Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities

Host organisation: Articulate Cultural Trust

Project title: Trauma Informed Places and Spaces (TIPS) at McLellan Galleries

Project description

Context:

Glasgow's Sauchiehall Street is undergoing significant transformation, with a £2.3 million
heritage investment (the second of three planned) creating a pivotal moment for cultural
reimagination. At the heart of this sits the McLellan Galleries - a landmark venue with the
potential to become a nationally significant space for participatory culture, community
healing, and creative excellence. A new four way partnership between Glasgow Life, the
Glasgow Film Theatre, Scottish Ensemble and Articulate will explore how this neglected
icon can once again become a much loved and utilised cultural asset for the city.

Articulate Cultural Trust is uniquely positioned to shape this conversation in an inclusive
and thought-provoking way. Over the past decade, we have developed a substantial and
distinctive evidence base through interconnected action research programmes. This
project will bring that evidence into focus, translates it into accessible resources, and
activates it through a major placemaking symposium but for underpinning the new
partnership and its long-term potential.

Foundational Research:

This project draws on four bodies of research owned and developed by Articulate:

  1. Arts, Creativity and Enterprise (ACE) Our ACE research explores the relationship
    between creative participation, enterprise, and social mobility for young people facing
    structural barriers to employment and cultural life. This research, supported by Scottish
    Government’s Social Innovation Fund, was the basis on which we built our charity culture, pillars of practice and developmental strategies.
  2. Trauma-Informed Places and Spaces (TIPS) Developed in collaboration with INCH
    Architecture, our TIPS model provides a framework for co-designing environments with
    young people, especially care experienced young people, to foster trust, safety, and
    belonging. The supporting business plan was developed with Community Enterprise.
  3. Article 31 Participatory Action Research Our Article 31 research, conducted across
    Scotland, centres children and young people's right to cultural participation. It offers a
    rights-based lens for understanding how programmes can be co-designed to include
    marginalised voices, enabling asset-based approaches that tackle educational and
    economic disadvantage.
  4. Care Experienced Creative Arts Research Conducted with Esmee Fairbairn Leaving
    Care grantees, this work explores the values, components and impact of high quality arts provision for care experienced children and young people. The core research team were care experienced and the contributors were specialist arts organisations UK-wide.

Outputs

Research Synthesis and Resource Development:

We will work with our research leads, lived experience Creative Changemakers and partners to synthesize our and other research findings to translate findings into accessible, practitioner-facing guides and resources that fit our purpose now. These will be freely available and designed for use by planners, architects, cultural organisations, and community practitioners but will be immediately available to the McLellan project to build a robust and resilient possible future for its place in the city and the street and our place in the building and the partnership.

Placemaking Symposium: We will host a public symposium bringing together
leading thinkers and practitioners to explore how marginalised voices, particularly those of
care experienced young people, can be instrumental in shaping places and spaces for the
crucial purposes of community and individual healing, identity and belonging.

In person/remote/hybrid

In-person.

This political place-making project would benefit from being almost fully in-person, in the studios and on the street itself.

Benefits to the researcher

  1. Centred in a strategically important capital and community place-making project
  2. High level of autonomy and agency
  3. Strategic influence
  4. Stimulating partnership
  5. Potential for long-term impact

Key relationships

  • Glasgow City Council
  • Glasgow Life
  • Articulate Cultural Trust's Creative Changemakers
  • Glasgow Film Theatre
  • Scottish Ensemble
  • Sauchiehall Street Culture and Heritage Working Groups (various)
  • Various local and community groups associated with the street and the building

Subject areas

This opportunity would be relevant to the following subject areas:

Architecture; Design; Heritage Management; Policy, Arts Management and Creative Industries; Information and Knowledge Management; Cultural History.

Person specification

A1. Knowledge Base
  • Essential: Subject Knowledge; Information Seeking; Information literacy and management.
  • Desirable: Research methods – theoretical knowledge; Research methods – Practical application; Languages; Academic literacy and numeracy.
A2. Cognitive Abilities
  • Essential: Analysing; Synthesising; Critical thinking; Evaluating; Problem Solving.
A3. Creativity
  • Essential: Inquiring minds; Intellectual insight; Innovation; Argument construction; Intellectual risk.
B1. Personal qualities
  • Essential: Enthusiasm; Perseverance; Integrity; Self-confidence; Self-reflection; Responsibility.
B2. Self management
  • Essential: Preparation and prioritisation; Commitment to research; Time management; Responsiveness to change; Work-life balance.
B3. Professional & career development
  • Essential: Continuing professional development; Networking; Reputation and esteem; Responsiveness to opportunities.
  • Desirable: Career management.
C1. Professional conduct
  • Essential: Respect and confidentiality; Appropriate practice.
  • Desirable: Health and Safety; Ethics, principles and sustainability; Legal requirements; IPR and copyright; Attribution and co-authorship.
C2. Research management
  • Essential: Research Strategy; Project planning and delivery.
  • Desirable: Risk management.
C3. Finance, funding & resources
  • Desirable: Income and funding generation; Financial management; Infrastructure and resources.
D1. Working with others
  • Essential: Collegiality; Team working; Collaboration; Equality and diversity.
  • Desirable: People management; Supervision; Mentoring; Influence and leadership.
D2. Communication & dissemination
  • Essential: Communication methods; Communication media; Publication.
D3. Engagement & impact
  • Essential: Public engagement; Society and culture.
  • Desirable: Teaching; Enterprise; Policy; Global citizenship.

First published: 28 September 2026

<< Internships and Artist Residencies 2027