Workshop 3: Transcript

GAGOG Surgery 4: Building Repair & Development Grants

SPEAKERS

Silvia Scopa, Fiona Sinclair, Taylor Cross-Whiter, Erin Walter, Shireen Taylor

 

Silvia Scopa
So yep, welcome to get a grip on grants discussion and a step by step guide to Glasgow City Heritage Trust’s grant processes and so today is our fourth surgeries and our last surgery. And we are going to talk about our development grant and our building repair grant. So our first slide is, of course about what we are and what we do. But before I start, I forgot to say that of course, you are doing it already. But please keep your camera and microphone off during the talk. And if you have any questions, you are going to be able to ask as many questions as you want, you can just write them in the chat at the bottom of your desktop. And at the end of the talk, we are going to collect the questions and we  are going to ask them to our speakers or even if you have any questions for me, or for Erin. So yeah, going back to the slides. So what we are and what do we do? So basically, Glasgow City Heritage Trust is an independent charity that provides 1 million in funding to promote and protect Glasgow’s heritage and in particular, its historic built environment. So we run internal events and projects as well as external projects. And so of course, pre pandemic, we had exhibitions as well in our office, and we usually Of course, had events in our office. And now we’re just going with just having them on Zoom, like tonight. So I am Silvia Scopa, and I am the community engagement officer at Glasgow City Heritage Trust. Tonight, I’m running this event with Erin Walter who is the monitoring and evaluation officer. So what we’ll be talking about today, we are going to talk about our building repair and our development grant programs. And we are going to gotrough the grants process journey, some do’s and don’ts. And we also have two guest speakers. So we have Fiona Sinclair who is conservation accredited architect and she will be talking about a project that we found  and this project consisted in the removal and reconstruction of a balcony on a  sandstone tenement in Partick, and it will be particularly interesting because she’s going to talk about as well about, all the processes that the coproprietors of the tenemenyt had to go through to obtain the grant. And then we got Shireem Taylor from G.A.M.I.S. from Glasgow Artists Moving Image Studio. And she’s going, she’s one of the founders of G.A.M.I.S. and she’s going to talk about the innovation of the Govanhill  Picture House. And then at the end, as I mentioned before, there are going to be some, there is  going to be some time to do some questions and answers. If you have any, you can just write in the chat. And even if you have like any technical issues with Zoom or the audio, just put it in the chat and we’ll do our best to solve it. So building repair grants basically assist building owners in carrying out essential conservation repairs to traditional buildings within Glasgow and they generally aim to improve the sustainability of Glasgow built heritage for current and future generations. And well, development grants support projects in their early stages in Glasgow city. And they basically assist with the development of these projects, for example, to feasibility studies, feasabilty studies and options  appraisals. So I’m going to let Erin continue..

