Mackintosh Queen's Cross

News & Events

Celebrate Mackintosh with the latest news and events from Mackintosh Queen's Cross.

Zero Waste Scotland – The Gaia Way

The Gaia way – how Glasgow communities are working together to reduce consumption.

Come along to find out how Glasgow is tackling to climate crisis from the grassroots, making reuse, sharing, repairing and sustainable textiles accessible for all, locally.

Panel session hosted by Samantha Moir, Community Support manager, Zero Waste Scotland with:

• Bevan O’Daly, The Fair Fashion Collective

• Emma Erwin, The share and repair network

• Lynne Dent, Merry-go-round Glasgow

• Neil Lovelock, Glasgow EcoTrust

Monday 19 June at 6.00pm – Mackintosh Queen’s Cross – Tickets Free at Eventbrite

Lids Open under Gaia

The next Lids Open Day of 2023 will be a special Lids Open Night at Mackintosh Queens Cross on Wednesday 21st June ~ from 4.30pm till 9pm. This is part of our 50th anniversary programme under ‘Gaia‘ .

We aim to give everyone around 12 minutes playing time, at least, with friends and family always welcome to come and listen too. Please register to attend – including a contact number and a rough time you will arrive, by emailing: info@glasgowpianocity.org

The Burrell – adopting a fabric first approach

The Burrell – adopting a fabric first approach by Graeme DeBrincat. Graeme is an Associate at Arup in Glasgow, specialising in façade design and delivered the Burrell Collection recently. He will talk about how they managed to return more than 16 tonnes of existing glass to remanufacture into new glass, a first for a public building.

Tuesday 20 June at 6.00pm – Mackintosh Queen’s Cross – Tickets Free at Eventbrite

The Burrell Collection comprises a vast array of precious art from around the world. First opened to the public in 1983, the museum in Pollok Country Park, Glasgow, is one of Scotland’s few Category-A listed post-war buildings. Unfortunately, a steady deterioration of the building fabric over recent years and declining visitor numbers meant that essential intervention would be required to bring it up to contemporary museum standards and guarantee its future.

When tasked with refurbishing this iconic structure, Arup adopted a fabric first approach centred on reusing and recycling the original materials from the museum’s façade. To do this, a new network was established across the glass industry, spearheaded by Arup, from manufacturers to research institutions and recycling facilities. Over 80 tonnes of usable material were recovered, and all the glass was recycled. They returned 16 tonnes directly to architectural glass production- a rare achievement for this kind of project whilst the rest was used in other construction products.

The end result has improved the building’s energy performance, as well as delivering significant carbon savings. 

Siobhan Wilson

We are delighted to have Siobhan return to Queens Cross for this special concert under Gaia on Thursday 15 June.

Singer, composer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist Siobhan Wilson grew up in Elgin, Scotland. A trained cellist, singer, composer and pianist from St Mary’s Music School of Edinburgh, Siobhan has 15 years of international studio production experience including in New York, Paris, Budapest and Scotland. After a 5 year stay in Paris, France, she returned to the UK where she has become one of Scotland’s most exciting artists.

Siobhan Wilson will release a new double album on 31 May 2023. Themes of solitude, self-discovery and reflection merge with rural serenity. The self-produced work only serves to underline Siobhan’s growing status as an independent auteur and inspirational force on the DIY scene.

The first half of the album is titled “Recording Of Myself In A Room Of My Own”: a collection of new acoustic folk music and features a number of collaborations, namely with French composer Clementine March (tracks “Quand La Vie Fait Mal” and “Un Ange Passe”) and Mercury Prize nominee Kathryn Williams (tracks “Sleeping Dogs” and “Good Company”).

Her recent single “Quand La Vie Fait Mal” has been played on BBC6 radio, and was performed live at
Celtic Connections in January 2023 with CLR Theory. This co-write features Clementine March, Lost Map. Siobhan appeared on BBC Radio Scotland, live in session in March 2023. Her brand new release, Unst Boat Song, is arrangement of the traditional sea prayer sung in Norn and Shetlandic dialect, featured on God Is In The TV Zine, Fresh On The Net, and The List.

Her 2017 album ‘There Are No Saints’ was shortlisted for the Scottish Album of the Year and drew attention from the likes of Rolling Stone and BBC6 Radio Lauren Laverne who listed it as her ‘album of the day. Wilson is a regular live performer at BBC Scotland and BBC6 radio stations and was also shortlisted for “Best Musician” in The Sunday Herald Culture Awards in the same year.

Siobhan will be supported by trailblazing cello soloist, Juliette Lemoine.

