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The Albert Drive project is a collaboration between the theatre company Glass Performance,
the local arts venue Tramway and the community of Pollock Shields in Glasgow.
It's basically about the people that live on, work on and visit Albert Drive
and what it means to be a neighbour on that street
and also in the wider sense within contemporary Scotland.
As a society, it seems that we spend less and less time with our neighbours.
Perhaps that's because our lives are so busy.
Perhaps that's because there are more computer screens and mobile phones
and things that prevent us from having actual human connections.
But certainly we realise that we didn't know that much about the people that we lived alongside.
So it felt like exploring neighbour was an important theme.
Tramway has been a neighbour on Albert Drive for 20 years, over 20 years.
In a sense it's a story that we've been exploring really at Tramway over the last five years
very specifically around what does it mean in terms of being an internationally recognised art space
that absolutely is artists led in a lot of its content and programming
but actually maybe hadn't looked at that relationship to its audience at a very local level.
At the moment we're going to visit loads of shops and just to tell them about the project
we've got with us some posters which we're asking shopkeepers to put in their windows
that say, I'm on Albert Drive.
Of course most people have been really willing to put the posters up
but actually the best thing about it is that the poster is almost a catalyst for a conversation to have about the project
and we've just had loads of really interesting conversations with people
and we've been really surprised at people's reactions and how much they want to tell us
and that's really great.
Hi there, hi sorry to disturb you.
We're here from the Albert Drive project
and I don't know if you've seen any of these posters around
but we're doing, it's a large-scale art project
and we're looking at the kind of central question of who is my neighbour.
Do you want, do you want to come in and talk to me upstairs about it?
That would be great.
Sure, thank you.
Thank you.
Wonderful.
Thank you.
Excellent, excellent.
Letters to our neighbours now.
What happened is we went on a journey to meet as many of our neighbours as we could
and we met one neighbour who you might already know
because he just lives a couple of doors down.
So Kevin thought a really good way to get to know his neighbours
would be to write them a letter to tell them all about him.
Now of course you are his neighbours
so really that letter is for you.
Shall I read it out?
Okay, are you sitting comfortably?
Dear neighbour, my name is Kevin.
I have lived in our house on Albert Drive for more than 16 years.
We ran letters to our neighbours' workshops across the whole of Pollock Shields
with all of the primary schools, lots of different community groups
and even in people's homes.
People of all ages, cultures, backgrounds wrote letters to their neighbours on Albert Drive.
This element of the project was a way for people who didn't have the opportunity
to communicate personally with a wider community
to send a very visual message to each other.
It's been an interesting morning.
I've been saying good morning to people and people are getting a little bit freaked out in a nice way.
It's my good friend Mr Shafiq and I'm planning to go to the fruit market with him next week.
That's six o'clock, six in the morning.
We're going to the fruit market six in the morning to pick up some fruit
and to discover a bit more about Mr Shafiq and his business and life in Albert Drive.
Is that okay sir?
I look forward to it sir, thank you very much.
We've got a big TV in it in this place which I'm hoping that if we can get them
to temporarily donate that TV to Albert Drive project that would be fantastic.
It's a 32 inch widescreen and I would love to show some of our short films in Rajah's Pizza Bar.
So soon we're going to ask.
They probably may say no and they're quite busy but we've got to try.
My plan is to start meeting the people, start meeting the shop owners, the residents of the street
and yeah, we're going to make short documentaries about the neighbourhood, about the community
and then we plan to get them shown and screened on Albert Drive.
What it is that I'm doing for the project is I want to create an artwork
called the Albert Drive Colour Chart which represents people's favourite colours on the drive.
Everybody names the colour that they have selected in their own terms
and some of the names they've been given are Sodium Flair, Silvatica, Vanden Palathe, Vermillion, Dad.
Hi, I'm Arpita and I'm one of the artists and residents on the Albert Drive project.
I'm really interested in working with Muslim women so as Albert Drive has a really big Muslim community
I'm really interested in working with them particularly focusing around the hijab.
Shall I, where do you want me? The other side? Perfect.
Hi, I'm Sam by the way with the neighbourhood watch and I had jobbies to report all the different things
that are happening, different exciting things.
And we were wondering if there's anything that you would want to tell us that we could report
as part of our neighbourhood watch reporting duty.
So that's an Albert Drive neighbourhood watch badge and it is now yours.
So we just met Carol and we just had a nice report about the spring fair that's going to be happening.
So Carol reported something to us, she got a neighbourhood watch badge and now she's part of a neighbourhood watch.
So Carol reported something to us, she got a neighbourhood watch badge and now she's part of a neighbourhood watch.
So Carol reported something to us, she got a neighbourhood watch and now she's part of a neighbourhood watch.
So Carol reported something to us, she got a neighbourhood watch and now she's part of a neighbourhood watch
Following the open call for performers, we started weekly rehearsals with the people
that had come forward to take part. Many of this group had never performed before and they just
really wanted to come to see what it might be like and what we might make together. We just
created a space where we could get to know each other and talk more about what it meant to be a
neighbour on Albert Drive and in Pollock Shields and we just took it from there. Well first of all
we just got to know each other a little bit and then we started to learn a little bit more about
each other and then we introduced the group to this idea that you are your story so on stage
you bring with you your culture your gender and that's what's interesting about this show
because it's about a combination of very very different people together and that's that's the
show and it's about that it's about neighbours and you know all about that because we talked about
the fun
I'm Janice and I'm one of the artists in residence on the Albert Drive project. On Albert Drive,
I'm connecting to the dances that people do in their living rooms, whatever that might
mean to different people. I really want to meet with people, collect their dancing stories,
share some of my own and see what emerges from there. I've been walking up Albert Drive
quite a number of days over the past couple of months which has been really lovely
and I've been talking to people about dancing at home and what that means to them.
When I arrived on the drive, I didn't know what it was I was going to do here and that's because
I think the way that I make things is that if I had to describe what it is that I do,
I would say that it tries its best anyway to be as relational as possible to the context
that it's situated in. Therefore, I couldn't know what was appropriate in that sense
until I arrived here and started to embed myself here. So, I decided to be here and I asked
the committee if I could be in residence here and thankfully they were kind enough to say yes,
they got me some keys cut so every day I came to the garden.
