Make a Difference
St Aloysius’ College continued to strengthen links with Glasgow School of Art when artistic Aloysians from S3 partnered up with Product Design Engineering Students from the GSA to dream up innovative ideas for the planned regeneration of Garnethill Park.
As part of Glasgow City Council’s regeneration project of Sauchiehall Street and the Garnethill Area, students at the GSA called on the Aloysians to offer their personal opinions and creative ideas for regeneration of near-by Garnethill Park.
As a fun way of offering feedback on different areas and features of the park, the S3 Art pupils were given ‘warm’ and ‘cold’ coloured balloons to attach to features which they felt either warmly or coldly towards.
The creative session proved to be a great success and the Aloysians willingly offered their positive and negative feedback and came up with some creative ideas of their own for what they’d like to see in the park.
As indicated by the warm coloured balloons attached to the park’s large painted wall, the S3 pupils were full of praise for a large mosaic which they described as ‘amazing’, ‘unique’ and ‘interesting’ but in need of updating and cleaning with the addition of fresher colours.
The Aloysians also felt the park could be made more accessible to all users by improving pathways to make them easier to walk on and by installing more attractive and effective lighting features to make it feel safer at night.
The volume of rain experienced in Glasgow was considered and the pupils called for improved areas of shelter whilst the idea of using a better drainage system to feed a creative water feature was also put forward with the comment that the park’s designers should ‘play with water and embrace Glasgow’s weather’.
The pupils agreed that the larger spaces should be opened out, removing a large stone pyramid from the top of the park and increasing the amount of child friendly play areas, whilst many noted that the amphitheatre seating area had great potential, with discussions even broaching the idea of the adding a small kiosk café.