Meet the Glasgow charity supporting artists and saving old buildings

The award, sponsored by this paper, is part of the Glasgow Business Awards organised by Glasgow Chamber of Commerce with Royal Bank of Scotland as the main sponsor.

Favourite Business Award nominee WASPS is on a mission to protect artistic jobs throughout the city - as well as reclaiming some of Glasgow's finest buildings.

The registered charity was started in Dundee 45 years ago but quickly expanded to Scotland's largest city.

Since then they've been supporting Glasgow's artistic community with affordable studio space and other measures - an important contribution that can easily go overlooked.

CEO Audrey Carlin said: "Sometimes when people think about people working in art they kind of think, ‘oh that’s not for me’.

"But when you think about it, art and design straddles everything we do, from the labelling on your bottle of gin right through to your banking app – some of our artists have been working on the graphics for things like that.

Audrey Carlin, CEO of WASPS

“So it spans pretty much every part of life when you think about it, right through to listening to podcasts, vloggers or whatever.

“It spans a wide range of creative centres that probably impact on people’s lives on a day-to-day basis but they possibly haven’t considered in what way.”

Pursuing a career in art and design is notoriously difficult, and creators all over the world were not helped by the Covid pandemic shutting down businesses and studios.

In Glasgow, however, that was something WASPS was able to help with.

Audrey explains: "I think coming through the pandemic it was really important that we supported our creative people as well as we could.

“There were rent-free periods, there was a whole range of things we put online, we set up a WASPS shop online so they could sell digitally.

“We created a whole resource of business support online for our creative community so that they could increase their own reach online, whether that was holding workshops or engaging with business internationally, right through to securing funding to upgrade our digital infrastructure across our network so they had the right level of internet to do things like hold workshops, engage with their customers and engage with other artists.

“We put a lot of effort into making sure they could still continue to earn a living, as well as making the building safe and sanitising everything so we had safe and accessible studios during what was obviously a very difficult period.

WASPS has been nominated for Glasgow's Favourite Business

“Many of them can’t work from home because of the nature of what they do, or their studio is almost like their safe place where they can come away from the challenges that everyone was facing and get on with what they do best and continue to make a living.”

It's not just artists who have benefited from the charity's work, with WASPS salvaging four iconic Glasgow buildings for their various outlets.

One is the Briggait, which served as the city's fish market for over 100 years. The fishmongers moved out in 1977 and it became an unloved shopping centre, only to be repurposed into an artistic space by the charity.

Audrey told the Glasgow Times: "In Glasgow, we’ve got another phase of work at the Briggait that we’re working on at the moment, and that’s about regenerating the city and bringing people back in to the city for experiences – saving an iconic A-listed building.

“We’re really building on the fact there are already 250 people working in this building, so we’re exposing them to the public but also getting the public access to these wonderful, historic market halls in a way they’ve not been before with a whole range of food, drink, creative space and markets.

“We recently had our biggest-ever Briggait market in the 1873 hall, and that was based on the demand from artists wanting to sell directly to the public but also the footfall we’re getting.

“People want to come to the city for experience now, and it’s not just about retail shopping, it’s about coming and seeing something different and coming into buildings they wouldn’t normally come into – right on the River Clyde and next to Glasgow Green.

“It provides something unique to the city and the work is created by Scottish artists in the main, it’s all about the identity of Scotland – and Glasgow as a city as well, celebrating who we’ve got here.

"We’ve got four buildings, South Block is our biggest on Osbourne Street, the Briggait, one on East Campbell Street and one at Hanson Street at the bottom of Alexandra Parade.

“So really well-established creative communities with everyone from big name artists – Turner Prize winners – right through to recent graduates.

“It’s about supporting artistic people at all stages of their careers and providing that offer regardless of what stage artists are at because they all need that support, it doesn’t matter how established they are.

“People have different stages and phases in their life where they want to learn from each other, they want to be inspired by each other.

“It’s also about keeping talent, graduates have gone through university or the art school and we want to keep them in that career that they’ve chosen by by providing that affordable supported space.

“It’s about keeping talent in Scotland and allowing people to have sustainable creative careers.

"WASPS has been around for 45 years and we’ve supported a whole creative community for that length of time in four buildings in Glasgow, with probably about 500 creative people.

“So it’s fantastic to have ourselves and our creative community recognised as being a favourite business. It’s fantastic news.”

The winner of The Glasgow Times Award for Glasgow's Favourite Business will be revealed at the annual Glasgow Business Awards ceremony, taking place at the DoubleTree by Hilton Glasgow Central on Thursday 6 October 2022, with voting opening on Friday September 2.

Place your vote for The Glasgow Times Award for Glasgow's Favourite Business here.