Erin Walter
Hi, thanks, Silvia. So as Silvia said I’m Erin and I am the monitoring and evaluation officer at Glasgow city Heritage Trust. So I’m going to be speaking to you briefly today about the application journey. So we have an infographic here, which is a great way to kind of visualize the nine or so months that the application works take. So starting out inquiring going through to meetings application, the submission of your application, your decision contract, of course, the works, just the main parts, and then your evaluation in the claim of funding. So we’ll talk about each of these steps briefly. And as Silvia said, if you have any questions for me on this, please do pop it in the chat. Silvia, if I can have the next slide, please. Yes. Fabulous. So the first step is to make a grant enquiry. We have guidance that’s available on our website, glasgowheritage.org.uk. You can see it on this slide here. Just on The grants tab. Second down is guidance notes. And these kind of outline the five different grant programs. So while today we’re talking about building our parents development grant, we also have community engagement, heritage outreach and traditional skills. So going through these, you’ll see priorities , outcomes we look for as well as eligibility, which is probably especially relevant if you’re looking for a building repair grants, which does have some criteria given to us by our funders. Now, if you get to this point where you believe you’re eligible, and you’d like to inquire further, you’ll see the grant inquiry form is the third down on that grants tab. And that is a short form, it takes about five to 10 minutes to fill out, and it comes to us after which point we’ll contact you. Next slide. So after you’ve been contacted on your projects assigned to a grant manager, or officers, depending on what strand it’s most relevant to, you’ll be contacted by phone or email, which point we’ll discuss it with you and give you an application to fill out. These are not overly intensive are about five to seven pages with some appendixes what you need to submit depending on your costings and whatnot. And staff are very happy to meet, you know, right now on Zoom in the future hopefully in person in the office over you know, a coffee and kind of a an informal chat, we um, we absolutely want to help you with the with the application process and with your project and see how the outcomes can benefit you the communities which surround the projects, etc. So yes, once you get the once you get the application, the next stage is kind of the grant decision. So we have three committees, which are made up of our Board of Trustee members at Glasgow City Heritage Trust. So once your application is complete, it is presented to the relevant committee by your officer manager, whoever you’ve been working with on the application. And it’s the committee who makes the final decision on this. So they’re scored competitively and they go through this process, you usually have your result back within a month, at which point you’ll get an offer letter, as well as a contract to sign in return. And then you have a nine month contract, generally, to start your works. extensions are available, depending on them, you know, things like pandemics and difficult budgetary issues, etc. Next slide, please. So going into work, I’ll just mention actually brought in the last slide that if your project application is not successful in the committee, and this can be because you know, the outcomes maybe didn’t line up or perhaps there wasn’t a budget in this round to fund it, that you are welcome to go back and work on it and resubmit it. So and again, we’re happy to work with you on with on that process. So once you’ve hopefully got your contract and you’re starting your works, you have this, this nine months to do it. And then you’ll be submitting to the Trust your invoices, which you must collect throughout the process, which should align to the costings that you laid out in your initial application, as well as your evaluation report. And 10% of your funding is withheld until the evaluation report is submitted and approved. As I said in my introduction. I am  the evaluation officer, so I generally give out some guidance notes on this, and I’m happy to meet up and discuss with you about the evaluation of the project. But the main point is to go through the outcomes and indicators which you identified early on in your application, and to speak about how you evidenced these, whether they were successes or challenges. And it’s not to say that everything has to be a great success. But that is a learning opportunity. And you can show how you’ve used the money to to attempt to succeed in these things. Next slide. So concept development, I know this is often a difficult point for a lot of people who think they want to do a project but aren’t quite sure how to get around it. So absolutely. The first step would be to read the guidance notes, see if you’re eligible. Look at our old case studies or annual reports. A lot of projects may, you know, spark an idea or help you to conceptualize your own project a little bit better, and discuss it with an officer. So if you have a question, even prior to an enquiry, feel free to drop us an email, a call once the office is open, the public is more than welcome to come in. And we can talk about how your grant might be, your project might be successful, and how you can kind of make that a reality. Next slide, please. And lastly, do’s and don’ts. So absolutely complete an enquiry. have a chat with us. Don’t forget to collect your receipts. This is a really big point. As we pay grant funding in retrospect, it’s important that all your receipts and invoices line up with what you said you’d be spending the money on costings are not flexible. So if anything is shifting during your project, you’ll need to get that approved with a member of the Trust prior to spending on funding. And don’t give up I know this year has been especially difficult for a lot of projects. But we’ve been able to find new ways to engage communities, move projects online or do socially distanced trainings, things like this. So we’re more than happy to, to aid you in this and to support you throughout your, your journey. And we want to see the best part of this project. So please do get in touch. And if you have any questions on this process, do let us know at the end. That’s it for mine. Thanks.

