Southside Festival brings fun in the sun

By Alieu Ceesay

Following its successful debut four years ago, the Southside Festival attracted thousands at the weekend to Queen’s Park to celebrate the cultural diversity and community spirit of this unique part of the city.

The area was packed with fun and entertainment for all ages with  live music, dance, sport, relaxation and comedy as well as the ever-popular face painting and displays from major contributors such as Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Service.  Also available was some of the fine, locally produced food and goods.

Said chair of the organising team, Andrew Montgomery: ‘The event this year has been stunning with the best of Glasgow weather and more activities for all ages.’

Local mum of three, Clare Boyd, said: ‘Events like this help bring the communities together to appreciate each other’s culture. The kids had great fun trying all the different children’s activities.’

Everyone agreed the event was a huge success. Among the VIPs attending were local MSPs Nicola Sturgeon, James Dornan and Councillor Mhairi Hunter.

Japanese tourist Yuko Okumura said: ‘The Southside Festival was really good! A real family festival, lots of games for children, lots of children, lots of balloons. There was a big stage for music and many people lying in the sun. There was a long line of food stalls and people drinking beer and talking – a lot! Not everyone was young. Whole families were there. And it was peaceful!’

As a commercial design student at home and a hobby Taiko drummer, Yuko enjoyed the whole sound and atmosphere of the day.

The fun continued on Sunday when the Picnic in the Park brought another day of music and family fun and good community spirit.

The Harvest hits Queens Park

By Alieu Ceesay

 

Queens Park, in Glasgow’s Govanhill, hosted a harvest special Farmers Market on Saturday 16 October, attracting over 30 stalls with farmers from across Scotland selling organic and processed food.

The event attracted huge crowds and witnessed a cook-off competition between Chef Jacqueline O’Donnell from Sisters restaurant and Domenico del Priore from Cookies Restaurant- both were excellent and resulted in a tie. Speaking to LOCAL NEWS Dominic said: ‘Its great to do things like this, it makes the market livley and entertain people and it gives stall owners the chance to showcase their produce and gets people buying from the markets rather than supermarkets’. Jacqueline described the competition as fantastic as it allowed them to cook using Scottish produce. Said Jacqueline:’Its fantastic we are using Scottish produce to cook and it’s good for people to watch the demostration on how to cook the dishes and what items to buy.’ The market was visited by the City’s famous dray horses who gave free rides to lucky riders. Other celebrites included the champion of the Highland Cattle Show.

Dominic Smith of Sunny Side Meat and Free Range, a stall owner, described the market as ‘very busy’ with good sales and said we was ‘hopeful for an increase in the next farmers market.’

Graham Wallace Managing Director City Market Glasgow LLP said the market was a ‘brilliant suceess with farmers passionate about their produce.’

Queen’s Park performance space winner selected

 

A hard fought battle among  77 design teams  to devise a new events arena for Queen’s Park has been won by  ZM architecture of  Albion Street, Glasgow.

The concept of swivel panels was described as ‘very different’  by Gerry Grams who headed the judges panel. He said its references to Peter Brooks were ‘very Glasgow.’  He added: ‘There was a clear desire to respect what the Park as a sculptured object  and a destination offered.’

The winning team took the £1000 prize money and the hope that their design will convert to reality when funding of around £350,000 is found to build the performance space.

Peter Richardson, Director at ZM Architecture told the LOCAL NEWS: ‘ We felt the idea needed a back wall. This triggered memories of the Peter Brooks production of Mahabarata in Glasgow as it had what we were looking for.’  Associate Director at ZM, Richard Pears added: ‘We wanted something simple and robust.’

The competition was organised by the Glasgow Institute of Architects and the Queen’s Park Performance Project Steering Group.  The top ten designs were exhibited in Queen’s Park Glasshouse durin the Southside Festival when around 500 people voted for their favourite design. Their views formed part of the judging process and that favoured design was awarded a special prize of £250.

Six teams which were invited to make a presentation to the judging panel were: Manifest Architecture, Nicholas Ecob, Martin Jarvie and Judy Cheung, SM Architecture, BFLS and Superfusionlab.

Chair of Queen’s Park Steering Group, Evelyn Silber, told the invited audience: ‘Our aim is to create a modern, multi-purpose space which can be used for small or large events. This competition surpassed expectations.’  The Steering group was made up of four community councils and had carried out extensive surveys of local opinion over a two year perid. Around 94% of 700 people who responded to one door-to-door survey, supported a Performance in the Park Project.

Second prize in the competition went to Nicholas Roberts of Manifest Architecture who lives on the Southside. He incorporated a large cinema screen in his design.  Third prize went to Nicolas Ecob who, while having been brought up in Glasgow, had travelled from London where he lives to make his presentation. He used the natural slope of the hill to enhance the natural amphitheatre of the space and ‘give something back to the Park.’

