The People's Painting: A Mural for Glasgow

As Glasgow prepares to host this summer's Commonwealth Games,

two artists are setting out to create a legacy

which will last long beyond the sporting events.

It's not just us stamping our identity on an area,

it's taking a little bit of everyone

to create something hopefully beautiful.

In a city which has a long tradition of public murals,

the artists are planning a large-scale wall painting

with a difference,

one which reflects what Glasgow means to the people who live here.

We wanted it to be a collaboration between us and the city.

Michelangelo has came to the East End of Glasgow.

We're very delighted.

Just beyond Glasgow's famous Barrowlands

and home to an equally famous football ground,

the area of Parkhead in Glasgow's East End

is where many of the Commonwealth Games venues are situated.

But it's also where artists Louise Chappell and Becky Bolton

are going to create their wall painting.

Today, they've come to the corner of Beattock and Crail Street

to look at the gable end site for the mural for the first time.

Maybe it's a lot bigger than we expect

-and we'll be suitably surprised!

-I don't know what I'm hoping for!

-OK, oh!

-Oh, there?

-There it is.

-OK! I think that's doable.

-Yeah, that's totally fine.

-Yeah.

So we've been told that we can do whatever we want with this wall

but the fact that it already has this, sort of, red line

that then echoes in all the surrounding buildings...

I think we'd probably use that as an architectural element.

Do you think? Yeah, I think it gives us a really good

-natural proportion.

-We want this to fit in with what's around it.

-We don't want it to become this new blank canvas.

-It doesn't need to jar.

-It's already part of...

-It needs to be an enhancement of the existing...

-Yeah.

-..space.

-Yeah.

I guess the weather might be an issue

-for an outdoor painting in Glasgow for a month.

-"Might!"

I mean, it is June.

If it's, like, really solid rain for a couple of days, what can we do?

-Cry.

-Cry!

I think we have enough stamina.

-I think so, too.

-We've been in training.

Louise and Becky met

when they were studying painting at Glasgow School of Art

and for the last seven years have been working together

as Good Wives and Warriors.

Their projects span both the commercial

and fine art worlds...

from magazine illustrations

to brand logos,

restaurant interiors

to large-scale art installations around the world.

But it's the city of Glasgow that's inspired this latest project.

Glasgow's got a real history of knocking down and rebuilding

and regenerating.

And I think that murals and gable ends

can be really important in that,

because they do lift the spirit of an area,

making something more beautiful.

The three-storey wall painting in the East End

will be the first time Good Wives and Warriors have tackled

a large-scale public mural.

But they're planning to get a little help

from the people of Parkhead.

This painting is called the People's Painting

and that idea...

Well, it comes from the People's Palace,

which is one of our favourite museums in Glasgow.

It's not just us stamping our identity on an area.

It's taking a little of everyone

to create something hopefully beautiful.

We wanted it to be a collaboration between us and the city.

Louise and Becky have put up posters across the East End

asking for people to send them ideas.

But they're also out and about to find out first-hand

what locals would like to see on the wall.

I'm going to take a picture with the clootie dumplings sign.

Is there anything...an object that you think might...?

Well, I think the object just burned there, yesterday.

So you'd say the art school?

I would say the art school was a big, big, massive feature.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, anything along those lines.

Let's go and have a look in here.

-At least it's a bit more rummagey.

-Yeah.

Oh, look at the old sketches.

We are looking for any antiques or objects

-that are particularly from Glasgow.

-This is Glasgow Bell.

-Was Glasgow Bell a pottery...?

-Yes, pottery.

And they closed about 1900.

The details in them are so unusual.

-Yes, it's quite modern, isn't it?

-Yeah.

The Glasgow Bell.

-Some nice tree.

-A tree.

-Maybe a big pigeon.

-Oh, big pigeons!

We can definitely put some pigeons in it.

Yeah, that's good.

Well, the spirit of Glasgow, the spirit of this end of the city

is dookits, you call them - pigeon huts.

-You see all the pigeon huts about the East End.

-Uh-huh!

I've done it since I was 14 years old.

Back in their studio, Louise and Becky sift through

all the ideas they've received

and work out how they're going to combine them.

Bream? I think it was maybe bream or trout

going into a pigeon. So those little claws.