Silvia Scopa
Thank you, Erin. So yeah, as I said earlier, so our first case studies is for our building repair grant. So we have Fiona Sinclair as our first speaker, and she’s a conservation accredited architect at advanced level. And she is not the grantee of our building repair grant, the grantee were the coproprietors of 28-30  Partickhill Road tenement and the project, as I mentioned before, was the removal and reconstruction of the karate sandstone balcony on an Edwardian corner tenement in Partick.  And we got the picture here with an arrow to show you where the balcony is and I think I’m going to let Fiona continue.

Fiona Sinclair
Thanks. Thanks, Silvia. Welcome, everybody. Well, the whole point about the building repair grant aspect of the work that Glasgow City Heritage does is that there really is no more sustainable strategy than to look after our built heritage than to look after our existing buildings and to properly maintain them in good order for the next generation and the generation after that. And this is this is a case study of a building that actually had been kept in relatively good condition by its collective owners, but it had a known defect and that defect was in the form of a deteriorating stone balcony, you see the the arrow pointing towards which was at second floor level rather unusually, and on the Psrtickhill elevation of the building. Now, this is numbers 28 to 30, Partckhill Road, it’s been Category B listed since 1993, which is quite an important component of receiving a grant, it it was eligible on the on the back of being category b listed. It’s a very distinctive corner tenement. For those of you who don’t know its location, it’s at the top of Gardner Street, which of course, is that incredibly steep street in Partick, that I associate most with the opening credits of the old version of Taggarts. And at the top of which you can see right across the city to the south side. So it’s got some pretty magnificent views. As you can see, it’s a relatively plain building. And it was built as part of a larger development that extends down North Gardner Street. It was built in 1904. And it’s a handsome example of an Edwardian design in what we call the Glasgow style and typically the Glasgow style is that little bit less decorative than the Victorian style. And it’s it’s substantially complete in terms of his period details. So as I mentioned, it was built in 1904 for the Partick Hill building company, and its architect was called Thomas Baird Jr. And it was originally called Crown Mansions. And you can just see the small legend crown mansions which was painted onto the North Gardner Street, facade of the building is still just visible. And it appears in early telephone directories as Crown Mansions, and Partickhill tennis and cricket and bowling club rather, is on the other side of North Gardner Street. And that was quite an important component of the development of the whole area. So there are eight apartments in total. They’re all access from a very beautiful close, which is lined with terrazzo on the floor. It was built with a communal telephone box in the close which is makes it extremely unusual. It’s one of the fun facts about the building. And the walls are lined in what we call scagliola, which is fake marble, very convincing fake marble, which just gives this this lovely sort of quiet, yet luxurious feel to it. And there’s a little bit of leaded glass and is used relatively sparingly in the common parts. But as you can see, it’s a relatively clean tenement and it relies in very large part for its impact on those very broad overhanging eaves from the roof and on the second floor balcony. Now if you look at this illustration, that Silvia  kindly put up for us. On the left hand side of the slide, you can see this very broad horizontal band of lighter colored stone and that’s where there was once a matching balcony on the north Gardner Street elevation, which many, many years ago, began to fail one of the corbels, a very, very big stone corbels that forms part of this balcony, I believe it fell to the ground. And on the back of that the owners had  quite sensibly had the balcony removed. Now this happened an extremely long time ago, nobody can seem to quite remember the exact date. But when the balcony at numbers 28 to 30 Partickhill Road on the Partickhill Road elevation began to show signs of the same defect occurring. These these eight co-owners very bravely decided that they didn’t want to lose their balcony because it’s a very important part of the building’s aesthetic. It has, it has no real purpose, you can barely step out onto it. It’s not really big enough, but it’s an incredibly important part of the aesthetic of the building. And it’s an important part of the wider streetscape. So this is something that these eight co-owners very bravely decided that they were going to do that we’re going to take it apart and put it back together. And this is why receiving a grant from Glasgow City Heritage Trust was so important, because it just eased that process of doing something that that other less brave people might decide wasn’t absolutely necessary. And it would have been a real shame if they have the second of those two balconies had been lost. So if we have the next slide, Silvia.