Hit the ground running and win a copy of Played In Glasgow

Football grounds, bowling greens, dog tracks, ‘doocots’, racecourses, blaes pitches, athletics tracks and swimming clubs; our city has had them all. Ged O’Brien’s book, Played in Glasgow, is a modestly-sized but mighty anthology that covers every sporting nook and cranny since Victorian times.
This is part of the superb Played In Britain series,  backed by Historic Scotland and English Heritage. The volume is subtitled ‘charting the heritage of a city at play’, and is a store of information for those of us who choose to look beyond the elegant stone facades, towering steel skeletons and pretty, manicured lawns.
Beyond Hampden Park, the home of Queen’s Park and Scotland’s international team, there are retrospectives on the homes of Rangers, Celtic, Partick Thistle, Clyde and the bullish ranks of Glasgow Junior football.
O’Brien also looks at the homes of the city’s many rugby teams and enjoys our rich bowling heritage, all recorded with excellent photography and detailed with the care of a first-class reference work.
Played In Glasgow has a section on swimming baths and clubs, from the elegant but forgotten municipal pools of the late 1800s to their 21st century heirs and the architectural wonders of the Western and the Arlington Baths clubs.
The book also strikes a nostalgic tone with a look at the city’s remaining red ash ‘blaes’ pitches and takes a flight into the world of the Glasgow pigeon fancier and their home-built doocots. Neither does it neglect cricketing heritage nor pass by the huge achievements of our many athletes over the years.
With one eye on Glasgow’s place as host for the 2014 Commonwealth Games, this book is a roadmap that shows us how far we have come, what we have won, what we have lost and hints at what could yet be.
A blend of social and cultural history and a treat with archive and modern photography, sometimes evocative and occasionally controversial, Played In Glasgow is an essential addition to the book collection of anyone who has an eye for their city’s sporting heritage.

LOCAL NEWS GLASGOW has three copies of Played in Glasgow to give away.
For a chance to win your own copy, just write and tell us which football teams play their home games at Hampden Park.

Send your answers by email to competitions@localnewsglasgow.co.uk. Please put ‘PLAYED IN GLASGOW COMPETITION’ in the header field and remember your name, address and a daytime telephone number. You can also enter by snail mail, please write with your answer to Played In Glasgow Competition, Local News Glasgow, YAM Publications, Third Floor, 142 West Nile Street G1 2RQ. Don’t forget all your contact details.

This competition closed at 9am on Monday, May 24.

DOTS gets its teeth into Glasgow’s dental health problems

Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon has opened a £1m South Side dental surgery which aims to accommodate 10,000 National Health Service patients and make a major difference to Glasgow’s dental health record.
The project, which is known as Dentistry On The Square (DOTS) and located at 12 Niddrie Square, Queens Park, is the brainchild of Dr Mark Skimming.
One of the youngest Masters qualified dentists in the country, Mark’s ambition is to turn a moribund practice into one of the busiest in the city. He personally raised that substantial sum of money to get DOTS off the ground.
Raised in Cumbernauld, but now a Westender, Mark studied dentistry at the University of Glasgow, taking his inspiration from family friends in the healing profession.
He completed a postgraduate diploma in advanced restorative dentistry, a two-year course, and is due to graduate in 2010.
At this time, Mark will be the youngest dentist in the UK to be awarded this qualification from the Royal College of Surgeons. He has also been awarded the Membership of the Faculty of General Dental Practice postgraduate qualification from the Royal College.
He chose restorative dentistry because ‘You can really make a change to people’s lives by providing them with a new smile.’
With television pictures of queues of people waiting to join NHS dentists, DOTS’s target of 10,000 patients within the next two years is not an unrealistic one.
‘In our first month we hit the 300-mark,’ said Mark. ‘Ten thousand is very ambitious but we have the capacity and we’re more than capable of coping with that number.’
While a specialist, Mark appreciates there will be a focus on what a patient might imagine would be the more ‘day-to-day’ aspects of dentistry. DOTS offers evening and weekend opening.
‘There’s nothing that we don’t offer at the practice. It’s just that there’s more of a specialism in that when there are cases other dentists can’t manage, we’ll be looking to be the guys who’ll step in.’
With dentistry, Mark points out that prevention is better than cure and urges Scots – who are not the world’s best at taking care of their teeth – to take the steps towards better dental healthcare.
DOTS has four surgeries that could support six dentists, and Mark hopes the practice will train as many as 20 newly-qualified dentists over the next decade.
‘In our part of the world there are still a lot of people with poor dental health,’ Mark added. ‘It’s important that the people of Glasgow have the resources they need and at DOTS we are playing our part. With a fair wind believe we can make a big dent in the target for NHS registration.’

Sponsor adds fizz to Spiders’ Saturday encounter

Fans of Queens Park and visitors from Annan Athletic will be able to take part in Scottish Football League sponsor Irn Bru’s latest challenge this weekend.
As the Spiders lock horns with the Galabankies at Hampden on Saturday, 23 January, the Irn Bru SFL Tour Bus will be in town and fans of both teams will be the first to take part in the sponsor’s shooting competition.
From 2pm, the doors to Irn Bru’s ‘shooting chamber’ will open and footballers of all shapes and sizes can test measure their speed against a camera. The hardest and the fastest will win, and fans can compare their performances with others on the Phenomenal Footy website.
The bus is also there with giveaways and ‘the Matchbox’, which allows fans to record their post-match reactions which are uploaded to www.phenomenalfooty.com.
Half-time entertainment will come in the form of the inflatable football game, and there will be a chance to collect a free wee-bru on the way home.