Tramway

It’s hard to believe now, but Glasgow was once criss-crossed by 100 miles of tramlines, before the system was phased out in 1962. This former Pollokshields tram depot in the South Side subsequently became the original home of the Glasgow Museum of Transport until the late 1980s (before it moved to Kelvingrove, and now the Riverside Museum). After that it started being used as an arts performance space, particularly during Glasgow’s year as European City of Culture in 1990.

Since then it’s been home to one of Glasgow’s coolest and most innovative multi-arts venues in the form of the Tramway. It’s centrality to the city’s arts scene was underscored by the announcement that it would host the 2015 Turner Prize, as the ceremony rightly comes north for the first time in tribute to the number of Turner Prize winners to have emerged from Glasgow. These include Douglas Gordon, who won in 1996 for his film ‘24 Hour Psycho’, which was commissioned by Tramway.

Styling itself as an ‘industrial cathedral that connects art with humanity’, the Tramway is an international multi-arts space which commissions, produces and presents contemporary arts projects across a broad spectrum – from visual art and theatre to experimental music, dance and all things in between.

As well as its neutral industrial architecture, vast space is one of Tramway’s greatest assets. It comprises two galleries, two theatres and studio space, as well as a café and the Hidden Gardens – a unique public green space and community development organisation to the building’s rear. The largest of the Tramway’s galleries, Tramway 2, is a massive 1,011 square metres in size – making it one of the largest dedicated galleries in Europe. For artists with large-scale ambition, it offers exciting possibilities like few other venues can.