Silvia Scopa
Yep.

Fiona Sinclair
So we can gloss over the photograph on the left hand side, you don’t really want to know much about me, I have to say that I did a quick kind of tally this morning on the number of grant assisted projects that I’ve been involved in with Glasgow City Heritage Trust. And I think since the tail end of 2007, I’ve maybe been involved in about 40. So I’m quite well placed to say to people what an absolute gift it is to be able to receive a grant from Glasgow City Heritage Trust and what important work they do and how it actually is worth holding out for that grant. Even if you’re turn down  first time round, you know, come back again because it makes all the difference. But interestingly, when Glasgow City Heritage Trust first began to make offers building repair grants, the outcomes were subtly different to what they are now, Erin talked about the outcomes aspect. The outcomes originally were simply that buildings were left in far better order than than they were before the grant. Buildings at risk were saved, you know buildings that required maintenance, were actually you know, made more sustainable for their owners, now the outcomes required to be about education and community involvement. And there needs to be far more coming out of a project than just the building looks good or the building is in better condition. So typically, now, we try and deliver outcomes that provide levels of education. And what you’re seeing in the center is a stone carving workshop that formed one of the outcomes to the delivery of the project at 28 to 30 Partickhill Road is a stone carving workshop that was arranged by the contractor. And for your you’re seeing the owners of number 30 Partickhill Road and Dr. Blatchford and his wife actually having a goal at carving a block of sandstone. And although it was the most horrible of days, as you can see by the gazebo, and we were obviously struggling a little bit with social distancing, it was something that all of the owners attended, and those who were interested to the opportunity to actually try and do a bit of stone carving after it had been demonstrated to them by the contractor. One of the other outcomes, which we haven’t been able to deliver yet is an exhibition on the architect Thomas Baird Jr. and the principal reason that we haven’t been able to deliver that is the Mitchell Library has been closed for about a million years it feels we get to Glasgow city archives. But as soon as they’re opened, we’re we’re right down there getting information on Thomas Baird Jr. He was the designer of cinemas, which leads us neatly onto the next talk you’re going to hear,  but we’ll be able to get information on Thomas  Baird Jr. and pull together a little exhibition on one of the lesser known of Glasgow as architects of the period, he is not an architect that we know a great deal about and one of the outcomes will be an exhibition that can be put up in the bowling club. And that will allow people to actually learn a little bit more about one of the the architects who kind of really established the look of Partick Hill. And the project as you can see from the slide on the right hand side was to essentially rebuild the balcony and simply move on to the next slide Silvia. Now interestingly, um half of this work was done without a grant, because Partickhill is in the West End and both the property manager and a wonderful lady called Amanda at ……, both Amanda and I were under the impression that the work wouldn’t qualify for grant because it was in the West End. And in reality, it was one of the owners who actually said, you know, let’s ask the question. And when the question was asked, a very encouraging response was received, which of course was well, obviously, it will depend on the outcomes. So we were able to demonstrate that the outcomes would be sufficiently robust that some grant money could be made available. But what you’re actually seeing here is a balcony that is seemingly supported on four huge red sandstone corbels. But in reality, it isn’t. The red sandstone corbels are just cantilevered out from the front wall of the building. And ideally, they shouldn’t be touching the balcony above them. And the balcony is itself held up or was held up on a series of cast iron  beams. And the problem was the cast iron beams were rusted. And of course, when cast iron rust, it expands and increases in thickness, and it had begun to press down onto the stone corbels. In addition, the actual underside of the balcony is concrete, which is a very popular material in Edwardian design. And it had begun to deteriorate as the cast iron had begun to expand. So what you’re seeing in this illustration is the scaffolding that was erected to really allow the structural engineer and myself and the contractor to get to the bottom of what was happening. So if we move on to the next slide, Silvia, what ultimately had to be done was the structural engineer felt that the only way in which to properly understand how it had been built by Thomas Bair Jr. was to dismantle it to set the stone to one side with a view to reusing it and to really get our head round. You know, how this balcony had been constructed. And interestingly, what transpired was, there was no way of structurally rebuilding this without following the exact way that Thomas Baird Jr. and his engineers and contractors at the time had actually designed so essentially, the cast iron framework was just cantilevered out from the building. And the only thing that would stack up in terms of modern structural calculations was to simply replace it, but to replace it using stainless steel. So what you’re seeing is the impact in the left hand slide the impact of the rusting action of the cast iron, which has to expand to the extent that it just blows off the stone that’s called corrosion jacking or rust jacking. And essentially the stone just cracks and falls away. What happened was the scaffolding was erected was one of the corbels finally cracked and came down onto the scaffolding, which meant that a crash deck then had to be erected, the crash deck was erected. And then a pandemic just kind of made its way up onto Partickhill Road. And the work had to stop. So another fantastic element of receiving a grant from Glasgow City Heritage Trust was that that grant went in part to pay for the ongoing scaffolding hire when a contractor couldn’t actually do any work on site, because of course, all the building sites were locked down. So ultimately, the balcony was rebuilt. The crash deck actually ended up having to take the weight of another corbel, which cracked on on the back of this, we simply had to make the decision to remove all four corbels and to have them carved in new stone. And what you see in the top right hand side is one of the newly carved red sandstone corbels. So the tremendous thing about the grant was that it just ease that very painful process for the owners, which was that really the the we’re going to have to pay for four brand new corbels instead of just the one. Next slide, Silvia. So ultimately, the work was completed relatively slowly because all external work is subject to weather. And once the building sites were reopened, and we were able to go back on site, there’s a great long wait for new red sandstone, has a very long delivery period. And of course couldn’t do anything so the new red sandstone arrived, but the balcony has been reassembled. And it doesn’t look as if a great deal has been done. But it’s it’s it was an incredibly important exercise. It was, educationally It was very, very interesting. Those stone corbels don’t touch the balcony. There’s a gap between the stone corbels and the balcony. So there’s two things kind of like quite independently cantilevered out from the building face. The drain from The balcony had long since blocked and there have been a tree growing out of it. So we were able to install a new external rainwater pipe. And what’s quite important when that sort of intervention is carried out is record the date of the intervention, which is why we’ve got 2020 on the   hopper, which is the year that not many of us are going to forget. And it’s just quite important to actually show that Well, that wasn’t an original rainwater pipe, it’s a new rainwater pipe installed. And if we could have actually had room on the hopper, perhaps we could have written, you know, grant, grant, aided by Glasgow City  Heritage Trust. Sadly, there wasn’t room for that. But I think it was an important thing to do. And the owners were already very committed. They’re very, very committed group of owners who looked after their building. But they felt it was important that this decorative feature which is quite important for the streetscape makes the building special, I’m a no doubt contributes to the value of the building. And and obviously, the the architecture of Partickhill Road,  it helped them significantly helped them actually go through this process. During the process. We submitted updates to Glasgow City Heritage Trust and updates to the owners. And eventually, when everything opens up again, I would like to think the owners would open the close and the staircase on Doors Open Day perhaps. And everybody can see the little communal telephone box, obviously there isn’t a phone in it anymore. But there’s lots of little telephone numbers that people have scribbled on the walls. So it’s, it’s been a good process. It was very, very long. But the owners were incredibly patient as was Glasgow City Heritage Trust. And I’m sure they would love me to say on their behalf. You know, thank you very much for the for the grant. So that’s me. That’s great.

Silvia Scopa
Thank you, Fiona. So yeah, we are ready for our next speaker, who is Shireen Taylor from G.A.M.I.S. , Glasgow Artists Moving Image Studio. And she’s going to talk about the regeneration of the historic Govanhill Picture House that you can see in this picture. And I’m sure everyone is quite familiar with this building, because it’s such a stunning building. So yeah, Shireen..

