Buried ceramic animals, a condemned 'eco' classroom, rope structure set on fire and a community centre built from junk ... Architect Lee Ivett linked to a series of bizarre projects in some of our poorest communities ... Best selling book Poverty Safari puts spotlight on Scotland's 'poverty industry'

SCOTLAND’S ‘poverty industry’ is under the spotlight thanks to rapper Darren ‘Loki’ McGarvey’s best-selling book Poverty Safari.

McGarvey - raised in Glasgow’s Pollok - criticises well-meaning experts who descend on deprived communities with big ideas about how to fix deep-rooted social problems.

Tapping into public funds, their creative projects make little difference to the people who live there.

Reporter Russell Findlay looks at an architect behind a series of bizarre taxpayer-funded schemes in some of Scotland’s poorest areas.

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LEE Ivett is no ordinary architect. Working from his Glasgow-based studio Baxendale, he is described as an ‘urbanist with a track record of developing transformational long term projects’.

Using edgy but vague buzzwords, one architectural website continues: “His mode of practice is intensely generative, developing low-budget socially-focused projects from scratch largely for marginalised communities within Scotland and beyond as a means of identifying ideas and developing local agency and capacity.

“Lee works with artists, makers, dancers, choreographers, growers, academics, musicians to prototype and generate the activity that ultimately creates a demand for the physical regeneration of place.”

Or, as Ivett more candidly told architecture students in Dundee last year while swigging from a bottle of beer: “The shorthand of that is I go to places and attempt to make them a little less s*** than they are.”

He went on to tell them: “It’s interesting being in Dundee at the moment that’s currently trying to smoke a huge amount of cultural crack in an effort to make itself a little less s***.”

One of Ivett’s projects ‘Riverside Solidarity’ is shortlisted for a prestigious Architects Journal award to be announced this week.

In summer 2017, he and artist Ben Perry created a structure made from old ropes is the area’s former shipyard dry docks.

Ivett said: “Our aim was to metaphorically and literally cut out the ‘noise’ in Govan and seek a way of understanding the territory on our own terms.

“The future role of men, the integration of new men and the opportunities for young males within post-industrial communities will form the basis for our future investigations.”

Local youths duly set fire to the structure within 48 hours of its completion.

James Holloway of Govan Community Project said: “It lasted two days and then the young team who hang about the dry dock torched it. There was a bit of spin put on it, but it was really the youths saying how dare they come into their space.”

Esme Clarke, secretary of Govan Community Council, said: “We’re very keen to look at the history of Govan but I don’t know if this was one of the best ideas or best use of public money.”

The Govan project was deemed so successful that Ivett and others travelled to Gdansk in Poland to build something similar from shipyard ropes. It is not known whether Gdansk's youths took similar action to those in Govan.

He said: “Over the course of four days in Gdansk, we recreated the form and methodology of the intervention delivered in Govan; identifying old shipping rope in the possession of an artist’s collective that has occupied a former bakery within the shipyards.”

The Govan-Gdansk project, and associated work, was backed by Creative Scotland, the University of the West of Scotland and received £50,000 from the National Lottery.

Ivett first became prominent in the ‘poverty industry’ in north Glasgow’s Milton, an area associated with crime, drugs, ill health and below average life expectancy.

One of the 37-year-old’s first creative forays there was in 2012 and involved burying 365 small ceramic animals.

The purpose of the ‘Odd Numbers’ project, bemused residents were informed, was ‘giving form to their idea of themselves as a creature/animal’ and to ‘give the area a new living myth’.

The final cost of the collaboration between Ivett, artist Nicola Atkinson and local charity Love Milton is unknown but at least £23,000 was secured, courtesy of the Arts & Humanities Research Council.

An online explanation stated: “This tradition of burial as a symbol of growth has a strong ritual history, as far back as the ancient Egyptian tombs.

“People in Milton are invited to select and borrow one creature that mostly reflects themselves and hopefully become part of their lives. Atkinson envisages that each person will use this time to create an identity, story and character for their creature.

“The creatures will then return to Milton along with their associated stories, poems and pictures and will be exhibited to the public.”

The animals were then buried on waste ground in Skerray Street ‘to create a permanent place of memory and a future place of archaeology’.

The burial plot was to be the site of Ivett’s masterplan— a community centre, or ‘urban sanctuary’ made out of beer cans, 500 old tyres, 12 shipping containers, 300 pallets and straw bales.

Backed by local Church of Scotland Minister Rev Christopher Rowe, the centre was described as ‘a cross between Scrapheap Challenge and Blue Peter, with the blessing of the Almighty’ and would include a church, offices, café and theatre.

The first phase was building an ‘energy hub’ where locals were expected to forage four tonnes of aluminium drinks cans to be crushed for use as building material.

The scheme secured National Lottery, Glasgow City Council and Scottish Government funding.

According to Rev Rowe, the building would deliver a defiant message, being built by ‘people who are often regarded as rubbish by society, one of the poorest communities in Western Europe, in a culture which is quite good not just at throwing away physical or energy resources but human ones as well’.

To apply for public money and planning consent, Love Milton charity was created with the ambitious aim ‘to make Milton the best place to live…ever!’.

Over the past five years it has received almost £500,000 from taxpayers, mostly from the Scottish Government and its Climate Challenge Fund.

