Why - Glasgow User Manual

When we stop seeing the wonder in things we lose meaning in life.

Sounds a bit airy fairy for an opening statement. We need to see what Oscar Wilde means when he says. "we're all lying in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars"

What I have always interpreted this to mean is, we need hope. No matter how bad it gets we need to believe it can get better. Without hope we are lost. To create hope we need to look at our successes and celebrate our achievements to help us tackle what lies ahead.

Before starting on this project I looked through dozens of brochures at the Information centre at George square, searched the web and found very little on Glaswegians and who they were, in the boasting of and selling of our city. All I could really find were enticements, designed to put people off looking.

The Glasgow you will find in the glossy, high-production publications lining the shelves of the Tourist Information Centre is a simulation of our city, steeped in formaldehyde like the Damian Hirst shark. This simulated city is only a reality represented in that printed matter, and is preserved for those who can pay. It is only viewable to most Glaswegian's through the thick glass of financial exclusion.

The REAL Glasgow - not the alternative Glasgow - but the Glasgow of the majority of the people, tends to get buried amid the trumpeting and fanfare which has become the "corporate Glasgow" of Council funding and business interests.

In an attempt to help represent the unrepresented I would like to outline the ethos of this project:

The User Manual will be a "ground up" publication and will operate as a sympathetic "ear" and "voice" for the working class people and groups - their events, meetings, culture,activities and ideas which are rarely listed in other publications.

The project will be run as an open and participatory forum for ideas and events as much as possible. The idea is to encourage people to bring ideas to the community forum, and to engender confidence in their abilities to do such things.

Skill sharing and professional counsel is welcome in any degree. The more cross-pollination of ideas and services, the better.

We are looking to encourage citizens who wish to participate and be active, not fence sitters.

It should be in the interest of every citizen of this city - any city - who seeks to enjoy the fruits of enlightenment through cultural empowerment, that they share and encourage other citizens. For if our culture does not reach them, it is useless.

We can produce something here that, when a visitor to our city asks, "So what's Glasgow about?", we can smile and say, "Here!...read this!"