Shireen Taylor
Thank you. Thank you, Silvia. And so yes, my name is Shireen Taylor, and I, one of the cofounders of G.A.M.I.S. Glasgow Moving Image Artists Studio, which is a bit of a mouthful. So G.A.M.I.S. is more than fine. And,  my background is in actually visual arts and events planning, and I am a sort of events programmer and curator. I’m not a building manager by any, by any stretch of the imagination. And and Lydia Honeybun and myself formed the organization Glasgow Artists Moving Image Studio that was actually inspired by the building of Govanhill  Picture House, and that we wanted to create a space that was for, a cinema for experimental film and moving image. And as some of you may know, Glasgow has got an incredibly rich reputation for the visual arts. So we felt that it was, it was, we were well placed to try and do something like that. And the picture house itself as if any of you know anything about it is a really unique building. And one of the things that we found is that when we speak to people about it, everyone’s like, Oh, yeah, I thought I was the only one person that knew about this building, because it’s sort of, it’s sort of off on the side street. It’s been covered in holdings for years, it’s been in really bad repair. And people sort of discover it over and over and over again. And finally, it is beginning to come back to life. It’s privately owned. It’s gone through various transformations, since it was opened in 1927. No 1926 sorry. 1926. When it was originally opened as a picture house for silent film, it had an original orchestra pit. So this is before the talkies. And it was a seated at 1200 people in a sort of continual great graduate graduating  seating, which was sort of a balcony and stores that sort of met in the middle, and it operated as a picture  house as cinema until 1964. When it closed the last film shown there was called “Song without end”. And then after that, it was turned into a bingo hall like so many other cinemas in Glasgow and the UK, and then sometime in the 70s or 80s. And it’s not entirely clear, it’s slowly changed use into a warehouse. And has been used for various types of storage, including the  shop, shoe warehouse. And then I think in the end, Fiona can correct me on this because Fiona  actually did the conservation report for this. I think in the sort of early 2000s, it basically fell into disrepair. And it’s been empty for a very, very long time. The building is B  listed for its unique ceramic frontage faience, which is I think there’s only a handful of these types of buildings left in the UK now. And it’s also on the buildings at risk register, which is a really important part of getting the grant from Glasgow City Heritage Trust is one of their key objectives is to try and get buildings off the buildings at risk register. And if a building’s on it is generally because it is in danger of collapsing or falling into complete disrepair, which is definitely what was happening here. And the building was designed. I’m looking at Fiona here, because she knows this stuff even better than I do. And the building was designed by Eric Sutherland, who was quite well known in Glasgow for designing a lot of banks. I think this was his first cinema. No, no, no, no. Okay. Third cinema, yes. And at the time, there was a lot of cinema  been built in Glasgow, it was a real heyday for this kind of thing. And what else can we tell you about it the the unique style of the ceramics, which you can see in the picture there are influenced by sort of Egyptian style architecture that came with a sort of a lot of excitement came from the discovery of Tutankhamon’s tomb, tomb in the 20s. Egypt mania, I think as Fiona is referred to it, and is also possibly influenced by a writer called Owen Jones, who did a lot of research into different types of ornament in buildings. And he’s got this incredible book called “The grammar of ornaments”, which is always worth looking at, which I quite enjoyed looking at. And so yes, the building itself, unfortunately, fell into pretty bad repair. When Lydia and I went to look at it. In 2018, she was actually preparing to, she just got used to the building for a graduate project, which is actually on the previous slide. Actually, Silvia, if you want to quickly flip back. Oh, no, it’s the one outside. So this is actually before I was involved in the project. So Lydia put on an event in there, she managed to get the the owner to persuade her to allow her to use it for one off film screening in 2018, in August, and it was actually her graduate exhibition. And she did a screening of a kind of film, and she had some performances. And this is the first time people have been in this building for years. And it’s sold out in days. And this is the queue of people waiting to get in. And as you can see, they’re not going in the front. They’re going in sort of around the side here behind the hoardings. Because the basically, the front of the building is just completely open the bill,  that the owner had removed the walls, and in order to put in big glazed windows. And as you can see, looking at it as well, it’s in terrible, terrible condition, you’ve got all sorts of plants  growing out of it. And you know, the render is completely stripped back from much of the brick back there. And so then if we keep going forward again, sorry. So

Silvia Scopa
Do you want to go to the next slide?

