Glasgow Doors Open Days Festival
Glasgow Doors Open Days Festival is an annual event celebrating the city's architecture, culture, and heritage through a free programme of open buildings and events taking place in September!
About Glasgow Doors Open Days Festival
We’re excited to announce this year’s festival theme: “We’re All Here”: Diversity & Diaspora.
Our focus will be on exploring how immigration and emigration have shaped Glasgow into the multicultural hub it is today. Cities are, by their nature, a cultural stramash—drawing in and pushing out people, ideas, skills, and traditions. This natural ‘push and pull’ is the breath that keeps our city alive.
The term ‘diaspora’ originates from the Greek language, meaning ‘to scatter’ and ‘to sow’. Over time, this term has been adopted to describe the dispersion of communities away from their homelands and places of origin. It evokes both the upheaval of migration, and within that, the seeds of new beginnings.
Multiculturalism is nothing new. Over the years, immigrants to Glasgow have come from near and far – some seeking refuge from religious persecution, poverty, famine or war, others searching for work or a better life. Walk the streets of Glasgow, and you’ll find an array of churches, chapels, synagogues, temples, gurdwaras and mosques – each built to serve growing new communities from Lewis to Lahore, and Donegal to Damascus. Just off Kelvingrove Park, is the Polish Social and Educational Society building, gifted by the city to Polish ex-forces personnel in recognition of their service in WW2. In Anderston, you can sample a pistachio latte in the Ottoman Coffee House, once home to the Society of Glasgow Musicians. Step inside Trongate 103 and enter the world of Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre – a truly unique experience featuring the work of Russian sculptor-mechanic, Eduard Bersudsky and theatre director Tatyana Jakovskaya. Each new community has left its mark on our city, and their contributions can be found in our buildings, place names, food, music, songs, and stories.
Outward migration from the city has also had an impact. The city’s population halved following the Second World War, the effects of which are still evident today. Some were dispersed to the new towns and estates, while others ventured further afield to Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, taking advantage of the ‘assisted migration schemes’. Known as the ‘ten-pound poms’, thousands moved abroad. Amongst them were the Young family of Cranhill. Two of their sons, Angus and Malcolm, went on to form the rock band AC/DC.
Experiences of navigating new cultures, languages, streets, and buildings, vary greatly but some things remain universal – a jolt of recognition in a familiar taste or sound, or the thrill of finding something new and excitingly alien. Musician David Byrne, who left for North America with his Glaswegian parents in 1954, has said of his experience of growing up in the US, “I felt like a bit of an outsider. But then I realised the world was made up of people who were all different. But we’re all here.”
In 2024, we invite you to explore how diaspora communities have significantly influenced Glasgow’s rich cultural heritage, both locally and globally.
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