Case Study submitted by Anderston Community Council on their street art improvement project

After seeing the brightly-painted utility boxes on Byres Road from Yardworks’ “Outside the Box” project, some members of Anderston Community Council thought, “why can’t we have that here?” In March 2024, we got in contact with Yardworks and enquired as to how we could team up to add bit of colour to our area.

Anderston Community Council was invited to SWG3 and given a tour of the facilities and a history of Yardworks’ legacy of street art in the city. Yardworks’ G.R.I.D. programme, which is in partnership with the Glasgow Riverside Innovation District, has already been creating an open-air Street Art district in Yorkhill, Partick, Govan… so why not Anderston?

While we were in the conversation phase of this development, in June 2024, Yardworks hosted PARK XR at a vacant lot near SkyPark in Anderston. This event combined urban arts and extended reality technologies, including murals, digital art, light installations and even a graffiti wall for participants to try it out for themselves. It was incredible to see a taste of what could be done on our doorstep with a lot of talent and a bit of paint.

Once we got the go-ahead from Yardworks that the project will be happening, in October 2024, we conducted a community survey to identify which spots were most in need of some colour and shared the results in our November meeting. Yardworks later came back to us with a list of over 30 artists who applied to be a part of our project and it was a very difficult decision creating a shortlist out of all of the brilliant submissions.

In early March 2025, Laura Frood, Yardworks’ Education and Participation Lead gave a presentation at our community council meeting. She spoke about the history and impact of Yardworks and about the upcoming project that was ready to commence within the next few weeks.

In late March, artists came to each of the utility box locations and painted them colourfully, some with motifs from Anderston history. We now have a monument to Delftfield pottery, which was present in Anderston in the 18th century. We have some cheeky mosaic mice and wheat sheaves representing the whisky, grain stores and Bilsland Bakery located here in the 19th century. A painted banjo and Fyffes banana boots represent the birthplace of local legend, Billy Connolly, in the 20th century.

This collaboration with Yardworks has been the biggest win for the Anderston area within the past year. The addition of street art to our cityscape makes our area look loved and cared for.

We hope that bringing this project together continues to bring smiles to residents and visitors to the area (and maybe even the Big Yin if he decides to drop by!)

You can see more of the great artwork produced as a result of this project on Anderston CC's Instagram  page.