Shining a light on the future of a national institution

Openness and accountability are key to mapping out the next steps for Glasgow School of Art, writes Laura Waddell

The Glasgow School of Art is sending mixed messages about who the Mackintosh building is really for. From the outside, it looks like the board has lost its way.

At the weekend the Sunday Post reported insurance covered costs of the initial rebuilding project following the devastating Mackintosh building fire in 2014, and millions of pounds of donations from emotive fundraising drives have actually gone into the purchase of new property and the growth of student numbers.

Starry sponsors aside, many former students and interested members of the public contributed. It feels disingenuous at best to fundraise using sentimental language in appeals to save a great building when cash appears to have been spent in a way not explicitly clear – and particularly when the costs of building a second time are set to be much higher. Politicians calling for a public inquiry are right to do so.

This is only the latest revelation suggesting trust in the Art School governance is dissipating. Recently we learned over 70 staff members have quit in the last year, a high and alarming number, and there are whispers of dissatisfaction with gagging orders preventing criticism. And as if that wasn’t concerning enough, postgraduate students of fine art have demanded reimbursement, unsatisfied with working conditions. Diverting donations borne of love for the Mack into expansion feels as misguided in priorities as inflating a bouncy castle in the garden while the real house is crumbling at its foundations.

Online fundraisers have proliferated since the advent of crowdfunding platforms, and they’ve provided new opportunities to analyse what happens after hands are held out for

money. Other than product or campaign launches where there should be a clear outcome, not always do donors know exactly where their money is going, and in some cases they don’t care, content that charities, for example, will do what they wish with the funds. What’s key in those transactions is trust that money will be used wisely and effectively, supporting core principles.

But we’re also in the age of the grifter. It feels like being taken advantage of when emotive pleas for help are followed by unexpected or flashy spending, or when there’s a lack of clarity and accountability. The twoway process required in fundraising can be easily undermined. Goodwill erodes as trust does.

Astonishingly, the GSA board have at times appeared irked by being questioned at all on the two disastrous fires. Muriel Gray, while Chair of the Board of Governers (currently on temporary leave), made defiant media appearances and at the Scottish Parliament culture committee, striking a jarring tone for circumstances of repeated architectural travesties. We have been told over and over again the Mack building is important to students, to Glasgow, and to Scotland in the same breath as insistence on its continued private governance. An air of ‘this is my ball, and just remember you can’t play with it’ doesn’t quite gel with the building’s status of national significance.

Promises to sound out the local community, which we are told is important to the Mack, have been undermined by residents and local businesses associations openly hostile to the idea that they’ve been properly considered or consulted about the site’s evolution. Commentary, no matter how expert, has been put in its place as personal opinion, drawing a dividing line