“1990 has been a year of fun, entertainment and enjoyment for the people of Glasgow and that’s what we wanted it to be.” (Pat Lally, former leader, Glasgow District Council)
“1990 was a year when an intellectually bankrupt and brutally undemocratic administration projected its mediocre image on to the city and ordered us to adore it.” (Michel Donelly, one- time assistant museum curator. Peoples Palace, Glasgow)
The first of the above statements was made by a businessman who could, as the writer suggests, be ‘Using the arts as a means of achieving wider economic cultural and social change’.
The second statement by an assistant curator of a museum who saw the project as financial and cultural farce and who also has ideas relating to wider economic cultural and social change.
As it is written here the statements have the same space and the reader can ponder the merits of both. But the difference is the council leaders opinion was backed by a public relations team and probably a few £M spent on world wide advertising, to ‘project’ his view of culture in the city, where as the assistant curator probably had a few paragraphs in a local newspaper.
Both of these statements illustrate a wide difference of opinion. They also verify the need for people concerned by them to discover what lies between such extreme points of view.
This is the essence of CITY STROLLS.