Cutting Through

In February 2026, Glasgow International Director Helen Nisbet, Curator Pelumi Odubanjo, and Open Programme Convenor Robyn Haddon met artist Keira McLean and Arts and Communities Lead Margaret McCormick at Platform in Easterhouse to continue a conversation about their work and Platform’s important role within Glasgow’s cultural ecology.

Currently celebrating its 20th anniversary, Platform is one of two organisations, along with Rumpus Room, collaborating with Glasgow International on the festival’s Special Projects programme. Through this collaboration, GI will support the development of a new work by Keira McLean while recognising Platform’s sustained commitment to artists, communities, and experimental approaches that resist extractive or tokenistic models of engagement. The performance, Fire Stories, will blend archive, film, storytelling, and song to tell the shared histories of struggle in Easterhouse, created by and with the communities that live and work there.

GI’s conversation with Keira and Margaret offered an important opportunity to reflect on the urgency and care embedded in their work, and to situate Glasgow International within the city’s vital, interconnected art scene. Below is an excerpt from our discussion.

 

Helen -

Keira and Margaret, maybe I can begin by asking you how you first came to work together.

 

Keira -

It started in 2022 for Platform’s Year of Stories programme which I worked on in collaboration with [Glasgow artist] Joey Simons.

 

Margaret -

I was introduced to Keira by Joey, who was keen to work with her looking at the archive of Easterhouse, which is an ongoing passion of his. This led to Keira running a visual storytelling group for a year, which embedded her here at Platform. Then she took over Art Factory, our weekly art group for adults.

 

H -

Can you talk about the origins of your project and how this coincides with the work you're presenting at GI?

 

K -

I became obsessed with the history of the Craigallian Fire, so I started writing in my spare time, and it slowly formed into the bigger project of Fire Stories. We started talking, making films, writing songs, and performing bits in schemes and community halls. Folk responded and encouraged us, especially Platform, so we wanted to develop it here!

 

M -

Thinking about Platform and GI’s relationship, over the years we’ve been part of the festival in lots of different guises. It’s important to bring what is happening in the city centre out to Easterhouse. That’s something I am passionate about as there are a lot of people in this area who can’t travel to the city centre or beyond.

 

K -

I would say in the past GI has missed out on not coming to communities like this because of the talent and culture and history here. You’re not getting the full picture of Glasgow’s art scene. Most of my career has been in these peripheries.

 

M -

For me, a driver is making art feel like it’s for [anyone] and [can] be part of the everyday. What we do here is create space for people to think about their connection to the city they live in, their relationship to art, and what's in the way that stops them from engaging.

 

H -

Engagement is often about confidence and unspoken privilege. You need to know what your voice is, but this can be prescribed on your behalf, or certain spaces are gatekept by more dominant voices.

 

K -

Both my parents were communists. I was given access to this Marxist lens very early on; you dinnae just watch a film in my gaff—you had to explain what every frame meant. When my dad and mum separated, she was abandoned by her comrades in the party. So I was jaded coming in as a young woman of 15 when she left. Then I got pregnant at 17 with my daughter, who kinda saved me. But it took me a long time. Nobody understands power better than people without it. Your proximity to power defines your understanding of it. I felt very excluded from conversations that were happening about people like me, so I started to read. Because I had that training early on, that enabled me to get out without that, I don’t know. Then I became politically involved and joined a women-led community organising in Castlemilk, where I felt welcome and safe. In Castlemilk, people were organising because they had to.

 

M -

That’s similar in Easterhouse. For me it’s discovering the stories of local women who still meet, who still cut through the building, who were part of resident committees or were fighting for better housing.

 

K -

Like Cathy McCormack [a grassroots anti-poverty campaigner from Easterhouse who died in 2022].

 

M -

With Cathy McCormack, she talks about: “is someone telling you you’re not looking after your child?” That’s what drove her to be like, “wait a minute, don’t accuse me of that”. That gave her the drive to go, “I’m going to prove to you it’s the bad housing”, and that’s what she eventually did prove. But she also talks about how it impacted her mental health. Yeah, she was a strong woman and she went on to do lots of stuff, but it was a hard slog. Because she was also trying to live her life and run a household.

 

K -

I don’t just want people to be inspired, I want people to come here and be angry. I want them to see how people here are forced to live. They cut Easterhouse off and communities like it. They ghettoised it—Castlemilk’s the same. They built these housing schemes with no amenities, they cut them off from the city centre, left folk to rot.

 

If you’re an artist working in communities there is a duty of care. The wider project is to try and connect those communities up with each other.

 

 

H -

This brings me to collaboration, which is intrinsic to both your work. I find that the idea of the enigmatic, charismatic, solo artist or curator with vision…

 

K -

Boring!

 

H -

Yes, these qualities don’t always go hand in hand with meaningful collaboration. It is often women or people from working class backgrounds who really action collaborative working. I wondered if you can talk about your interest in working collaboratively and what it means to you.

 

K -

For me, the work is better. I’m one person with one brain. The more people you bring into the project the better it will be. Everything is about building community power.

 

M -

What’s important to our programme here at Platform is creating space for people who are trying to find a creative voice. A place like Platform nourishes, gives support, gives space to make mistakes. I hate the negative connotations around words like “periphery” or “sidelines” - that’s where the most exciting stuff happens.

 

Pelumi -

Thinking about safe spaces feels important, not on a surface level of, “We create safe spaces, we want everyone to come in”— but thinking about what it actually means to recognise communities, individuals, intersectionalities, and the work that comes when someone actually feels comfortable in the space.

 

M -

The key is involving the people we’re serving.

 

K -

Any project I do, whether a window or a play, is about co-authorship, co-ownership. We’ve done this together. It’s ours.

 

 

M -

The building also plays a part. It's where people cut through, a pathway from one area to the next, where people can discover what’s happening. For me, the desire lines that people move along through the building are vital.

 

H -

What do you want people to know about Glasgow? What feels important about reaching across borders now?

 

K -

I want people to know that Glasgow is poor by political will, but that it’s rich in culture and heritage and history and language through its people.

 

M -

Fire Stories is a group of people coming together to make a powerful statement through storytelling. This journey they’ve been through with Keira, a lot of [the participants] probably started out saying, “I’m not going to speak out loud”. Through the project they’ve been given a chance to share their voice. I hope it captures the characters and personalities that make up the city—and hopefully a bit of Glasgow humour.

 

H -

What gives you hope just now?

 

M -

People coming together gives me hope.

 

K -

Well, there’s a line in the play. Starry says, “Oh, we have hope here!” and Scrubbernut replies, “What are you talking aboot?! Hope’s what’s left in Pandora’s box, ya fanny, you cannae just hope yersel oot yer chains!”

 

So you have to organise!