Cultural backstages as urban creative ecologies: The case of Glasgow

Abstract

Amid growing interest in the creative industries and their influence on urban planning and regeneration strategies, this article revisits cultural backstages and their underlying infrastructural conditions. By cultural backstages, we mean those urban production sites which accommodate small-scale, independent and often invisible cultural producers and businesses who operate from the margins of the creative sector in cities. This study approaches backstages as urban creative ecologies because a complex set of relationships and interactions exists between the physical spaces, the individuals, their activities and the resources required for cultural production in cities. It also argues that these relationships are defined by four infrastructural conditions: (a) financial models, (b) social networks, (c) public interfaces and (d) the adaptive capacity of their spaces and organisations. Based on a fieldwork-led comparative analysis, the research examines the ecologies of four production sites in the Barras area of Glasgow’s East End and analyses how their fourfold infrastructural conditions are constantly negotiated between top-down strategies and bottom-up initiatives. It concludes that while the relationships, interactions and infrastructures within these ecologies differ, they still share common ground: they operate in close proximity to each other and rely heavily on localised yet collective forms of support. Together, they form a wider ecology at the neighbourhood scale and they add cultural and social value to its function. This article concludes that cultural policies and urban planning strategies need to consider the complexity and dynamic nature of these ecologies and design recommendations ought to prioritise these fourfold infrastructural conditions to safeguard diversity in the public culture of cities.