Practice Makes: Govanhill – supporting artist-led initiatives and projects in Govanhill
Celebrate Govanhill’s creative community tonight at Glasgow Zine Library for the Practice Makes: Govanhill launch. This artist-led project showcases local initiatives through a unique publication-in-a-box, connecting and celebrating the area’s vibrant cultural scene.
Words and photos by Kelsey Wood
Practice Makes: Govanhill is a community-based project that supports and connects the multitude of artist-led projects and initiatives operating in Govanhill. By bringing cultural and artistic producers together into one tactile, living archive-style publication, this community can be strengthened and new connections formed.
Conceived by Kelsey Wood, a curatorial practice student at Glasgow School of Art, this project is the culmination of her research towards her Masters Degree, finishing this September. Kelsey’s practice highlights underrepresented voices and local histories in inclusive formats. Her curatorial approach is slow and intentional, fostering hospitality in cultural spaces that prioritise meaningful relationships and collaboration between artists, audiences and the environments they inhabit.
Map of resident led initiatives and community organisations operating in Govanhill – collated by Kelsey Wood
Kelsey Wood on Practice Makes: Govanhill
Practice Makes: Govanhill is designed with, for, and to be used by, the community. Featuring a set of directory cards outlining the included venues addresses and contact information, social media handles and a brief outline of what the project does for the community.
Kelsey holds up Practice Makes: Govanhill archive box
The box features creative contributions from those who are held within, giving a flavour of their voice and allowing them to continue to shape the narrative of the Govanhill community. These contributions include grassroots community publications – like Greater Govanhill – who contributed stickers, recycled plastics, business cards, recipes and more.
The box also contains light-hearted zines to promote the sustainability of artist-led projects as a whole, offering insights and guidance on starting your own, backed by deep research into those successfully operating in Govanhill.
‘So, you wanna start your own artist-led project?’ zine
As a creative practitioner, I investigate the role of care and hospitality in the spaces we inhabit through my curatorial approach. My work is guided by a strong belief in the value of artistic production – particularly within artist-led, grassroots initiatives that centre social connection and collective wellbeing within their communities. Govanhill has a rich range of these and has been an excellent case study for this project.
I see curation as more than exhibition-making – it is a process of deep listening, holding space for one another and nurturing the conditions for collective practice. My projects draw on the narratives of place, site-specific response methods and collaborative storytelling to draw attention to the undervalued elements of our lived experiences and environments.
MILK Community Hub illustration
My work focuses on accessible, non-exhibitionary formats such as print media, writing, collective storytelling, workshops, pamphlets, zines and open access publishing tools that amplify personal and public place-based histories. Developing this project into a tactile, publication-in-a-box has been a lot of fun, it’s a great way to see a snapshot of the community in one relatively small vessel.
My commitment to accessibility and co-authorship shapes my curatorial practice. I aim to cultivate projects that not only represent the involved communities but are made with and embedded within them – projects that honour everyday life and experience and invite locals to imagine more relational ways to live together.
I have come into contact with many creative and cultural workers across the area throughout this research and everyone has been willing to help in so many ways. It’s been a really worthwhile experience, chatting to as many members of the Govanhill community as I could to get a true understanding of what it means to operate here.
I’ve really enjoyed working on this project and being so deeply rooted in Govanhill throughout. I’m looking forward to sharing with the community and those who have contributed to the process.
The project will be shown at Glasgow Zine Library on Thursday the 7 August, 5:30-7pm. All members of the creative community are welcome to drop-in.