The Arches DIY – Glasgow, Scotland

Words by Charles Myatt

Photos by Angus MacKinnon, Andy Buchana, Mari Souza, Kerr Melville, Tom Arnold & Charles Myatt

Originally printed in Confusion magazine – issue 38

Glasgow is a post industrial city on the west coast of Scotland and somewhere within it, in a location that is pretty central and easily found on google maps, is The Arches DIY.

In ebbs and flows this DIY has been built over the last seven years, I fall in and out of love with it as the barometer of life’s pressures rises and falls and also as the winter sucks. In the colder months it has a tendency to become a bit of a pond, with no skaters riding it whilst wet there’s no caring presence so the local youth fill it up with glass and bricks, maybe someone will dump a load of foam on it, tip a van load of half empty paint on it or tow a caravan full of oil drums and tyres in to it or perhaps 25 tonnes of city rubble from the main shopping street will get dumped in the middle of it (all of this has happened). We clean it up, fix and improve it almost every spring like any dedicated backyard pool skater knows how. For many years the kids that don’t skate and show up would think it’s being destroyed not constructed. Well, more like two years ago that was the case, but we’ve come a long way since then. We’ve poured a lot of the park and as each area gets a little more refined it gets a little more respected. Although this is destructive I understand that people have got to let out their frustrations in this way, perhaps they are just bored, seeking thrills, in need of something to do and reacting to their environment, like me. The most important part of building a busy spot like ours and holding back the destruction is a regular presence, activation, persistence, hard work and having a bunch of riders that care about it, at least that’s how it is best maintained in our context. We got a lot of people coming through to skate, hangout, paint, and do whatever they want really.

This year has been all flow; I had some good fabrication projects happen in my personal work and in a rare sunny month in May a group of peoples free time collided and we built a rad minibowl. The preparation was a lovely time, a bunch of regulars and a few occasional helping hands building brickwork, stealing rebar from an abandoned building site and getting busy, defining ideas together. Anything metal is reinforcement: the section was meshed entirely in paint tin lid fasteners, and another in a flayed shopping trolley. I love how resourceful DIY construction can be. In my own work, as an artist and fabricator, I make some pretty technical stuff that usually involves a lot of precision, tools and time. At the DIY however, we knock things together crudely using any means at our disposal. It’s all about using minimal power, building with what tools I can fit on a bicycle, making unusual jigs and fixings, recycling. Cutting as little as possible to get the prep work in and make that junk structural. I like building there to be quick and make-do, just enough to get the concrete in, random assemblages of all kinds of discarded bits from the industry around us make it unique, a collage of forms reacting to an existing environment, unlike sanctioned skateparks, DIY. In the process we hopefully share some skills and knowledge about tools and materials, anyone is welcome to come and help and the majority of our projects are advertised publicly. Many sections of the park have been built by volunteers with no concrete experience. The results can be a little rough and wobbly but never too bad, more important than the finish is that many people have had a hand in shaping it.

The minibowl pour was remarkable. Coincidentally I double booked a heavy metal gig on the same day, there must have been 100 plus people show up for ‘Riffs and Ramps’. I pulled in all the pros I could from around the country and invited anyone else to join and so there were probably another 20 people on the tools in the bowl. We put a tent over everything as it was raining that day. There was a 40m boom pump and a concrete truck in the middle of the park, heavy machinery, in the middle of the mosh pit! Fortunately the drivers were sound and we managed the crowds safely when moving the vehicles. I had to tip the pirate jaeger driver £200 to go get another load late on a Saturday. He had a flat nose that had been bashed in flat to his puss (local dialect for face). When I handed him the cash I asked him ‘do you want to make a donation to The Arches DIY? He gave me a tenner back, small victories, what a champ though going back to the plant so late. The police showed up, luckily they’ve always been sound with us, they said they were looking for the owner and I lied and said it was me, solves the problem pretty quickly if it’s a private party. We just had to stop people pissing in the street and leaving in large crowds. Stoked we got away with it!