‘Juliette is exploring and redefining the cello’s role within Scottish Traditional Music. She recently burst onto the Scottish music scene with her debut album ‘Soaring’, supported by the Beatrice Huntington Award for cellists, launching the album with a sold-out headline performance at Celtic Connections 2023. Her emotive compositions weave through Scottish Traditional, Western Classical, and Jazz genres to create a highly personal new voice. Leading an all-star band of some of Scotland’s most exciting young musicians in the unique line-up of cello, fiddle, piano, and tenor saxophone, the album is a euphoric celebration of the theme of freedom. Juliette is fascinated by the cello’s potential to take on a lead melodic role in a traditional music context, in the way a fiddle typically would, and finding ways to retain the sense of fluidity, bowing style, ornaments and authenticity. Her playing has taken her across the UK performing at festivals such as Celtic Connections, Aberdeen Jazz Festival, Edinburgh Tradfest, Blas Festival and HebCelt.’

Tickets cost £16.50 plus booking fee Get Tickets

Also available from Eventbrite

Glasgow Science Festival under Gaia

The Glasgow Science Festival is set to return to the city in June with a bigger programme of free events than ever under the theme of ‘Glasgow’s Looking Forward’!

Gaia and her Renewable Energy Miracles: For All, Forever:

This event on Saturday 3 June from 4pm to 5pm at Mackintosh Queen’s Cross looks forward to how Scotland will help the world achieve net-zero. Visitors can use ‘energy goggles’ to see the planet’s energy for themselves, hitch a ride on a sunbeam and take a once in a lifetime tour of Gaia’s energy system. A ticket to the show will also offer free access to ‘Gaia’, a stunning high-resolution six-metre-wide floating Earth created by artist Luke Jerram. Gaia will be on display at the Mackintosh Queen’s Cross from 13 May until 24 June.

“We are star dust harvesting sunlight” wrote the great cosmologist Carl Sagan. We live in a flux of solar energy that powers (almost) everything we know and are. The numbers can be boggling, but in this entertaining talk we’ll put on a pair of “energy goggles”, hitch a ride on a sunbeam and take a once in a lifetime tour of Gaia’s energy system. We will look forward to how Scotland and Glasgow will help achieve our 100% renewable, peaceful, energy futures.

Before we get too carried away with the awesome maths and physics, we’ve totally lost the plot when it comes to our relationship with energy. We’ve become immune to its magical powers of sublime transformation and ignorant of its true value. We waste it with zeal, and then complain its expensive, or we haven’t got enough. It is time to reconnect, to re-imagine and to fire up some new ideas to shape our future societies. We’ve about a decade left to quit fossil fuels to limit global heating to 2oC. Half the world’s 8 billion people don’t consume enough energy to live well. The other half consume too much. How then, will 11 billion of us from 2050 enjoy the high energy lifestyles we have become used to and at the same time avert dangerous climate change? Where will we get our energy from? How will energy change the way we live?

The talk by staff at the Open University will include some demonstrations, graphics and performance elements interspersed with some boring facts.

This event is free, but booking is required.

Film week under Gaia

As part of our 50th anniversary programme we are hosting a series of film nights from Monday 5 June to Thursday 8 June at Mackintosh Queen’s Cross.

KoyaanisqatsiMonday 5 June at 7.00pm

Tickets £7.50 from Eventbrite

A unique opportunity to see this cinematography masterpiece.

Told without dialogue, narration, cast or characters, Koyaanisqatsi is a dizzying, hypnotic example of cinema set to an extraordinary score by Philip Glass. It contrasts natural beauty with a population ever more dependent on modern technology.

Shot on a low budget in New York City and the American South West, the film found support from Francis Ford Coppola where it found a larger audience and has gone on to become a cult classic.

If ever a film was destined for watching in a cinema, this is it.

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Under the Skin – Tuesday 6 June at 7.00pm

Tickets £7.50 from Eventbrite

An alien entity inhabits the earthly form of a seductive young woman who combs the Scottish highways in search of the human prey it is here to plunder. It lures its isolated and forsaken male victims into an otherworldly dimension where they are stripped and consumed. But life in all its complexity starts to change the alien. It begins to see itself as ‘she’, as human, with tragic and terrifying consequences. UNDER THE SKIN is about seeing ourselves through alien eyes.

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Comfort and Joy – Wednesday 7 June at 7.00pm

Tickets £7.50 from Eventbrite

A beautiful film, Comfort and Joy not only captures those late winter afternoons of a former industrial city like Glasgow (expertly lensed by Chris Menges) it also captures the Christmas message in the most subtlest and wryest of ways. And once again Mark Knopfler delivers a gem of a score, with Dire Straits’ Private Investigations figuring large as Dickie Bird lifts the lid on the ice cream wars. 