Further grants of £2.2million were identified to turn the dream into reality but there was a problem which even the Almighty could not overcome.

The derelict land, on which tenement flats once stood, is owned by the council and they wanted £350,000 for it. The plan was duly mothballed and the Skerray Street site lies empty.

Undeterred, another Milton creation was an outdoor ‘eco’ classroom in the grounds of Miltonbank Primary school.

Known as ‘Little Build’, it was made from an old shipping container and other junk. Volunteers made paint from milk, lemon juice, lime putty, water and vodka.

With input from Glasgow School of Art architecture students, work began in 2011 and took four years to complete.

Princes Trust volunteers were presented with an award by Prince Charles in recognition of their green construction skills.

Unfortunately, Glasgow City Council did not share the prince’s high opinion and instructed Love Milton to stop describing it as an outdoor classroom.

Due to safety concerns, the council then ordered it to be demolished — having only been used once by pupils.

It only remains standing because there is no money to pay for its removal.

How much the classroom actually cost is unclear but £33,000 came from taxpayers via the Climate Challenge Fund.

Alex O’Kane, a community campaigner and lifelong Milton resident, despairs at the ‘poverty industry’ which he compares to the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes.

In the Hans Christian Anderson tale, people are told they are stupid if they can’t see the emperor’s fine garments, when in fact he is naked. It takes a child to finally point this out.

O’Kane said: “It’s like the story because we’re led to believe that only clever people can see the benefits of these projects no matter how ridiculous they really are. People like Lee Ivett come bouncing into a room saying how they have a great idea.

“People sit there nodding because they may feel inferior, are too scared or lack the confidence to call it out as bulls**t.

“Over the past 20 years I’ve heard all sorts of people like him. I’ve seen countless millions of pounds being wasted on daft ideas and there has been absolutely no legacy for the community.

“There are real needs in Milton but they are not being addressed. I’m sure most of them start off as sincere but it then seems to become a process of identifying funding criteria and tapping into it.

“They often make a big deal about members of the community being involved but often it’s no more than a paper exercise, by using local people to legitimise what they’re up to.

“Very rarely does it make any tangible difference to people’s lives. Sometimes I think these people view Milton as a field of poverty from which they can harvest public money.”

Ivett’s Milton experience served as a springboard for similar projects in other Glasgow communities including Pollokshields, Mount Florida and the Gorbals. He has also worked in the Highlands and Ayrshire.

Back where it all began in Milton, O’Kane and other residents await the next poverty industry project with a sense of weary resignation.

O’Kane said: “These problems are so big and deep rooted that there is no easy fix. It’s about employment and education - not burying ceramic dolls, building condemned classrooms or other nonsense.

“I don't see this changing anytime soon as there are too many self interests involved well before the funding reaches the communities.”

LEE IVETT: MY WORK ‘P****D PEOPLE OFF’

Ivett said: "The work in Milton and the recent work in Govan does not, I feel, demonstrate or fit the 'Poverty Safari' narrative described in Darren McGarvey's book.

"In both instances I have made a longer term commitment to the area either by being directly employed and managed by a local group instead of being a 'drop in and out' consultant or based my practice there and tried to invest in the place.

"The three years I spent working in Milton didn't actually involve many 'art' projects, just the Odd Numbers project for which I wasn't the artist and didn't receive any money.

"Most of the work was just day to day making and building stuff with local people to try and create a bit more choice and opportunity for people who has been unfairly denied access to some of things in life that most people take for granted. That was all.

"Some of this work pissed some people off, these people instead of engaging and changing the work of Love Milton just chose to attack is and personally and sometimes quite nastily attack those involved in it.

"At the point at which I knew or was told I was no longer needed within a situation I always removed myself.

"I never tried to turn these projects into 'my' projects and create organisations that would end up more about trying to create power and influence and benefit for an individual."

DARREN ‘LOKI’ McGARVEY: ASK LOCAL PEOPLE

McGarvery said: "What seems creative and socially conscious to some many appear indulgent or patronising to someone else.

"This tension is a feature of class inequalities and the resentment they produce as a by-product.

"In communities which have been politically and socially excluded for decades, you can understand the scepticism when unfamiliar people turn up in their scheme using third sector jargon, with what appear to be resources and funds locals can't access.

"I can think of projects already based in areas like Govan and Milton which exist in a constant state of crisis regarding their long term futures.

"It's often the case that well established projects which are known and trusted by the community are not meaningfully consulted prior to groups parachuting in when, in truth, some cursory research would show clearly those individuals and groups already working there with whom it would be wise to consult and collaborate.

"In order to tackle scepticism and engage communities in works of art and culture, we need to be among the people who live there long enough to build a rapport where their interests and concerns become a matter of intuition.

"We get communities on side when we consistently make our values visible, not simply in what we say but in what we do and how we do it."

An abridged version of this exclusive report first appeared in the Sunday Mail newspaper on April 15, 2018

Odd Numbers ... Ivett with a ceramic animal for burial

Making places less s*** ... Ivett tells Dundee students

Condemned ... Ivett on top of outdoor classroom

Riverside ... rope structure torched in Govan

Skerray Street ... site of buried animals and unbuilt community centre