A toast to the Turpies

name change to Strathclyde Arts Centre, and a role as cop-shop for the

region's arts police, may not all have been aware of the battle for

control of the building which had been fought 14 years previously.

But with the connivance of Glasgow City Council's department of art

galleries and museums, Strathclyde looks set to be reminded of the

origins of the city's arts centre movement and -- by implication -- the

extent to which it has been reduced.

Not that this is -- by any means -- the intention of the celebration

which will take place in either the Burrell or Kelvingrove a year from

now, and which aims to reunite many of those who were introduced to the

arts in the 1960s and 70s through the work of Glasgow's arts centres.

The arts centres were the vision of Iain Turpie, principal music

teacher at Glenwood Secondary in Castlemilk. His desire to involve the

pupils in something worthwhile out of school hours led to the

establishment of the first arts centre at the Girls' High School.

The Friday-night classes, which began as a choir and grew to encompass

other arts, moved on to Allan Glen's School and with the involvement of

other teachers across the city, other arts centres opened in the schemes

of Drumchapel, Easterhouse, and Castlemilk itself. The board of the

organisation included such luminaries as Yehudi Menuhin, Radio Clyde's

Jimmy Gordon, and Lord Taylor of Gryfe.

Carol Downes (nee Brown) was one of those involved in the early days

of the arts centres, as a pupil at Glenwood in her young teens. She

became Turpie's secretary and is one of the moving forces behind the

reunion.

She hopes that the two-day event will recreate a typical evening at an

arts centre with the participation of those who are now just a little

older, as well as welcoming contacts from other countries such as

Denmark, Malta, and Germany that the young people visited. Guests of

honour, however, will be Iain Turpie and his wife Kay, now retired in

London after a spell in the US, following the takeover of Washington

Street -- by then the arts centre HQ -- by Strathclyde Regional Council

in 1978.

Turpie is reluctant to become involved in the politics of developments

since (clearly what happened then was enough to disillusion him), but he

does observe that a deal of the success of Glasgow's cultural

renaissance, 1990 and all that, is surely down to those, now grown up,

whose interest in the arts was first nurtured by the Glasgow arts centre

movement.

Magic carpets

THE Arts Diary's delight in appropriate sponsorship is tickled by the

private sector support for the Pace Theatre Company production of

Cuttin' A Rug, the second part of John Byrne's Slab Boys trilogy. A show

spilling over with local interest, it starts its community tour at the

town's Foxbar Community Centre tonight, following a week in Paisley Arts

Centre.

The play is set at the staff dance of A F Stobo and Co, carpet

manufacturers of Paisley, at Paisley Town Hall in 1957. The business

with an eye for a good marketing opportunity is the similarly-named

Stoddart Templeton Carpets Ltd, which is subsidising the community

performances.

The icing on the cake is that show is to be performed at Paisley Town

Hall itself for the first time a week today.

Cultural quiff

REACHING Paisley Arts Centre the following day on a tour that takes it

to Glasgow's Mitchell Theatre for the start of Mayfest is Unit One's A

Night at the Sarry.

In the small world that is Scottish theatre, Unit One's reputation

rests on its mid-80s productions of the Byrne plays, which opened

Paisley Arts Centre with their second run in 1987. Phil McCann in that

show was played by the writer and director of this play, Simon Sharkey.

This piece had its first outing on the eve of Glasgow's annus

mirabilis, 1990, and -- through the eyes of the regulars of the Sarry

Lamp, a thinly disguised Saracen Head, one of the city's best-known pubs

-- looked at what culture meant to Glasgow.

With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, Sharkey has now updated it to

include reference to what was delivered of the City of Culture promises.

He offered it to Mayfest, who seemed initially interested, according to

Sharkey. But you won't find the show in the Mayfest brochure. Instead it

is part of the festival's growing fringe: the Mayfest Quiff.

''I cannot understand it,'' says Sharkey. ''For some reason they've

dropped it and brought over five Canadian companies. But we're on at the

Mitchell so hopefully we'll take some of their business.''

Quair supporters

BACK with sponsorship -- the Precious Organisation is anxious to

promote the generosity of its stars, the popular music group Wet Wet

Wet.

The Clydebank soulboys, who have oft dipped into their royalties for

charitable causes, have branched out into the field of arts support to

give a princely #1000 to TAG Theatre Company for their production of

Grassic Gibbon's A Scots Quair, which premieres at the Edinburgh

International Festival.

We are downright fascinated to know if this is the first instance of a

pop group supporting a theatre company, or hear of other examples of

cross-arts support.

Eastern promise

IT is, one fears, only a matter of time before one of the more

prurient publications of the Fourth Estate interests itself in the part

of NVA's Sabotage show at the Tramway which deals with sexuality.

Jamie Owen and Caroline Aldred are the couple who demonstrate the

skills that Eastern philosophy has taught them. Owen is a sculptor who

has just had a successful first solo show, while Aldred now teaches yoga

full time after a career as an actress.

Her roles included a policewoman strip-o-gram on TV's Capital City and

the West End run and national tour of Michael Frayn's Noises Off in

which she played Brook Ashton, a character who spends the whole show

running about in her underwear.

Aldred is clearly prepared for anything the small papers might throw

at her when she notes that appearing completely naked is a perfectly

natural progression.