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Disappearing Glasgow

Friday 26 May, 6.00pm | Mackintosh Queen’s Cross | Tickets from £6.13

As part of our 50th anniversary programme under the ‘Gaia’ (The Earth) installation at Mackintosh Queen’s Cross we are hosting a number of talks.

We are delighted to host an illustrated and updated talk by Chris Leslie, who began his career in Sarajevo in the 1990s, and who then went on to document the changing landscape in Glasgow. His sold out 2017 book and multimedia project ‘Disappearing Glasgow’ featured photographs, essays and interviews with people from areas in Glasgow which have dramatically changed or disappeared in the last ten years including Dalmarnock and the Red Road Flats.

The skyline of Glasgow has been radically transformed as high rise tower blocks have been blown down and bulldozed. 35% of the cities High Rise flats have disappeared since 2006, communities dispersed across the city and Dalmarnock in the East End has ‘been raised from the ashes’ via the Commonwealth Games. Does this Disappearing Glasgow herald a renaissance in the city?

BAFTA Scotland New Talent award-winning Photographer and filmmaker Chris Leslie is widely acknowledged as the most consistent chronicler of the city’s recent history. This 10-year long term multimedia project ‘Disappearing Glasgow’ documents an era of spectacular change in Glasgow through photography and video.

www.chrisleslie.com

Lost Map Under Gaia

Lost Map Records will host a concert entitled: ‘Lost Map Under Gaia’ on Wednesday 31 May.  The event will be a showcase of music from the record label, based on the Isle of Eigg. Acts featured are Amy May Ellis (full band); Pictish Trail (solo); L.T. Leif and Lost Map DJs. 

A unique 10th anniversary concert, In Mackintosh Queen’s Cross, from Scottish label, Lost Map. Under Luke Jerram’s Gaia installation of the Earth.

Wednesday 31 May, 7.30pm – 10.30pm | Mackintosh Queen’s Cross | Tickets from £13.00

Tickets are available from Eventbrite.

Discover Gaia at Mackintosh Queen’s Cross

The Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society presents ‘GAIA’ by Luke Jerram – Part of our 50th Anniversary Celebrations.

To celebrate its 50th year, the CRM Society is holding a series of events to mark its anniversary at its home at Queen’s Cross. This is the former church designed by Mackintosh and now operating as a successful venue for music and events such as weddings, concerts, films and talks. Queen’s Cross itself – is one of the most complete original Mackintosh buildings in the city – is a visitor attraction in its own right, drawing visitors from abroad as well as around the UK.

Gaia – named after the Greek Goddess of Earth – will be open to the public from Saturday 13 May 2023 and run until 24 June.

Measuring six metres in diameter, Gaia features 120dpi detailed NASA imagery of the Earth’s surface. The artwork provides the opportunity to see our planet, floating in three dimensions. With each centimetre of the internally lit sculpture describing 21km of the Earth’s surface, which is 2.1 million times smaller than the real Earth.

General Admission (16 and over) includes up to two children per adult ticket bought.

Tickets for GAIA and all our events are available from Eventbrite.

Details of our events programme during Gaia are available here.

We would like to thank The Hugh Fraser Foundation and Glasgow Area Partnership for their support as part of our 50th Anniversary Celebrations.

SILVIA TAROZZI & DEBORAH WALKER + MAGGIE NICOLS

Pleased to welcome two acts whose exploration of song and the voice reaches into the beyond.

Silvia Tarozzi & Deborah Walker present their transcriptions and reinterpretations of traditional folksongs from their birthplace, the Emilia-Romagna region in Italy. Touched by the evocative power of female rice-field workers choirs, the ‘Mondine’, and the strength of their community life experience, they sketch an emotional territory where our relationship with the geographical coordinates and the history of the region Emilia resonates with other sounds, other places. They present this work in collaboration with Glasgow’s Glad Community Choir.

Friday 7 April, 7pm | The Mackintosh Church | Tickets from £7.00

Following on from her stunning albums on Cafe OTO’s OTOROKU label, Scottish free-jazz and improvisation vocalist, dancer and performer Maggie Nicols presents a performance celebrating her 75th birthday. Maggie’s work is intensely social, and rooted in the radical possibilities of collaboration. For this rare chance however, we get to see Maggie solo, with her songs and poetry, and the Mackintosh Church’s grand piano.