Shireen Taylor
I can tell you, yeah, so. So, this is the inside of the building. And it’s, this is how it originally looked, this is the only photo we’ve actually managed to find on the inside of the building. And as you can see, this is looking directly out from probably, possibly even through the projection box, the hole or the projection booth, or maybe just in front of it. And this is looking straight down. And as you can see, it looks a lot like a theater, you can just about make out the orchestra pit at the bottom, and the little ashtrays for people smoking in the auditorium. And you can also see the break between the balcony where we’re standing and the stalls below. So this is the time when cinemas were very much like theaters of moving image. They weren’t really cinemas quite when this was built from what I understand. So it’s this this really interesting kind of interim period. And if you look, you’ll be sad to hear that the interior is basically completely gone. So have a look at that ceiling and the shape of that ceiling. And just I think it’s in the next slide. flip forward Silvia. Oh no, no, no, no. Oh, no, it’s in the back is back. Sorry. You’re right. So if you if you see this Interior shot here about the project underneath that one. Okay. Yeah. So if you see this interior shot, this is actually the interior of the building now. And as you can see, there’s now been a steel structure placed to create an upper floor, windows have been put in. But that is the original ceiling, or what’s left of it. And that’s one of the very few remaining features of the inside of the building. What you can’t quite see there is also actually above that ceiling are these incredible trusses which Fiona uncovered are actually very important architecturally because of the structure of the sort of barn like building, it’s quite a new, a new structure to be used at the time. And I’m really conscious that she’s going to be correcting me here. But anyway, we’ll keep keep moving forward or skip across to. And so we had all sorts of ambitions about the the idea to sort of turn this space that was basically derelict into artist studios, and it’s a model that’s been done over and over again. And Lydia was lucky enough to talk to some architects who suggested they can maybe just do some initial research into it for us. And they did a lot of pro bono work. And that basically said, this feasibility studies is substantial. And suggested we got in touch with Glasgow, City Heritage Trust. So that’s what we did. And they sat us down, we had to go talk about the project, they were really excited. Because I think this has been on their radar for a long time, this building, and a lot of people were quite surprised that we finally managed to get access and the possibility of doing something with it. And what they suggested we did was to bring in instead of just architects who would design something, they said, it was very important to bring in a conservation specialist to talk about look at the history of the building and consider the risks that it faced. And we were lucky enough to bring in Fiona Sinclair, who is very well respected for the work she does. And she did an incredible job, I really, really enjoyed working with Fiona. And basically what we did is we developed an options appraisal. So the architects took the research that Fiona did, spoke to us about what our objectives with the with our ideas for running the space were, and basically came up with four options in terms of the use of the building. And we had to consider things like the actually the building by this stage. But actually, the owner had actually moved tenants, in downstairs underneath that steel structure. And they’re running a shop in there. So actually, you go new can now go into the main entrance, and there’s a massive fabric shop and fashion shop down there. And so we needed to think about, you know, how we would use a building, if we were considering renting part of it from the owner, if we were considering trying to buy the whole thing from the owner, whether we wanted to keep keep the neighbours, whether we wanted to take the whole thing, you know, there was a lot of kind of financial, moral sort of community based questions that we had to start asking ourselves, and we suddenly realized that this was a very, very big, complicated project. But really, really exciting, actually, the more that we learned about it. And then actually, if you move forward a little bit I think, talk a little bit about the challenges. Not yet, we’re talking. There was some more there was a lot of challenges. This is great. So this photo is Niall, who I don’t think is here today, from Glasgow City Heritage Trust, and Jamie McNamara who’s actually not there anymore, but he’s at Scottish Civic Trust. When we, when we said, oh, we’re interested in doing a feasibility study on this building, they were like, Can we come and visit it? And we were like, hopefully, and we said, it’s in really bad condition. There’s a lot of pigeons there,  both living and dead is it’s we don’t know how sound the structures are, you’re going to have to climb a ladder to get in all these sorts of things. Please wear steel toe cap boots and maybe bring high vis and a hard hat. They turned up wearing tweed and waistcoats. And completely unflustered by the whole thing, but it was Yeah, it was it was very funny. So this is a picture of us all standing upstairs in the projection room. That’s Jamie with his head and a hole. This is actually one of the few remaining parts of the interior of the building that actually is part of the original building, and therefore was kind of a priority to preserve. And actually, we can see, if you flip to  the next one. There’s another shot of the inside of it, I think with Yeah, Rohan, one of our architects, you get a sense of the scale of it. And you can also see that the condition it’s in like, you can see the beams here. The concrete beams with the steel is just you know, deteriorating quite seriously so it’s quite worrying. It’s also completely pitch black in there because it’s a projection booth, so there’s no windows. This, this photo was taken with the aid of about five mobile phone lamps. Which is why it’s such good quality. So the buildings in really bad condition, it has a private owner, who is interested in its commercial value, essentially. And has there’s been a lot of work done to turn it into a viable commercial premises. And what the the feasibility study uncovered was that there was sort of considerable concerns about what work had been done on it already, I’m being careful about how I say this, but that there may be some issues around planning consents on the building, and what’s been done. So, though, there was a sort of a red flag in terms of us getting involved too quickly, in terms of taking on some of that liability, and making sure that we were clear about how we wanted to go forward with it. And the other thing that actually came out of it is because of this, the scope of the scale of the work required and the scope of our ambition and what we wanted to do with the building. And the cost of it was really quite high. And actually, the the architects came back and said, they thought there was a conservative estimate of what it would actually be. And, and this was the QS was part of the what I didn’t explain areas, when we did the feasibility study, we engaged a whole design team, which was architects, the quantity  surveyor, structural engineer, and Fiona. And the quantity surveyor came back and said, this is gonna cost a lot of money, even if you’re doing it on cheap. And so when we presented this to the owner, and suggested that he might want to contribute to this, he was very much not interested. So that was a real down point. But the flip side of that was that we were faced with, well, the only way that we can actually really do this, and as a, by this point, we’d actually managed to form a charitable organization. So we’re now a legally constituted charity is that actually, one of the only ways that we could do this is to think about buying the building, or persuading a local development trust to buy the building, in order to obtain financial support from public bodies to do what is in excess of a 3 million pound development. So that’s kind of the stage that we got to at the end of the feasibility study, which was to kind of have a real picture of the challenge ahead, which is where we weren’t, we didn’t have that at the start. And, and we were at a point now remember sitting down with Lydia and going do you really want to do this. And we were like, yeah, we still really want to do this. And so we are still doing this. And obviously, the pandemic hit in the middle of all of that as well. And we had to think realistically about how a new organization actually reaches its community and its audience in this environment, where we can’t actually invite people to the space or do anything like that. So I don’t know if I’ve spoken too long, I can talk about a lot of projects for the next stage, which maybe we can come back to. But essentially, the kind of the takeaway from this is that although it presented us with the scale of work involved, it’s inspired us to actually really build on it. And we’ve got a lot more projects now in development. It’s gonna happen. Yeah.