Here's some others. So we're trying to do the different versions of...

pigeon wings, fish tail...

This one's maybe a bit weird

fish head, pigeon bottom.

The two animals people kept referring to

were the doos and the fish.

And then to have them coming down the painting,

changing from one to the other.

We tried to speak to as many people as possible,

to kind of get everyone's individual idea

of what the spirit of Glasgow was and what it meant to them.

So we're really trying to use our magpie approach

to collect as many images as possible.

It would be great in the end if people can point and say,

-"That's mine."

-"That's my bit."

-Yeah.

-That's what we want.

While Good Wives and Warriors

put the finishing touches to their grand design

for the 9x8 metre mural,

back on site, the scaffolding goes up

and the wall is whitewashed, ready for work to begin.

Although the mural will be predominantly black and white,

Becky's called on some local help to create a green wash in the centre

to represent the hills of Glasgow.

But they're not having much luck with the weather.

I think we're just going to stop.

Cos we're quite worried that all the paint is just...

being washed off the wall!

We might just give up for today.

Oh, yeah look at it!

Looks amazing though, doesn't it?!

Fortunately the sun is shining when Louise arrives to join Becky

and start on the intricate design work,

which is just as well

as they have under three weeks to complete the mural.

-The streets are going to start down here.

-Yeah,

-I drew in the triangles already.

-Amazing.

Louise is starting at the very centre of the wall,

giving pride of place to the doos and dookits

suggested by so many local people.

In Parkhead, collecting, breeding and flying pigeons

is a long-held tradition

and the area has the highest concentration

of man-made huts, or dookits, in the city.

MAN IMITATES PIGEONS

-Come on, hen.

-HE COOS AGAIN

I was still in my primary school when I started the pigeons.

You just watched the old men flying pigeons

and you went to dog school

and watch the pigeons getting caught and all that.

And ever since then... You build your hut

and that's me for 40 years now, 50 years.

And now I'm the older guy!

So the other kids come round and watch us flying them, now.

And hopefully they learn off you and carry it on and carry it on.

It's not racing pigeons,

they're pouters, what they call pouters.

Basically they're bred for, just, sport.

They're just to go out and basically they've got to

go and steal another pigeon back off the other guy

and he's put his pigeon out to steal mine.

And it's whatever one's got the most brains,

whatever's cleverer than the other one.

And hopefully it's yours that's the clever one, you know?

If a doo likes a hen, he'll come back with her.

And vice versa, if a hen likes a doo,

she'll go back with him.

You're hoping to catch as many as you can catch.

If you've got six pair,

you'll put your six pair out.

And you're hoping every one can do the business and catch.

But again, you could maybe lose two or three

and it sets you back to the drawing board again.

You've got to get another hen and another doo

and start all over again with that pigeon.

On the wall, the artists have created

a long line of the iconic dookits

and pigeons feature prominently throughout the design.

This pigeon, we were just wondering

-what it should be carrying in its feet and...

-A teacake!

..and as I wanted to eat a teacake, Louise has put a teacake in it.

Now I can have the real object to draw from.

But I'm going to eat it so you just get the wrapper.

Underneath the dookits, Louise is painting a line

of Parkhead's most striking buildings

from the Congregational Church to the White and Bluevale flats

and the public wash house or steamie,

another Parkhead institution

mentioned by many of the older residents.

The artists have also chosen to represent the steamie

with clouds of steam which fill up the mural

and rain down on the city.

Four days in

and the artists have climbed to the very top of the scaffolding

to add another East End landmark.

It's a surprisingly beautiful day here in Glasgow

so we wanted to come up here to the top level of the scaffolding

to get some sun

but also to finish painting the...

What are you painting?

The Tolbooth clock tower,

which was one of the first things mentioned to us by Rico

at the Val D'Oro.

# More

# Much more than this

# I did it my way... #

Glasgow means everything to me, obviously.

Because it's given us life, it's given us our livelihood.

-If I had to pick one thing that really moves me...

-Means Glasgow.

-Yes.

-..the Tolbooth clock.

-Thank you.

You know, I've lived with it all my life.

And to me,

coming down London Road, Glasgow Cross,

the old mercat cross,

I learn more about life than anywhere else in the whole world.

