THE evolution of Glasgow’s cultural landscape over the next 25 years should be driven by diversity and equality, a new vision reveals.

A blueprint, drawn up by Glasgow Life, sets out how the city aims to promote those who have been historically marginalised, including through Glasgow’s links with slavery, and insists power and leadership in cultural organisations must be shared fairly.

The draft document has been released for public consultation, which will run until February 19.

Plans include centring the creative voices of marginalised people, ensuring all venues and programmes are accessible to these people and allowing everyone to access cultural activity and careers.

They also involve helping people to feel empowered to express themselves creatively and promoting ideas which “provoke and stimulate dialogue”.

Engaging with disadvantaged children and young people and making sure the city’s cultural landscape is representative of all its population are also included.

“Culture should never be owned or decided upon by the powerful or self-selected,” the draft states.

It has been pulled together following Glasgow’s first Culture Summit in September 2017, which involved 200 people from across the city’s artistic, cultural and creative sectors.

Councillor David McDonald, chairman of Glasgow Life, the city council’s cultural and sporting arm, said: “We know that participation in culture – whether it’s watching a play, creating your own piece of art or singing a song – is a force for good, and an enabler of community empowerment that can increase our quality of life.

“Culture also inspires, questions and challenges us to see our city and the world in different ways.

“Having just been named as the UK’s top cultural city, we need to now create the conditions in which our confident cultural sector can develop and grow, and where our artists are nurtured in their work.

“The culture plan is about how we in the council and Glasgow Life can better support our artists, writers, performers and makers and what more we can do to ensure that culture in Glasgow continues to flourish.”

The early 1980s acted as an “incubator” for Glasgow’s ‘cultural journey’, a prologue to the plan states. It says public festival Mayfest showcased everything from grassroots work to the international and avant-garde.

An “emergent and edgy arts scene” created the confidence to bid for European City of Culture in 1986, it adds.

Glasgow Life sees the city as a major maker of new art and culture, with a public willing to test ideas and innovation and an interest in the new and provocative.

It believes the city is characterised by the largest concentration of live producing capacity in theatre outside London, the liveliest centre for visual arts in the UK, excluding London, and the world’s leading festival and event destination.

Glasgow is home to more than 100 cultural organisations, including Scotland’s national orchestra, theatre, opera, and ballet companies, with nine million visits to cultural institutions each year.

The plan states Glasgow’s cultural sector needs to be “explicitly driven by a recognition” of its diversity. “Cultural expression is not the right of dominant groups,” it states.

“We should also never forget that much of our own culture and infrastructure is a product of imperialism and dominance. Built on tobacco and cotton harvested by enslaved people, profits from people starved and forced off their land, or backbreaking heavy industries, Glasgow has the opportunity to create a new future.”

The plan sets out a number of responses to the issues raised. A spokesman for Glasgow Life said: “It is the framework for an ambitious 25-year-vision to embed culture at the heart of the city’s future creative and economic success.”

He added: “However, we’re not starting from zero – culture has been intrinsic to Glasgow’s evolution; propelling the city’s emergence both as a model for post-industrial transformation and as a world-leading artistic and creative centre with a global reputation.

“We want to consolidate Glasgow’s position as a truly international arts capital – nurturing and showcasing the best in local and international creativity – and we would encourage anyone with a role in the sector to respond to the draft plan and have their say during the consultation period to help shape the final version.”