During lockdown, our second most productive period (thank you furlow/ we should have a better welfare state), the constable came down every evening at 6pm because he was bored. He liked the park as it gives people something to do. I think a lot of people see how beneficial the place is to the local area. People are generally impressed. Sometimes we get lucky too. I’ve been trying to get rid of some rubbish recently and spoke to the guy in charge of waste management in our district, he happened to be a roadworker that used to drop curbs, cement and other useful materials to the spot. He helped us clean the place up via an organised council litter pick. 

Anyway, we sent the pirate for more crete, ripped out the formwork and poured the flats in the bowl on the same day, time is precious, there was no way I was gonna look at half a bowl for another couple weeks till we raised enough money to pour the flats, it would have been more expensive and harder work to pour it on another day too. We dug deep beyond the fundraiser and a core crew stayed till 5am to finish it. As people from the concert got more wasted the really mashed ones would stumble into the tent and try and piss on us, one straggler walked right into the middle of the wet concrete without realising! Thankfully everyone was pretty respectful of each other, probably one of the funnest, wildest days of my life!

Our philosophy – we don’t own it, no one does. It’s everyone’s to use anytime, no matter what you do. If someone builds a temporary shelter it’s theirs as much as ours, anyone’s welcome to put on an event and so we get a lot of corny stuff that isn’t necessarily my cup of tea but that’s a learning curve too. Just let people have their thing, let them be, and form a strong community out of it. It’s inclusive, not protective or private, I don’t want to be controlling our shared public space in the city from people using it creatively or finding somewhere to sleep on it, same shit.

The bowl changed the game and changed the scene, the old park is pretty gnarly and now we have this little steep tech thing that you can get a focused session on. Our waste has doubled. I quite like seeing the pile grow as it means people are chilling and using it, as much as it’s a big issue and a lot of work to deal with. The sessions have been lit and the energy people are bringing to the space is super proactive. In the month of August we had an event every weekend, a FLINTA building event with the best crew – lots of love to Lynsay Holmes for organising this, it was an honour and a lot of fun facilitating you all. We also hosted a fundraiser for Gaza Skate Team – organised by Pen Pals Collective, Skatepal and Reply. We built a permanent shelter at the top of the spot for the event, and to provide people with a bit of shelter in the future. We also built a new staircase and access point to provide an alternative point of entry to the park. I hoped this would give people the incentive to walk into the Arches that may initially be put off by walking into what looks like a skatepark.  Everyone really pulled out all the stops for this one, amazing efforts. We erected some screens donated via the Venice Architecture Fringe, via the Dundee design festival, to the Arches Gaza skate team fundraiser. Thanks to the Wildworks crew. They housed an exhibition of media from the Gaza team. We had so many sick bands and DJs, home cooked dahl, Leah Moody made beautiful linocuts for printing tees, Jinty taught children and adults alike how to use spray cans. They made a beautiful Palestine mural. Other painters came down and they all put up banging murals. Other than that we have been having some focused sessions for our video, for this, and another article in The Skateboarders Companion. Good times. Thanks to all the filmers and videographers coming in for this. Also two lovely community gardeners (randomly friends of Tobin Yelland’s parents) have many native trees for us to plant this winter. We also have a rad group of three architects with some funding looking to build structures and planting under the name of Wildworks, people are painting the walls and (sometimes) ramps almost every day. This is what happens when you get it fired up and open your arms to the people, all kinds of life and activities are taking place and embracing the spot, creating opportunities to learn, get together and most importantly try to support people less privileged than ourselves. Some of whom are going through the most traumatic, inhumane situation imaginable, a genocide. Free Palestine.

The DIY can be a lot of work, it’s started to feel like a full time job and sucks the life out of me a bit. It takes a lot of time doing this stuff but then I get down to meet some friends, see some old faces, get a session, hear about a cool event folk want to run, and I get stoked all over again. In the winter when the parks are wet, the city is often drier and more sheltered, so in the winter it’s time to take a break, find a space to chill, skate and take some space in the streets.   

DIY spaces are really important, the fact that we’ve had a two storey beer fuelled public construction site open every day of the year for the last seven years without major incident is insane. You can’t submit that to a planning committee, it wouldn’t pass the red tape, but it works and it gets better every year. Touch wood. Touch wood every day, haul your plank all over the city and find something fun to do!   – Charles Myatt