MUSIC TO TACKLE SECTARIANISM
RAP music is being used to tackle sectarianism and “toxic masculinity” in an area of Glasgow that was placed into lock-down by riot police last year after violence flared.
Community music organisation The Glasgow Barons has been given more than £73,000 to launch Govan Forward 2020, which will stage a series of musical events across a range of genres in the area.
The programme will also see the launch of a new hip-hop album by Scottish Alternative Music Award winner Steg G and local young composers.
It was devised in direct response to events on August 30 when rival groups clashed during a pre-organised march by the James Connolly Republican Flute Band.
Loyalists staged a counter-protest and riot cops were brought in when violence flared between the two sides.
Funding for the project was secured through Creative Scotland’s Open Project Fund.
Paul MacAlindin, right, artistic director at The Glasgow Barons, said: “We know the difference we make to people and places in our neighbourhood and are honoured to be given the chance to continue building our relationship with them, as well as with audiences across Greater Glasgow.”
Almost £62,000 has been given to BUZZCUT live art festival planned for venues across Glasgow’s South Side.
Funds were also allocated for two new LGBTQ+ projects which will work directly with children, including some as young as 12, and another which aims to rework parts of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with LGBT retellings of the characters of Puck and Lion.
Sex Education Xtreme is said to involve artists working with S1-S3 pupils to create a new work which will explore “LGBTIQ+ identities, sex education and the evolution of gender”.
Details on the project shared with Creative Scotland state that the “sensitivity of the topic and vulnerability of young people” means it will be “tested at each stage to allow for input and endorsement from schools, young people, their families, teaching staff and wider communities”.
Meanwhile, there is a £21,069 injection for the Rainbow Library which aims to increase LGBTQ+ representation in children’s and young people’s literature.
The project will produce stories by seven LGBTQ+ children’s writers, illustrators, poets and comic artists, which will be devised through participatory workshops with groups of LGBTQ+ young people from 14-26.
Funding for the two school-based projects come in the wake of an outcry among some parents of children at Glencoats Primary School in Paisley after a drag act called Flow Job was invited to speak to children in an event to mark LGBT History Month.
Explicit content on the artist’s social media sparked complaints leading to an apology from Renfrewshire Council and an admission from Education Secretary John Swinney that the invitation should not have been extended.