-Aw-w, thank you.

-Perfect.

And the artists have placed the Tolbooth steeple

in prime position at the summit of their painted Glasgow skyline.

It's also one of the few sections of the mural

where they've added a splash of colour.

We're painting this trompe l'oeil archway just now

which is going to be a fairly flat, three-colour blue sky.

And it was inspired by the mural we went to see at the Gallowgate.

And it's a mural that both me and Beck have loved for years.

But it's this really very simple painting of a trompe l'oeil archway

looking to the city beyond.

Just the simplicity. The four colours.

It is, it's really optimistic.

It's a beautiful painting.

I think with the blue, that idea of going straight into the sky

is something you should use in our painting, too.

-Yeah, and the strong, structural element.

-Yeah, the 3D.

Something architectural and recognisable.

So we really wanted to reference that in this painting

and we wanted to paint an optimistic blue sky

for all the grey days in Glasgow.

So we're lucky - blue sky today!

For Louise and Becky, half the fun is finding playful ways

to link all the ideas they've been given.

At the moment I'm painting...

this is the top of the sort of "stuff" triangle

and we're just getting a few more of the elements

that people have mentioned to us, while we can, in this area.

So some of the older people we talked to

were mentioning jeely pieces. They're like jam sandwiches.

So here we have...I've done this

as the knight from the Glasgow coat of arms.

So he's eating the jeely pieces.

So it's just a little sort of fun thing going on, here.

And then this is one of the wallies,

which is the hot water bottles.

and they were made in a factory near here

that someone was mentioning.

But the whole idea of this area with the things on the chains

was because of the guy Tam that we met on the high street, there.

-Could I interest you in some of my products...

-What have you got?!

-What's in here?!

-..out of my Glasgow shop?

-I've got lovely nylons.

-Uh-huh.

-One and threepence.

-Wow.

-Bargain.

-And if you need the line painted on,

I'll paint the line for you.

-Excellent.

-We've got lovely watches.

-Oh, yeah?

-Take your pick. Beautiful.

-Oh, my God, that's a big one.

-That's an amazing one.

-Lovely.

That's the biggest watch I've ever seen.

That's what they all say. Wait till you see my clock!

-This is incredible!

-And they call it a no for sale shop.

"Much is that?" "It's no for sale."

-"Much is that?"

-Lots not for sale?

-Tam doesnae sell anything.

I just keep the stuff that I like cos it's hard to get this stuff.

I really like what Tam's doing here.

He's kind of creating a museum of Glasgow

but in a really immediate way,

like, a granny's living room museum.

Just like in Tam's shop,

there's a rich history of Glasgow emerging on this wall,

if you care to spend time looking.

The artists' magpie approach means they've found a place for everything

from caramel wafers and Mother's Pride bread

to pies from the local pie shop.

From the Barras

to Glasgow's Bell's pottery patterns.

And the city's famous traffic cone,

which sits permanently on the Wellington statue in Royal Exchange Square,

has been painted on top of everything,

from the Tolbooth clock tower to fishes' heads.

The artists want to reference not only buildings and objects

but the factories and industries that produced them.

Well, there's been a rope factory for a long time in Parkhead

and now it's a twine factory.

So with our paintings we often do...

We use techniques and devices to make a change,

like, a different style of painting or use cut-throughs.

So we thought that by doing a rope it would make a nice contrast

but it was also relevant because of the rope and twine factory.

Just a street away from the mural, on Caroline Street,

stands Henry Winning's rope factory.

The business started from this unassuming brick warehouse

back in 1880.

And though these days Winning's makes string not rope,

it's the last remaining twine factory in the UK,

supplying demand from all over Europe.

In the factory we make lots of different twine.

I'd say there's about ten different kinds

and we maybe do five different types of rayon as well.

So there's quite a lot involved in it.

It's not just a bit of string.

The first day you start, we do special knots

so what you have to do is learn your knot.

Then as time goes on, when you're tying the knot

you'll do it as the machine's running.

The factory employs 32 on its shop floor,

and most are from Parkhead and the East End.

I've worked about 37 years altogether.

I was 15 years when I started, straight from school.

I didn't think I would be here that long

but the years just passed by so I'm still here!

My sister's always also worked in here.

