Thirty years ago, a group of academics at Glasgow University produced a book on the regeneration of the East End of Glasgow that supported the creation of a college of further education in the area, the building of an Olympic swimming pool that could produce Olympic champions, and the setting up of a theatre in which local groups would mount productions that would win awards at the Edinburgh Fringe.
It was ambitious thinking for an impoverished area in serious decline. Before the Commonwealth Games arrived on the horizon, the only one of these proposals that saw the light of day was the setting up of John Wheatley College.
Precisely a year before the opening of the games, when spending on the incredibly successful sporting spectacle was at its height, the closure of the college was approved by Michael Russell MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning. The closure came as the college was absorbed by Glasgow Kelvin College, which is now facing further substantial cuts.
In place of the college, we have the second of our proposals: an Olympic swimming pool at Tollcross. Unfortunately, despite the success of Platform in Easterhouse, community theatre is still an idea whose time has not yet come to the heart of the East End.
The 1980s were different times. Even in Thatcher's Britain, social policy could link education for the future employment of young people, leisure for their health and well being and artistic creativity to connect them to the wider world. However, two out of three, in series rather than in parallel, is not a good result for the young people of the area.
We were also careful to point out that the leisure needs of the vast majority of the people of the East End would not be touched by the types of investments in sports and the arts that we proposed.
In an area of high unemployment, low incomes, low levels of car ownership and a higher than average proportion of the elderly, a more relevant leisure policy would focus attention on the needs of pensioners, lone parents, housewives, the disabled and the unemployed, rather than on the creation of star performers.
Academic discussions at the time were locked in a debate about the nature of the "leisure society" and the relationship between leisure and work. Leisure was seen as liberation from work and it was pleasure; for some it was about the "regeneration" of the individual, usually over the weekend, in preparation for a return to work. Little attention was paid to people who were without both work and leisure.
Policy-makers also confused leisure and recreation with sport. This was both ageist and sexist, for involvement in sport in the 1980s excluded both the elderly and women. In fact, very few people in the East End participated in sport and no-one familiar with the class composition of the area would have expected otherwise.
Leisure has changed a great deal since that time. Home entertainment, for example, has been transformed. Leisure outside the home has also changed, some of it in the East End as a result of the games themselves. In particular, some of the community facilities created in the East End in the 1980s have been demolished to make way for the new sports facilities.
If the Commonwealth Games are to have an impact on leisure in the East End, the true measure of their success will not only be the extent to which they attracts young people of the area to elite venues, but also whether they increase the overall participation rates of the low-income not-so-young, the women with child-rearing responsibilities, the disabled with access issues and the unskilled and long-term unemployed.
Participation in leisure outside the home increases with income and car ownership.
If the legacy of the Games were to be the creation of stable full-time employment and higher incomes for local people, participation rates would automatically increase.
The closure of John Wheatley College does not help in this regard.
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