Welcome to the GHSA!
The Glasgow Housing Struggle Archive is up and running!
Our new site (beautifully designed by Frances Lingard) is an evolving space, and over the coming weeks and months we will be hosting a number of workshops and events to allow people to get involved, have their say on how the archive can best serve today’s tenants’ movement, contribute their skills, experience, and knowledge, and also documents and materials they’d like to see archived.
We have already started to build a timeline of housing struggles in Glasgow (which can be viewed on our front page), which gives a glimpse into the rich tradition of our city’s radical fights against landlordism and poor housing. And together with uncovering and sharing these historical battles, we are starting to think about how best to record today’s organising and the work of Living Rent – Scotland’s Tenants’ Union.
The website was launched earlier this month at an online event entitled ‘Archiving Our Past for Today’s Struggles’. GHSA project leads Joey Simons and Frances Lingard gave an overview of the project’s development; the importance of recording, sharing and learning from the often scattered, and sometimes suppressed, history of housing movements in Glasgow; and ideas for how to take the archive forward.
Ewan Gibbs, a historian and scholar of working-class politics and protest, gave a fascinating presentation on the collective memory of Red Clydeside amongst activists in the Poll Tax movement, and provided vital insights into the uses of oral history, archival sources, and political relationships in developing projects like the GHSA.
Kirsten Lloyd, curator of the research project Life Support: Forms of Care in Art and Activism, explored the ever-evolving archive of Martha Rosler’s If You Lived Here…(1989 – present), which over the course of three decades has documented living struggles around gentrification, domestic labour, rent strikes and feminist organising, and demonstrated the potential of archive projects to directly intervene in contemporary housing politics.
Most importantly, the workshop contained a wealth of collective experience, knowledge and energy among its participants, with lively discussion on how best to organise and present historical material accessibly and useful; ideas for oral history, mapping and timeline projects; sharing the lessons of past struggles such as the ‘Sell and Be Damned’ campaign which successfully halted the sell-off of council housing in Merrylee almost 70 years ago; and practical questions on collecting materials, copyright, and digital access.
Lots to be getting on with!
Our next workshop will take place in October (details to come soon!), and will be hosted by Paula Larkin, archivist at the Govanhill Baths Community Trust, Spirit of Revolt, and Janey Buchan Political Song Collection. The workshop will focus on practical 2-D digitisation skills and best practice, and offer an opportunity for us to bring along and scan historical and contemporary documents from housing and community struggles.
The present incarnation of Martha Rosler’s If You Lived Here… archive is currently at the Glasgow Women’s Library (until 16 October), and we highly recommend a visit! It houses a wealth of material connecting tenant movements and feminist organising across time and place, and also the Glasgow Housing Struggle Timeline, which we hope to incorporate into the GHSA in one form or another in the near future.
See you all soon!