My mother's worked here.

My son and my daughter go to college and university

so they come in and give a wee hand

when they're off college and university, to give a wee hand.

All the family's worked here, yeah.

The only factories I know that's left in the East End is this one

and the biscuit factory over in Tollcross.

All the rest are away and there used to be quite a lot.

Back on the wall,

Good Wives and Warriors are using the local rope

to tie all the elements of the mural together.

There's so much going on, isn't it?

I really like that about it. The...

-I think it's so different.

-The twine factory...

There's so many things that's from around this area.

-It's good for our community.

-What's that?

Is it a squirrel or a ferret?

12 days into the project,

the artists are working on the suggestion

to include a building extremely close to their hearts,

without which there would be no Good Wives and Warriors.

So the section we're working on right now

is lifted directly from a Mackintosh design.

For the competition we wanted to have something quite bold

and we also really wanted to reference the art school in the painting

because the Mac building's somewhere that's so important

to our experience of Glasgow.

These blocks we know specifically feature in

the furniture in the Mackintosh building

and also the sort of blocks and the grid reference

is used all over the art school.

Depicting the art school became even more important to Louise and Becky

after an accidental fire broke out

and destroyed perhaps the most precious part of the building,

the wooden library and much of its contents, earlier this year.

-Oh, I mean, we both cried. It was...

-It was kind of horrendous.

There was lots of messages going around from...

-All of our friends.

-..various ex-graduates and friends

and just everyone was really emotionally hit, weren't they?

Yeah. And I think seeing those pictures of the flames, you know,

whooshing up, that was so upsetting.

We would have probably put references to the Art School

into our mural anyway, but after this happened,

we definitely knew that we wanted some of the parts of the library.

So we put some of the lights that were in the library,

which is this really beautiful ironwork.

It was something that was really important to us

and important to the city,

so we want it to live on, in a small way, on a wall in Parkhead.

But there's another historically important Glasgow building

that the artists just had to include in their mural for Parkhead.

A lot of older residents, when we spoke to them, remembered the Forge,

which was a steel factory opened by William Beardmore.

In the middle of the 19th century,

Parkhead developed from a small village

into a thriving industrial suburb at the Eastern end

of the expanding city, largely driven

by William Beardmore's famous Parkhead Forge.

Today whether we speak of Beardmore's or Parkhead,

which mean the same thing,

we are speaking of one of the greatest industrial concerns

in the world.

I stayed in the Gallowgate.

My back windows looked into the back end of the Forge.

You could smell the Forge. You could smell the smoke

when they were melting.

You knew the furnaces were on, because you could hear the noise

and you could see the black smoke going up.

You could smell it. You were shutting your windows.

If your windows weren't fitting too good, you'd put the bits of paper in,

shut the window down on to the bit of paper

so as the dust didn't come in.

Covering an area of 25 acres,

the Forge became the largest steelworks in Scotland.

Davey and Norrie were some of the last to work

within these old forge walls.

It was like a football match coming out,

the amount of people that were there.

At one time they reckon there was 30,000, at one time.

It was the place to be. It was Parkhead Forge.

It was the working man's Mecca, if you like.

You worked in the Forge

or your Granda worked there.

It was just a natural thing that you were going to work in the Forge,

if you were a boy, that was it.

That was it.

It was the lifeblood of the community.

The original Forge closed its doors in 1976

and is now a shopping centre.

In their tribute to the steelworks,

Louise and Becky have included the original factory sheds,

but the story of the Forge and its founder William Beardmore

has also inspired another section of the mural.

We started looking into history of the Forge

and found out that he sponsored Shackleton in his bid

to be first man at the Antarctic, at the South Pole.

So we found out more about it,

and we found out that his ship the Nimrod

was pretty much sponsored by William Beardmore.

So we thought it would be really nice

to put the Nimrod in the painting.

We thought it would be quite nice to have a ship in the bottle

at the bottom of the Clyde, with a bit of history attached to it.

And it had to be an Irn Bru bottle, really.

In their final week of painting,

Louise and Becky have come down to the ground level.

For the last section of their mural,

the artists have designed a riverbed under the Clyde.

They've trawled Glasgow's past for their design,

and the ship in the bottle is just one of many objects

which the artists have sunk to the bottom of the river.

