A Glasgow scheme is marking 70 years since its first tenants moved in as councillors call for the area to be included in the city 850th anniversary celebrations.
The first tenants relocated to Castlemilk in 1955 with more than 30,000 people coming from inner city areas including the Gorbals.
Now councillors want to see the neighbourhood’s 70th year tied in with events to highlight Glasgow 850 next year.
SNP councillor Paul McCabe is bringing a motion to a full council meeting this week calling for communities to be involved.
The motion said: “other communities are celebrating anniversaries including Castlemilk whose first tenants moved in during 1955.
"Council notes that whilst this community suffered at the hands of poor planning, major investment has gone into the community in recent years to address this including new social housing and improved green spaces and parks.”
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Bailie McCabe said: “In 2025, Glasgow will be 850 and Castlemilk 70 years old. Let’s mark these historic milestones by celebrating the people and communities who have grown this city into the vibrant European destination it has become, after all, it’s the People who Make Glasgow.
“Diversity of our people has and will always strengthen our communities.”
He urges the Glasgow 850 team to “link in with the local community to explore opportunities provided by Castlemilk’s 70th and identify other local anniversaries.”
The proposed motion “recognises the Castlemilk communities’ resilience and creativity as captured in the Jeely Piece Song and Castlemilk Womanhouse in 1990 where artists worked alongside women and children from Castlemilk in four flats in an empty tenement block which became a huge living(room) artwork and a meeting place for women and children in the neighbourhood.”
It also praises the work of the Castlemilk Youth Complex.
Highlighting other work celebrating communities, the motion explained how Glasgow City Council has been involved in an emigration history project encouraging Glaswegians whole families come from Donegal in Ireland to take part.
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Led by Donegal County Council, the work aims to create an exhibition paying tribute to those who left the north west county to work in Scotland.
Bailie McCabe added: “My great grandparents on both my mother and father’s sides came to Scotland from Ireland to improve their life own life opportunities as well as to contribute to building a modern Scotland through community.”
Fellow Linn Councillor Margaret Morgan said: “In support of Bailie Mc Cabe’s motion, I would like to pay tribute and draw attention to the part played by Irish literature, with literary giants such as Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Bram Stoker, Brendan Behan, Samuel Becket and George Bernard Shaw (to name but a few) impacting on the young minds in Scottish schools and universities, where the language is often acerbic, delicate, cerebral and, perhaps more pointedly, relevant to young Scots today in its resonance.”
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