At a time when Scottish cultural coverage feels lke a running obituary of funding cuts, venue closures, and dark stages, Platform Arts Centre in Easterhouse is marking a very different kind of milestone. On Friday 23 October, the East End venue celebrates its twentieth birthday with Made in Easterhouse 2026—a multi-artform party marking two decades of staying open and staying local.
Opened in autumn 2006 within The Bridge complex, the building has spent twenty years doing what better-funded city-centre venues often claim is impossible: remaining experimental, locally focused, and stubbornly affordable. Tickets for the anniversary event start at £5. Across two decades of austerity and soaring inflation, Platform’s baseline ticket price has risen by precisely fifty pence.
That pricing says plenty about how the building runs. While other Scottish organisations have closed their doors or cut back on community work to balance the books, Platform has kept its neighbourhood right at the heart of what it does.
‘It is twenty years since we first opened the doors here at Platform,’ said Artistic Director Matt Addicott. ‘In that time, we’ve hosted art and artists from across the world here in Easterhouse and supported communities to watch, participate and collaborate in this work. As we gear up for the Made in Easterhouse 2026 festival on 23 October we make a nod to the multi-artform celebrations which have formed a key part of our programming over the past 20 years.’
‘It is twenty years since we first opened the doors here at Platform,’ said Artistic Director Matt Addicott. ‘In that time, we’ve hosted art and artists from across the world here in Easterhouse and supported communities to watch, participate and collaborate in this work.’
Grown in the Building
The anniversary line-up reflects that grass-roots focus. Co-curated by Visual Arts Programmer Margaret McCormick alongside Performance Programmer Eoin McKenzie, the event is steered by someone who pretty much grew up inside the building. McKenzie first came to Platform as a child in 2006 to attend its youth drama workshops, eventually leading the groups before returning full-circle as part of the venue’s programming team.
The programme itself avoids self-congratulation. Alongside live music from Scottish indie outfits Sacred Paws, DICK50, and GLOSS, the evening stages Yer Da Works At Tesco—an irreverent look at capitalism devised by Platform’s youth group, Monday Night Drama. In the galleries, Cranhill Arts is showing the largest exhibition in 35 years of its historic Glaswegians archive, drawing on nearly 40,000 portraits taken between 1989 and 1993.
“Made in Easterhouse feels like a chance to celebrate not just what has happened here over the last two decades, but the particular kind of arts centre Platform has become – and what it might become next.“
Eoin McKenzie
Unsurprisingly, given the venue’s track record, the milestone is being treated as an inquiry rather than a victory lap. Writer Helen Charman has spent time in the organisation’s archives to produce a commissioned text asking a deceptively simple question: what is an arts centre actually for?
‘Made in Easterhouse feels like a chance to celebrate not just what has happened here over the last two decades, but the particular kind of arts centre Platform has become – and what it might become next,’ said McKenzie.
Amidst the ongoing bonfire of Scotland’s cultural infrastructure, Platform’s quiet endurance offers a welcome bulletin: proof that when an arts organisation makes itself essential to its immediate community, the doors stay open.
Featured Image: Cranhill Arts Glaswegians exhibition
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