It is basically going to be a mixture of the different fish

that were suggested to us that are going to be moving

in between underwater plants

but also lost bits of Glasgow buildings,

made to look a little bit like the castles

and decorations you put in a fish tank.

We brought loads of really big brushes

that we haven't even looked at,

because we've decided to do the whole painting

in a range of really tiny brushes,

which is possibly not the right size of brush

to paint a three-storey building with.

Good Wives and Warriors have just three days left

to complete their intricate riverbed.

Is some of this stuff references to Glasgow?

Yeah, everything has come from something that someone's suggested.

That's good. Really smart.

But as they work away on the street level,

the mural is attracting quite a bit of local interest.

Which is your favourite bit?

-That one near the keyhole.

-Ah, cos that's the Quarry Brae logo

for the football team.

-Mm-hmm.

-Yeah, your coach asked us to put that in.

-Is it sort of the universe or not?

-Sort of the Parkhead universe.

-Parkhead.

-Yeah. It's just lots of images and objects

that people have suggested to us to represent Parkhead and Glasgow.

Fortunately, with time fast running out,

the artists receive some welcome help...

Oh, tea!

..and refreshments.

Thank you very much.

So like this?

Yeah, just like that.

-That's really nice.

-Do it, like, here?

-Uh-huh.

WHat do you like most?

The wee fish with the ice cream cone on its head.

I love ice cream. I like fish.

-WOMAN:

-Do yous mind people talking to yous when you're doing it?

-No.

-GIRL:

-It just takes 'em longer!

-You do yours nice and neat.

-I am!

Do yous want to be an artist when you're older?

-Yes, definitely!

-When we grow up.

When I grow up, I definitely want to be an artist.

Irn Bru.

Three Irn Brus and the wee green circles, and the flowers.

Mucky hands.

Yep, very mucky hands.

It's the last day of painting, but there's one final creature

to add to the design.

We had the idea to use a hybrid animal,

combining pigeons and fish,

because the whole bottom part of the painting is the Clyde,

then at the top we've got the archway

and we had the dookits and the doos.

So we did a few drawings of these... We're calling them Doofish.

They had to be one of the last things that we painted,

because we had to paint the coloured layer on top of everything else.

So we needed to know where to put them,

but we could only judge that after everything else had been finished.

Michelangelo has came to the East End of Glasgow.

We're very delighted and very proud, aren't we, Billy?

Oh, it's absolutely breathtaking.

It'll be here long after the memory of the Commonwealth Games.

This is pretty much the last bit of painting.

Louise was just saying it feels like the last day of school.

I think I might wait and just do his eye as the very last touch.

With the painting finally complete,

the scaffolding comes down and the artists get their first proper look

at the whole mural.

I have to stop myself looking for mistakes, though.

-I can see mistakes.

-Yeah, me too.

I think those two doofish are in the wrong place.

-No, I think they're OK.

-You think they're OK? OK.

-I think it's really good.

-It looks like how it's supposed to look.

It looks like we're slightly insane that we've done that amount of work.

Stacy, there's food!

There's food!

Hello, everyone.

This painting was always meant to be

more about the people of Parkhead than us,

so everything here is a suggestion that one of you,

all of you have given to us, we've put it in there.

Although we feel like we've...

Obviously it's our style and our painting,

it's very much your painting. We hope that you're proud of it.

We've had such a good time.

Just thank you, really, is all we want to say.

APPLAUSE

But more importantly, what do the locals think?

That is very nice.

I'm trying to figure out where does Benmore come into it.

It's been good. Really good. Watching it every day.

We could se a big improvement, different colours and all that.

-Every gable end should have one.

-Every gable end should have one.

Every time you look at it, you see something else.

An Irn Bru bottle down the bottom.

I like the whole lot, what they've done.

It's really, really lovely.

It looks really detailed. Not all the fish are the same.

We've watched it every day since it started.

Watched it getting bigger and bigger. It's lovely.

We wanted it to have longevity,

so that it would give people something different

every time they looked at it. If they could keep coming back to it

and finding new things and exploring it...

-It's not just one line.

-Yeah.

It's many lines that people can pick up on.

Good. It's very nice, really.

Are we not doing nothing with the middle?