Biography of 'Glasgow Corporation'
Films associated with 'Glasgow Corporation'
- ANNUAL ART COMPETITION
- AT SCHOOL IN THE CAIRNGORMS
- BATHING THE BABY
- CHILD WELFARE
- CITY'S FARMS, the
- COUNTRY HOMES
- EDUCATION AT YOUR SERVICE
- GLASGOW - OUR CITY
- GLASGOW 1980
- GLASGOW TAKES CARE OF ITS OLD FOLK
- GLASGOW TODAY AND TOMORROW
- GLASGOW'S FESTIVAL OF FELLOWSHIP
- GLASGOW'S HOUSING PROBLEM AND ITS SOLUTION
- GLASGOW'S PROGRESS
- HEALTH OF A CITY
- HOW OUR CITY IS GOVERNED
- IF ONLY WE HAD THE SPACE
- KEEPING OUR CITY CLEAN
- LEADED LIGHTS
- MUNGO'S MEDALS
- OUR ART GALLERIES AND MUSEUMS
- OUR CITY - TODAY AND TOMORROW
- OUR HEALTH SERVICES
- OUR HOMES
- OUR POLICE
- OUR PUBLIC PARKS
- OUR SCHOOLS
- OUR TRANSPORT SERVICES
- OUR WATER SUPPLY
- PASTEURISED MILK
- PIGS
- PLAY CENTRES
- PROGRESS REPORT
- PROGRESS REPORT NO. 2
- SADNESS AND GLADNESS
- SCOTTISH INDUSTRIES EXHIBITION 1959
- STOBHILL HOSPITAL: The Story of a Modern Hospital
- SUNNY DAYS
- TAM TRAUCHLE'S TROUBLES
- VITAL STATISTICS
- WATER WHEEL, the
- WINSTON CHURCHILL VISITS ABERDEEN
- YOUTH CENTRES
Sponsor and producer
Between 1920 and 1978 Glasgow Corporation and various departments sponsored over 50 films. These films did more than instruct Glaswegians on how to be clean and healthy and become good citizens. They reminded Glaswegians Ð divided by class, politics and religion and ethnicity, that they all contributed to the making of a great city. Moreover they broadcasted the city's pride in its assets and services and in the independence of its policies to nation and Empire. But above all they recorded the city Ð its people, buildings, streets and river, its industry and leisure, its power and decline Ð and its tendency to demolish and rebuild.
The Representation of the People Act of 1921 introducing universal suffrage gave the Corporation the means and the motive to sponsor films; addressing a local audience of recently enfranchised tax-paying citizens. The Corporation was amongst the first public institutions in Britain to make films explicitly for the education and entertainment of children. Almost always hiring Scottish film production companies (Thames and Clyde, Campbell Harper, Templar Films) the Corporation also played a part in the establishment of a film industry in Scotland. With few exceptions Corporation films always had a live introduction or commentary and were shown for free on council property such as schools, clinics, galleries and exhibition and the burgh hall.
From its initial position, in the silent era as 'Second City of Empire', to its final years in the 1970s as an institution, Corporation films projected the image of the Corporation as a leader of social and educational reform and as the guardian of a city which was represented as the site of repulsive slums, a vast public park, the beating heart of industrial Britain, the embodiment of modernity, and as an object of physical transformation and civic improvement.
[Extracted from the Sadness and Gladness exhibition catalogue. Introduction by Elizabeth Lebas for The Lighthouse, Glasgow, 2007]
Researcher: Lighthouse, Glasgow