The Sir John Maxwell School and Pollokshaws Community Heritage
Celebrating a community’s cultural heritage is a powerful way to bring people together to take pride in where they live, to understand their area’s history and traditions, to share stories - and to pass on these stories from generation to generation.
It is also a dynamic means of envisioning future possibilities
It is belief in the importance of this process that lies behind our desire to save the Sir John Maxwell School. It is a belief shared by the Pollokshaws Heritage Group (founded in 1997).
Both recognise that there are a number of different dimensions to cultural heritage:
As evidenced by the work of the Pollokshaws Heritage Group, heritage rightly includes oral history - the recounted memories of the members of the community both individually and collectively.
Inter-generational passing on of knowledge and understanding of local history (including such things as home and classroom life, games played, traditional skills undertaken) is fundamental to the maintenance of a stable, safe and inclusive community. It is also the means by which a community can build its future on a secure foundation.
Sadly, in the recent past, Pollokshaws has experienced not one but two major fractures to this cycle.
Firstly, in the 1960s, the low-density, run-down housing stock of the old burgh was comprehensively replaced, largely with blocks of high flats; and the existing community decimated.
Some fifty years later the high flats themselves were demolished with further devastating impact on the coherence of the community.
The avowed intention of this second regeneration, apart from providing new modern, energy-efficient flats for social rent, is to to re-create Pollokshaws as a vibrant and popular neighbourhood. Without embracing, valuing and sharing the area’s cultural heritage, this laudable objective may not be fully realised, which would be more than disappointing given the title of the present initiative ‘Transforming Communities: Glasgow’.
Without community-grounded, heritage-based social values and norms, there lies the risk and costs of individual isolation and disconnectedness.
The challenge, given the above discontinuities, is to find the means of engaging all of ‘The Queer Folk O’ The Shaws’, present and past, in re-gaining their historic burgh’s disappearing heritage. A superb starting point, if you do not already know it, is to follow the Heritage Trail produced by Paul O’Cuinn on behalf of the Pollokshaws Heritage Group.
(https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=32321&p=0)
The adoption of the marketing slogan ‘People Make Glasgow’ is a potent reminder of the central importance of individuals in the evolution of our proud city. Consequently, in the page ‘Pollokshaws People’ we have begun documenting the particular contributions of those unique people - both ordinary folk and the famous alike - who have played a part in shaping the heritage of the area.
In this context it, is with great sadness that we have to report the death of William (Bill) Carson, a Pollokshaws community champion and the driving force behind the campaign to save the Sir John Maxwell School.
Celebrating a community’s cultural heritage is a powerful way to bring people together to take pride in where they live, to understand their area’s history and traditions, to share stories - and to pass on these stories from generation to generation.
It is also a dynamic means of envisioning future possibilities
It is belief in the importance of this process that lies behind our desire to save the Sir John Maxwell School. It is a belief shared by the Pollokshaws Heritage Group (founded in 1997).
Both recognise that there are a number of different dimensions to cultural heritage:
- The Built Environment (public and domestic buildings, monuments etc.)
- The Natural Environment (rivers, parks, agricultural heritage etc.)
- Artefacts (objects, books, documents, paintings etc.)
As evidenced by the work of the Pollokshaws Heritage Group, heritage rightly includes oral history - the recounted memories of the members of the community both individually and collectively.
Inter-generational passing on of knowledge and understanding of local history (including such things as home and classroom life, games played, traditional skills undertaken) is fundamental to the maintenance of a stable, safe and inclusive community. It is also the means by which a community can build its future on a secure foundation.
Sadly, in the recent past, Pollokshaws has experienced not one but two major fractures to this cycle.
Firstly, in the 1960s, the low-density, run-down housing stock of the old burgh was comprehensively replaced, largely with blocks of high flats; and the existing community decimated.
Some fifty years later the high flats themselves were demolished with further devastating impact on the coherence of the community.
The avowed intention of this second regeneration, apart from providing new modern, energy-efficient flats for social rent, is to to re-create Pollokshaws as a vibrant and popular neighbourhood. Without embracing, valuing and sharing the area’s cultural heritage, this laudable objective may not be fully realised, which would be more than disappointing given the title of the present initiative ‘Transforming Communities: Glasgow’.
Without community-grounded, heritage-based social values and norms, there lies the risk and costs of individual isolation and disconnectedness.
The challenge, given the above discontinuities, is to find the means of engaging all of ‘The Queer Folk O’ The Shaws’, present and past, in re-gaining their historic burgh’s disappearing heritage. A superb starting point, if you do not already know it, is to follow the Heritage Trail produced by Paul O’Cuinn on behalf of the Pollokshaws Heritage Group.
(https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=32321&p=0)
The adoption of the marketing slogan ‘People Make Glasgow’ is a potent reminder of the central importance of individuals in the evolution of our proud city. Consequently, in the page ‘Pollokshaws People’ we have begun documenting the particular contributions of those unique people - both ordinary folk and the famous alike - who have played a part in shaping the heritage of the area.
In this context it, is with great sadness that we have to report the death of William (Bill) Carson, a Pollokshaws community champion and the driving force behind the campaign to save the Sir John Maxwell School.