STEP was created as a response to the often challenging access for buildings and venues that we love, by using inventive research based on the simple structure of a step and how it both limits and provides access, exercising an overlay of the temporary solutions we often see when adapting old buildings for public use. It considers how we might get to them, both physically and conceptually.

STEP itself is a modular work cast from pigmented concrete covering 20 square m, sited at Govan Graving Docks. The location situates you at the edge of Glasgow city centre, which is visible to the east looking across the vast and vacant contested space that itself is weighed down by the demands of heritage, the restrictions of civic funds and the need for restoration and development. The piece is based on imaginary and unfeasible overlay ramps for two of the buildings originally surveyed - Civic House (built 1920’s) and The Royal Faculty of Procurators building (built 1850’s). The concrete access ramps combined act as a visualisation of something awkward and cumbersome that is the standard response where steps make an entrance inaccessible; broken up, they create a place to commune and begin a much needed discussion about new ways for everyone to access their city.

The works sited at Govan Project Space are made in response to the borderline absurd idea, due to the number of steps, of producing a ramp for the low-level Queens Park railway station, a place which is also home to the cherished arts space Queens Park Railway Club. Like many older railway stations in Scotland including most of the Glasgow subway system, Queens Park was built with many stairs and no lifts. Our ambitious Victorian infrastructure, designed by ambitious Victorian men, yet again catching out every pram, limp, stick or wheel that approaches it.

The series of risograph prints show each drawing of the STEP overlays.

Audience for STEP, 2021, 06:50 mins

Artwork by Jacqueline Donachie. Poem written and performed by Sandra Alland; translated into BSL by Bea Webster with Ciaran Stewart, audio description by Sandra Alland. Filmed & edited by Bert Ross.

"Audience" was originally published in Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (co-editors Alland, Barokka, Sluman; Nine Arches Press)

STEP install at Govan Graving Docks, 2021, 03:03 mins

Film by Bert Ross