The Glasgow Barons are the world's first professional orchestral ensemble for helping rejuvenate an area in trouble, in this case, Govan, the ship-building district of Glasgow, Scotland.

Govan, Ward 5 of Glasgow City Council, is where I now live. Once the base of Scottish Christendom, the ancient Kingdom of Strathclyde and Viking settlers from the 6thto 11th centuries AD, it became the world’s biggest shipbuilding hub for the British Empire. Since that industry's decline, Govan has become an area of deep multiple deprivation. Many excellent agencies like Central Govan Action Plan, Sunny Govan FM, Plantation Productions and Govan Heritage Trust work tirelessly to lift it out of the water again.
THE LOGO & NAMEOur logo had its own journey. Commissioned from Cassia Friello, we worked intensively together to create the feel I was after.

Initially, she came up with beautiful images inspired by ship building and Celtic knot work. I changed the direction of the colour away from blue to orange; "less Bombay Sapphire, and more Irn Bru, please." After the logo's community consultation, three issues came up. It needed to be more obviously musical, the colour reminded some people of The Orange Order, and some women found the ship too masculine and past-oriented.

The resulting iterations have led us to the current logo. Orange is the colour of the sun shining on Govan's Victorian sandstone buildings, as it occasionally does. Much research has gone into which colours a Glasgow business should avoid to remain apolitical, and the only "safe" colour is - brown. 

So, I stuck with orange.

Secondly, there is an obvious perception of masculinity in shipbuilding, though this belies the lore that ships are considered female. Our ship is a nod to Govan's dominant heritage, which nobody here can escape, and also the fact that shipbuilding is driven by innovation; here, Robert Elder's compound engine and integrated shipyard. The Glasgow Barons must constantly innovate to meet our challenges, envisioning forward like the ship builders. Finally, the shipyards, along with our ancient Christian heritage, connected Govan to the world, and doing so meaningfully through music is especially effective.

The violin scroll completes our logo: a wave of water, sound and craftsmanship.

And the name?

Glasgow, because of where we are, though our focus is Govan. 
Barons after the ship-building barons, who were the last generation to irrevocably shape Govan through hard work and innovation.

2017 - June 3rd: LUATH STREET PARTYOn arriving here late 2016, a few things struck me. First, I sensed a lack of trust, a passive aggressiveness not just between inhabitants but also 3rd sector agencies. My street was littered with rubbish. At the end stands the shipyard, which used to employ everyone in Luath Street, and now employs none. No kids played here. My block of tenement flats, petitioned to be built in 1900, was meant for the bowler hats who worked in Fairfield shipyard's middle management and the draughtsman's offices round the corner, and included radically progressive indoor toilets and bath tubs. Now, by the residents' own admission, it's a dumping ground. So, after trying to attract residents' support, I worked alone with Govan Housing Association to create The Luath Street Party. We blocked off the street to traffic and made a kids’ play area for the likes of hop-scotch, skipping and sandcastle building. We set up a craft and heritage zone with T-shirt printing, bracelet and ceramic tile making, face painting, science games. Glasgow Open Museums came with a casket full of 19thcentury domestic curios whose function people had to guess. Our fantastic music line up had the Govan Allsorts Choir, folk singer/songwriter Paul O’Brien, BBC Young Folk Musician of the Year 2016 Mohsen Amini, The Apparells, Foggy City Orphan and DirtyLoveClub.
In spite of local incredulity that Luath Street could achieve anything, it seemed that all the participants of the party had a great time, and relationships between us all began to soften. We opened up a bit and started talking to each other.
Far more significant, however, was the sheer number of people who didn’t come out of their flats to participate in a completely free arts and craft event right on their doorstep. We saw adults and kids looking down on us from their living room windows.  I’m bored of hearing about how the Scottish arts need to be “more accessible”, whatever that means. It's a decades' old blackmail refrain to reduce artists' self-esteem to the lowest common denominator so that we become more malleable, desperate, more afraid of losing funding. In Germany, where I lived for 15 years, people simply wouldn't understand because artists do not need to justify their existence, which is why our cultural politics are baseline at best, and theirs are highly evolved. 

