Drouth event - High Rise, the future in the past

To launch the latest issue of the Drouth, "Foundation", an event was held on the 19th January at the CCA with talks from filmmaker Chris Leslie, photographer Nicky Bird and Mitch Miller, presenting his dialectogram illustrations.

Event description:

UN figures show that by the early 1960s Scotland’s percentage public housing building output was the highest in the world (ie higher than Soviet Russia, Communist Eastern Europe or China). From the late 50s when government subsidies for each floor over the 6th were introduced, much of this housing was high-rise. Glasgow itself is said to have built more high-rise housing per head of population --largely in the 60s and early 70s- than any other city in Europe. It is now said to have the biggest high-rise demolition programme in the whole of Europe. What is the significance of this story? Three artists engage with this momentous social history.

These artists--a filmmaker, an illustrator and a photographer-- give presentations of their work on an important part of Scotland’s history. We show a film, present and discuss a new form of drawing developed specially for representing life in this form of housing, and a photographic project, which all record, remember, and investigate the high rise social housing, particularly those built in Sighthill and Red Road in Glasgow, and Adler in Dundee.

Chris Leslie's photographs of Haiti are featured in the latest issue of the Drouth.