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People’s Palace what does the future hold for the Glasgow museum?
There will be more stories about lives of ordinary Glaswegians in new People’s Palace
AT 5pm last Sunday, after a hectically busy weekend, the People’s Palace finally fell silent. The last visitor departed, perhaps with an affectionate backwards glance at the exhibits and the interior. The doors were locked, and the staff gathered, lost in thought.
The much-loved old place is now closed for three years to allow an extensive transformation to begin. When the doors reopen in 2027, the Palace and the adjoining Winter Gardens glasshouse will have a much more modern and inclusive look.
“We had more visitors than usual last weekend”, reflects Jane Rowlands, Senior Museums Manager (Collections & Programming), at Glasgow Life Museums & Collections). “I think just over 5000 people in total came for the final weekend.
“Even the rain on Sunday did not put people off. It was just fabulous to see so many people. There were so many inter-generational groups, too” – toddlers to grandparents, and couples in their twenties and thirties.
“It was quite sad on the Sunday. When Bailie [Annette] Christie
[Chair of Glasgow Life] closed the doors just after five o’clock, and the people drifted away, the venue team who were based there had a quiet moment themselves. And, yes, there were a few tears. But there is definitely a sense of excitement, too,” she adds.
“It’s clear to see when you walk round the building - and with the Winter Gardens being closed - that it’s time for a refurbishment, for fabric repair. It’s also time to update the displays and tell more stories about more and different people living in and visiting the city, and telling that story to our visitors.
“We’re raring to go, actually.”
First, however, comes the substantial task of stripping the People’s Palace of its hundreds of exhibits and clearing space for the extensive refurbishment. The casual visitor on Saturday or Sunday, jostling for space amidst the press of the crowds. might have marvelled at the scale of the task and been not a little daunted. Where, really, is it all going to? It’s a very good question.
“There are just over a thousand objects in the building, and they range across social history, costumes and paintings, and prints and drawings”, said Ms Rowlands.
“What the team will be doing over the next little while is assessing the best storage location in which to put each part of the collection while the refurbishment is happening.
“We are looking at things like the war-time Anderson shelter, which is so popular with the World War Two workshop and with school visits. That will be moved to the Glasgow Museums Resource Centre (GMRC) in Nitshill, and of course that centre is accessible. People will be able to book and still see it if they want to.
“Smaller social-history pieces will be assessed by our Conservation team for what if any treatment they might need in order to conserve them.
“They’ll be packed using a specialist packing method and those will all go to the Kelvin Hall, where we have a store on the ground floor. That is also accessible to visitors”.
The GMRC has conservation studios where teams will document exhibits, photograph them and carry out any treatment needed for ongoing preservation and get them ready to be displayed once the transformation of their old home is complete. Regular updates will be posted on the Glasgow Life website and social media channels.
It was in January this year that Glasgow Life announced that initial development funding of £850,000 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund would be paving the way to a wider £7.5 million award.
The cost of the wide-ranging People’s Palace and Winter Gardens project has been put at £35.9 million. Glasgow City Council has committed £2.9 million, with another £11 million to come from the authority.
Speaking at the time, Bailie Christie made the point that while the palace and the gardens “had been one of Glasgow’s most treasured spaces for 126 years”, it was now in need of
This will bring a wealth of social and economic benefits to the people of the East End of Glasgow and beyond
significant investment.
“We will use all we have learned abut engaging with communities”, she added, “developing innovative digital technology, and designing accessible spaces, to celebrate the people of Glasgow and tell the city’s stories in a world-class. accessible and sustainable museum. This will bring a wealth of social and economic benefits to the people of the East End of Glasgow and beyond.”
MS Rowlands said this week that the Glasgow Life website and social media channels would also solicit opinions from people “how they can contribute their ideas on what they would like to see in the building” as the transformation is carried out.
In the meantime, the decanting process is now getting underway. It will be a painstaking engagement, taking in everything from Billy Connolly’s banana boots to the Barrowland ballroom sign, the singleend flat, John Knox’s painting of the Glasgow Fair, and Clydeside radical John Maclean’s writing desk.
“It will be very strange to see the bare walls and bare floor-space”, Ms Rowlands acknowledges. “This will particularly be the case on the floor where the Anderson shelter is. Indeed, on the top floor as well, with the single-end.
“There are lots of walls that are not original and display structures, and one of the things that we will do initially will be to remove those. We’ll see how much more floorspace we have and how much opportunity that will give us to put in more up-to-date displays that use digital technology and screens, so that we’re able to tell more stories rather than fill the space with big display structures.
“We don’t know exactly at this stage what it is going to look like, at all. But it will feel more open and it will still be a place that we want to feel is welcoming, and will talk about the city.
“So far, we have spoken to just over 1,400 people about what they would like. We’ve always know this anyway, but people have such an affection for the museum. They are really excited to see more stories about the lives of ordinary Glaswegians.
“They want to talk about the past and the present and to balance that so that it really tells that story of what it is like to live in the city and to feel Glaswegian.”
The experiences of what are known as New Scots, or New Glaswegians, will also be reflected in the People’s Palace when it emerges in its new form three years from now.
“The city has changed so much over the past decades,” Ms Rowlands said. “The building itself was last re-displayed in the 1990s. The city has changed a lot and we want to be able to represent the city as it is now, in a really positive way, and that means representing all of our communities, in a way that they might like or want to be represented.
“We’re very much wanting to be community-led and to talk to a lot of communities across the city about what they would like to see, and to say about their lives as Glaswegians.
“A number of schools have already been talking to people in the team and visited the museum before it closed to share their ideas and suggestions for what stories they would like to tell.
“We are really keen to hear from anybody over the next couple of years about the displays, and about how they would like to use the building as a civic space, as a place where they would want to spend time, drink a cup of coffee and connect with Glasgow Green a little bit more widely”.
“Hurry back!”, someone has written on the People’s Palace Facebook. All in good time...