Silvia Scopa
Thank you, Shireen. So yeah, it’s time for Q&A if anyone has any, if any, anyone have any questions at all, and I also wanted to invite our GCHT development officer as well. She’s here tonight. So yeah, any questions for her as well? Yeah, you can just pop them in the chat, I think. So this is the last slide with our contacts, and our email addresses. But all this information is on our website. Anyway. So you can contact us through our website or via social media as well. And as Erin mentioned before, if you have an idea for our project, the best way would be to go on our website and to our enquiry form, because then we can we are more informed about your project and we can get back to you. I’ll stop sharing now and we can just Yay. Great. We have any question at all?  No questio?. I know, so Shireen was telling us before about news, like some news regarding the project and some things that are going to happen in the future. I know that this is a question that we get very often. Like, what, because at some point like our project, all of our projects have like a deadline. So it’s a question that comes up quite often like what is going to happen to the building or the project once GCHT grant has ended. So what is going to happen?

Shireen Taylor
It’s a lot to update. I mean, we don’t own the building yet. That’s, that’s probably a long way off in the future. But we’ve do what we have been just working really hard, as I’m saying, as any organization is very hard to start to get to get that track record that people are going to actually want to invest in your project. So we’ve been working really hard in terms of just actually building the organization itself in order to to be able to attract that. And we’ve been very lucky, well, after about six months of applying for money and getting nothing we’re very lucky back in December to apply to Glasgow City Council’s Animating Spaces fund to create an outdoor cinema. So just next to the picture house,  this sort of street has actually been cut off now. So it’s, it’s it’s basically now abandoned land, it’s useless. And it’s just full of flytipping, people park the cars there, and that is deteriorating. But we’ve just been awarded 15,000 pounds to build an outdoor cinema for the local community, which will hoping to go on site in May, and will be up and running for the Govanhill festival. And then we’re going to be continuing to do projects with it over the next sort of two years, hopefully, we’re still having a little bit of a wrangle with how the permissions work on that with the council. So that’s a process for working through. And that’s that, that’s going to involve sort of a kind of green space project as well. So if we’re looking at sort of actually just renovating that part of the land, and on top of that, we’ve also, we have just been awarded some money from Creative Scotland to build a sort of outreach program,  sort of looking at getting more people involved, and what the work that we’re actually doing, doing some programming and actually asking questions about how people might use the space and what they’re interested in, and trying to diversify our governance and all of that sort of thing. So that’s actually going to be a nine months project of workshops and presentations and talks. And on top of that, we’ve just in the process of getting some money, some more money from government from, was  going to call it the Govan Hill Community Development trust, then sorry, Glasgow City Heritage Trust to build, develop our business plan. And that’s going to work in tandem with all of these other projects as well. So yeah, really exciting times, and lots of work ahead. But we’re really excited.

Erin Walter
Absolutely. But um, yeah, I don’t think you could think of a more deserving building, it is so obvious that absolutely stunning and not always the need the you know, the funding, but it needs the love and the support of an organization. So…

Shireen Taylor
I think the thing that really struck us through the process was that it is such a community asset. And it was built for that area. And it’s sort of tucked away, but actually, it’s in the, in the center of Govan Hill. It’s a sort of forgot, forgotten center. And I think we were we were just really moved by the kind of the positive impact that it could have. For everybody there. So yeah, absolutely.