So we put everything on everyone's doorstep for free, and many still didn't walk those few steps down onto the street to participate. What exactly should I have done differently? And why is this? It’s about some of the reasons Govan is where it is; long-term unemployment conditions people to stay at home where it’s cheaper and safer. Consumption of drugs, alcohol and daytime telly stay behind closed doors, and the police's intermittent presence would have been noted. 

At the Luath Street Party we were more than happy to show our best side to each other, though those who didn't made a decision that has been keeping them alive for years. Poverty is tied to fear, shame, hopelessness. People make poor choices if they're inured to a climate of learned helplessness, where no matter what you do, you end up beaten and thwarted.

Nobody is born to make bad choices, and the arts can be one very powerful piece of a strategic jigsaw that helps turn this around, but those multi-agency conversations, finding out how we work together for change, need to keep happening. Parachuting into an area of multiple deprivation without continually leaning into the discomfort, aka trickle-down outreach, might temporarily kindle hope in a few, but doesn’t sustainably or systemically change anything; and Govan is the proof.










June 4th: Songs of Harmony RowThe Glasgow Barons' first full concert, Songs of Harmony Row, was in Govan Old Parish Church. Our 14 piece string ensemble funded by Creative Scotland filled the clear 19th century acoustic with the glorious Warlock Capriol Suite and Tchaikowsky Serenade for Strings.

In between these, I invited Paul O'Brien, an Irish singer/songwriter living in Holland, to perform his songs based on Govan's folk heritage. Paul travels round Europe's shipyards, Gdansk, Dublin, Belfast, Govan and so on, researching the stories and turning them into songs. Although this hybrid concert format was very raw, it hit home to the local audience, who had never heard a professional string orchestra or folk songs of Govan being performed in their local church before. We reframed the potential of the venue and opened people's ears up to new possibilities.





One audience member captured the excitement:
 “The Glasgow Barons Concert, performed in the magnificent setting of Govan OldParish Church, was an absolute knock-out and a wonderful introduction to thepeople of Govan and its community, to the power and intensity of emotionsevocative in Classical Music, from "Rousing Cheer", to "Calm serenity". Please,please, let us have more of this! Bravo Paul!”
Lesley Robertson – Music Director of Govan Allsorts Choir

August to December: GOVAN HIGH COMPOSERSEvery Friday during term time, composer Jennifer Martin visited Govan High Music Department. The fourth years needed to write compositions for their exams, and Principal Teacher Elaine Bonner allowed Jennifer to guide them through her process. Making fundamental choices about rhythms, modes, notes and story-led structures, Jennifer guided the kids through the act of their creations, providing the tools and frameworks to help them write entirely original pieces from scratch, devoid of pastiche or electronic instruments. 
Three of the Glasgow Barons, Alex, Anthea and Jonathan, visited the kids' classroom at the end of September to introduce the possibilities of writing for bassoon, clarinet and percussion.




On December 5th, the young composers gathered in the main hall to hear their compositions being played and recorded for their exam submissions.  The Glasgow Barons topped and tailed the show with movements from Stravinsky's Octet. Why this? First, as the school teaches wind rather than strings, it made sense to play a wind piece; second, the Octet is hugely entertaining, chopping and changing between blocks of brilliantly constructed wit and character, whose charm hide a very sophisticated structure. Finally, we bring artistic excellence at relatively low cost to an aspiring area of Glasgow. You either believe in others' human potential to the point where the follower surpasses the leader, the student the teacher, or you're part of the problem.

The reception from roughly 100 kids, including invited P7s from Pirie Park Primary School, was rapt, and the applause generous. The P7s, who will come to Govan High next year, now believe the school has its own professional orchestra. That's a very high expectation to meet.






We're deeply grateful to Music Department teachers, Mrs Bonner and Mr Rogers, for giving us the trust to work with their pupils on composition over a whole term.  We couldn't have done it without support from The McGlashan Charitable Trust, along with much personal subsidy from us freelance musicians. We're sure we'll be back next year.
The Glasgow Barons' mission is simply to make more music for Govan. That ties into building civic pride, community, skill development, listening, communication and self-confidence. Most of all, it's about collaboration with other agencies to get folk out of hopelessness and into positive life destinations, specifically, jobs.

Upon these three pilot projects, we intend to build our activities. I'm beginning a new journey, one possible direction for orchestras today. Simply put, I'm confronting my reality and responding musically. If we musicians can't do that, what good are we?


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