowbank Stadium and Sports social characteristics that constitute Centre, before moving to Glasgow’s Mitch’s work takes us beyond a place from within. east end, site of the 2014 Games. government markers that identify and This publication chronicles and Mitch’s dialectograms directly categorise entire groups by looking further explores Mitch’s time working address the immediate and the at and discussing the day-to-day lived on Games’ End in his own words local, revealing both tensions and experience of people in a specific and others and expands on the rich discussions in or around a specific locale, in turn revealing the complex encounters at Piershill, Meadowbank location, and resulting in what narratives and histories, which and Baltic Street, whilst providing a Mitch calls ‘a pigeon-eyed view.’ define a place. Mitch’s dielectagrams wider consideration of his practice in authoritatively map the unofficial relation to working in these and other or the colloquial, drawing our contexts. attention equally to how individuals or groups live their lives now, whilst James Bell also revealing the external pressures Producer, Collective and forces socially, politically and economically that enriches, encloses or displaces them. 2 Games’ End Mitch Miller When the respective city fathers of Games’ End is the notional ‘hyper- The western environs of Games’ Edinburgh and Glasgow selected district’ of two major Scottish cities End are the newest, and remain a their dilapidated east ends to host where I made dialectograms – large story for the future. When Glasgow ‘The Games’ of 1970, 1986 and 2014, scale illustrations of place – as part of won the 2014 Games, Dalmarnock they promised a great deal. They All Sided Games. Its eastern portion and the neighbouring Bridgeton promised a cavalcade of athletes, is in Edinburgh. Built for the 1970 and Calton areas were earmarked trainers, journalists, managers, Commonwealth Games (and re-used for significant redevelopment. The Queens, presidents (some ‘for for the 1986 event) Meadowbank ostensible wastelands of Dalmarnock life’), fact-finding delegations and Stadium and Sports Centre sits were to provide the Athletes’ Village, spectators. They promised a carnival among the predominantly working Velodrome and the bulk of the legacy of sport, culture and fraternity class communities of Jock’s Lodge, projects. The city council (whose would come to districts that were Piershill and Restalrig. Used in its time relationship with the east end is decayed, denuded and poor. And for athletic meets, football and as a notoriously antagonistic) promised then, of course, they would leave. leisure centre, now being considered to use the Games as leverage to for demolition, the stadium’s history deliver an enduring legacy for the But the organisers had plenty of begs important questions about area, a better tomorrow for the blueprints and documents stuffed the legacy of the Games and its children who use Baltic Street under either oxter. The Games would relationship with the inhabitants. Adventure Playground, the last of be a brief, blinding spectacle, but Such legacies have indirectly shaped the dialectograms I made, and the this flash was a by-product of a the lives of the people in Piershill one that looks more than any other, deeper, longer-term transformation Square West and East, the people to the future. of the proverbial plan. New facilities, who use Piershill Community Health infrastructural improvements, Flat, the first dialectogram I made investment… Assets through which for Games’ End. the city fathers would re-engineer what was now the Games’ End of town from its doldrums. Piershill Community Health Flat When I first came to Piershill Community Health Flat my intention was to use it largely as a base – a central node for my work in the wider Piershill community. But I soon found that the flat itself held more than enough of interest to keep me in work for months! A seemingly humble facility, the flat is funded by the NHS to implement ‘the social health model’, a way of improving levels of health in poor and vulnerable communities by addressing many of the issues that lead to health problems – stress, isolation and conflict being just a few. The work of the Flat Manager Beth Ekman, the volunteers and the core of mostly women who kept the flat an active, lively and non-clinical place had made the flat a genuine bastion of the community, a fascinating mix of collective will and Beth’s unique, quirky approach to her work. It’s no wonder I was so reluctant to leave by the end of my time there. 3 4 5 6 7 Meadowbank Stadium and Sports Centre Meadowbank was always the big Then I got to know the people. By this point I had accepted that it one – mostly because it was the big The first were Jo Mathieson, would have to be a ‘doubler’ – two one – larger than any single place Manager, and Emma Ogilvie-Hall, A0 boards rather than the one I’d used I’d ever worked on, larger in surface Events Manager, who got me ‘in’ for Piershill. It started to take shape in area, larger in the number and range there and helped arrange my the Control Room, the largely unused of people involved. It was, in short, temporary takeover of the Control space where the scorers for Athletics daunting. Room, which I turned into an on-site meets would work. It was also the studio. Then I met Woody – a man best view of the track and stadium. What also made it tricky was that so long-standing he is practically From here I could look out at the I was coming into Meadowbank off an architectural feature. He offered running track and watch the sun the back of my work at Piershill – five me his special tour – an amble creep over as the day wore on, the minutes walk down the road, but a through every corner of the building shadow that never left the south side world away. I had become immersed (and every chapter of Woody’s life of the track. Runners would run, kids’ there, had practically gone native, story). He also dug out two boxes of clubs would cavort, the ground staff and now I had to shift my focus to programmes and photographs from lifted mats, erected goals, painted something entirely new. I kind of the past 44 years of the Stadium’s life. lines. On a sunny day the reds and resented it. So it took me a while greens looked fantastic. It was a to warm to Meadowbank. Emma arranged a meticulous good view. It was distracting; it schedule of meetings – with the But I did. The first thing that really was the point where I went beyond Scottish shooting team, a line dancing pulled me in was its architecture. warming to the Meadowbank class and the Auld Reekie Rollers, the Decayed, modernist and breezeblock building. I’d fallen in love with it. local Roller Derby team. I met Neil, – built, it isn’t immediately pleasing. the engineer whose unenviable task Then you look more closely, roam its it was to keep the place running. corridors and you start to find things – Mark, the Duty Manager, supplied moments of delight, surprising nooks some x-rated stories. I showed the and corners and unexpected glimpses drawing at staff training sessions of private lives and intimate moments. and discussed the white spaces. 8 Meadowbank Stadium and Sports Centre 9 From the very beginning it was as important to get a sense of how the drawing was going to come out as it was to record what I saw – whether we were going to make a three or two panel dialectogram (see opposite) or, as it turned out, a two panel arrangement as as I had roughly sketched here (see page opposite).