Erin Walter
I’m looking at the chat, we have one question from Heather asking. “Hi, currently part of a group of owners of a traditional Glasgow tenement in disrepair. We’ve had a full building survey done, but no architect, do we need one?”. And this is probably dependent on a few things. Heather, um, I would say, just for eligibility, if you have five co-owners, and your tenement is either listed or in a conservation repair area, then you’re eligible. Now the architect, that’s very much  depending on what your works are. And also, I mean, you’ll need a conservation accredited building professional, it doesn’t have to be an architect necessarily. So I’d say get in contact, pop in an enquiry form and our building repair managers can get in touch with you and let you know exactly what you need and what the tenders will need to encompass and whatnot. You’re in a conservation area. Great. So you have that eligibility checked off the list. Fabulous

Silvia Scopa
Anyone else have any other question at all for Fiona? Shireen or for Taylor? Well, no. Taylor, do you have anything else you would like to, I know like the, the  development grant covers, there is quite a wide umbrella of things they can cover, and it can help with. So do you want to add anything else about development grant at all?

Taylor Cross-Whiter
Yeah, definitely. And I mean, as basically, with Shireen and G.A.M.I.S. project, this is a really good example of projects in their early stages of development with the feasibility studies and things like that. So it’s a really good example of that. The development grants can also cover projects that help develop the resilience of Glasgow’s built historic environment. So things for example, research projects, potentially conferences, things that bring people together. And so there’s a little bit of a, a slightly wider net, it doesn’t necessarily have to focus on a specific building project. But with the development grants, it can sometimes be a little bit tricky to see would I apply for that, or would I apply for maybe a heritage grant or community grant. So what I would only recommend is, if you are at all wondering is just put in an enquiry into our enquiry form. And then we will make sure that the right staff member kind of works with you to determine which grant program you would be most eligible for. Because I realized within five grant programs, it can sometimes be, who is heritage or community? Or you know, so I think just put in an enquiry, and then your enquiry will be directed to the right staff member is probably my best advice there.

Silvia Scopa
Thank you, Taylor. So yeah, before I can see the last couple of people just joined, but we are just ending the event. But don’t worry, because this event is being recorded, and is going to be added on our website with subtitles as well. So everyone will be able to watch it back. And we also have two other surgeries that are covering like different grants. So don’t worry if you arrived late. So yeah, is there any other question? Fiona, would you like to add? Anything else at all?

Fiona Sinclair
No, I think the the tremendous thing from Govanhill Picture house point of view was that Shireen  mentioned that studio near a couple of great girls from Edinburgh had already done a lot of pro bono work, which architects are particularly bad at, you know, they never turned out the chance to get involved in a really exciting building. And of course, Shireen and Lydia have been, you know, working tirelessly, but not being paid anything. So the tremendous thing about the development grant from Glasgow City Heritage Trust was it gives credibility to a project, because you can actually pay consultants, you can pay a quantity surveyor and an engineer, and it just gives you It gives the, you know, it gives the project a bit more oomph. Because there’s a limit to what you can do, if you just have goodwill and enthusiasm, you ultimately need to, you know, quantity surveyors and structural engineers can be enthusiastic about a project. But ultimately, the bottom line is they need to be picked for their advice and experience. So and that’s what’s been tremendous about the development grant actually allowed the project to just move to that next stage. And it sounds as if it’s, it’s made, it’s made all the difference. And that’s, that’s what’s good about the development grants, the building repair grants. I mean, I can’t praise them highly enough, because I’ve been involved in so many of them would have made such a difference. But it’s not, it’s not an easy process. And if you’ve got a group of co- owners and one co owner isn’t interested, it’s hard, hard work. It’s a lot easier, Partickhill Road, you know, all the co-owners, really behind the scheme and, you know, great group to work with. Most of the projects I’ve been involved in, it’s been a process of persuasion. Because people are actually slightly suspicious of building repair grants, they kind of feel that that repair grant is there to do something to a higher standard, and it’s getting across to people. That’s not what it’s for. It’s about doing things to the correct standard. So it’s it’s all you know, it’s educational, but you know, Glasgow City Trust has just been doing it for such a long time now. And of course, if the offices were open, people can just drop in and get that advice. And Fingers crossed, we’ll be we’ll be back in!

Silvia Scopa
Hopefully like, one day. Hopefully, we are going to be able to have the office open again and come back on a rotational basis. Maybe maybe?

Shireen Taylor
Following up on what Fiona just said, actually, something I meant to say in the presentation as well, which I imagine will apply relatively across the board with the different grant streams is that Glasgow Heritage, you know, they were collaborators along the way, they weren’t just a big sort of scary funder. They, you know, if we came, if we came up against any problems, and we asked them about it, they would give us some advice. We even actually, they actually let us have a meeting with the planning department at one point in the offices and sat in on it, and we all sat down, you were there as well, Fiona weren’t even we were all discussing various sticky situations with the building. And actually just really supportive, which was, you know, was just incredible, like really, really good, really held our hands through the whole process.

Silvia Scopa
That’s amazing. So unless there are any other questions, I think we can end this event. And as I said before this event is recorded. So it is going to be on our website, and everyone will be able to watch the video again. And yeah, that’s it. Thank you very much to our speakers. Thank you, Erin. Thank you, Taylor. And yeah, thanks. Bye!