Red Road: Photograph by Robert Ormerod
During Refugee Week, I have been working in a community flat in a 22 storey tower block, in the South-West of the city. It’s been a brilliant week with interesting events and I can’t quite believe my luck at being paid to do worthwhile work I enjoy (not an easy thing to come by in these times). But it has also been an eye opener. I have enjoyed working alongside asylum seekers and refugees once again, but it is – as ever – difficult to hear the stories they tell, and to take in the situations they find themselves in; indeed to work in an environment, which – outwith the confines of this small and homely (if a little ikead) community flat – feels very isolated and desolate despite the many lives lived out there is draining on the soul (I can only imagine what it does who have no where else to retreat). Yesterday I came across the work of photojournalist Robert Ormerod astutely captures a similar (though I suspect even bleaker) environment – Red Road, and the lives of the Asylum Seekers housed there. He’s exhibiting at the Mitchell right now: well worth a visit.
On the second day, we had a workshop with the police on reporting crime. Some of the visitors shared their experiences of racism whilst in Glasgow. Meanwhile, one flight up racist graffiti has still not been removed by the Housing Association responsible for the building days after it was reported. The following is a very immediate response I jotted down on the train back to my safe little cottage by the river. I will write more on the issues I’ve been thinking on soon I hope.
’Go home’
In uninspired black spray-paint,
And a careless hand,
You paraphrased the teachings,
Of some dark ‘Sun’ you casually worship,
On the cold concrete that ‘houses’ us.
I don’t suppose pity is what you were going for.
And yet pity was the only response I could find.
Because it seems that 12-page ignorance,
Well that’s the only satellite you’ve got,
And this cold dark concrete place –
Well it’s the only home you’ll know.
But there’s a place where the sun -
Well it shines all the long time.
And the paintings that mark the walls -
Well they celebrate -
they don’t reject the colours.
And someday soon, I know,
I’ll be going home.
