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OUTSIDE THE FESTIVALS Hitlist SEEDS, SATIRE, SELF AND SPACE*
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Growing, growing . . . Ahead of the food/art celebration, Glasgow Harvest, Kirstin Innes talks to Angus Farquahar of NVA about their involvement in Scotland’s Growing movement
G lasgow’s fast, urban, predominantly tenement-based lifestyle has a lot going for it, but the city isn’t necessarily known as a haven for the green-fingered. That’s changing, slowly: from tomatoes in Toryglen to Maris Pipers in Maryhill, allotments and vegetable patches are springing up in the unlikeliest places.
It’s thanks in part to public arts organisation NVA. Their city-wide food-growing project SAGE (Sow and Grow Everywhere) has been running since May last year: portable growing containers designed by landscape architects ERZ have popped up on sites reclaimed from wasteland in Toryglen and Possil Park amongst others, and they’ll be celebrating the first fruits (and vegetables) of the project at a landmark event this weekend ‘If you think about how food is grown in most cities, it happens behind closed doors – in back gardens, on locked allotments,’ says Angus Farquhar, NVA’s creative director. ‘We want to bring people together and celebrate something communal about growing food and sharing it: the Glasgow Harvest is intended to be a very visible, secular, celebration of food growing, and of community.’
As it’s billed as ‘Glasgow’s biggest open air meal’, all attendees are invited to bring a vegetarian dish based on food they’ve grown themselves, for free consumption. But, as it’s organised by NVA, it’s also
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an art event where playing with your food is definitely encouraged. ‘The Southside restaurant Cookie has been teaching local residents to make their own jam, and we’re encouraging them to bring a jar along, so we can create a giant, backlit, colour-coded glowing jam wall,’ says Farquhar. ‘And 85A [the young Glasgow art collective] will install the Herbaceous Barber Shop complete with barber’s chair in the space: they give you these growing wigs of herbs that you can have cut into the punk hair-do of your choice.’
They’ve got the local community involved too: schools, who’ve spent the last year growing potatoes through SAGE, will compete in the Double Rubble Chip Challenge, in which chip shop owners decide whose potatoes make the finest supper. ‘It’s a creative relationship, but you’re creating something you can eat,’ says Farquhar. ‘There are allotment spaces in Glasgow, but they’re mired in council waiting lists: we’re actually supporting communities to start producing their own food. It’s a wonderful, positive thing to do anyway, but it becomes particularly pertinent in a recession.’
The Glasgow Harvest, Hidden Gardens at Tramway, Sat 28 Aug, noon–6pm, free. For more information on Glasgow Harvest or SAGE, see www.nva.org.uk/new-projects
✽✽ Meet James Robertson The author of the excellent novel, And the Land Lay Still, pops in to sign his book and chat to fans. Waterstone’s West End, Edinburgh, Thu 2 Sep, 6.30pm. ✽✽ Will Self: ‘The Last Refuge of Greatness’ The satirist gives what we think is a serious talk, for the Edinburgh Art Festival. See picture, page 74. Edinburgh, National Galleries of Scotland: Hawthornden Lecture Theatre, Fri 27 Aug, 6–7pm. ✽✽ Glasgow Harvest NVA’s utterly wonderful celebration of home-grown food and Glasgow’s growing Growing movement. See preview, left. Glasgow, Tramway, Sat 28 Aug, noon–6pm. ✽✽ Cryptic Nights This month features composer Anna Meredith and cellist Oliver Coates, performing live against a backdrop of visuals from artist and filmmaker Eleanor Meredith. Food in the CCA café on Cryptic nights, is a fiver. Glasgow, CCA, Thu 2 Sep, 8pm. ✽✽ How to Save Orangutans Director of the Orangutan Foundation, Ashley Leiman, discusses conservation of the lovably hairy, ginger species. Half the proceeds go to the charity. Edinburgh Zoo, Thu 2 Sep, 7.30–9pm. ✽✽ Words Per Minute 5 The film/performance/spoken word/live music afternoon has an all-female line-up. See picture, page 73. Glasgow, Creation Studios Sun 5 Sep, 3.30pm–6pm.