Paper short abstract:

Baltic Street Aventure Playground is located in the top 5% on the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD, 2020). The space itself explicitly challenges the wider context in situ: food insecurity, precarity, and failed attempts at 'regeneration' through the amplification of local demands.

Paper long abstract:

Baltic Street Adventure Playground (BSAP) emerged out of, and through, a historically contested area. The East End of Glasgow, and Dalmarnock in particular, has been the site of continued efforts of 'regeneration' which have culminated in compulsory purchase orders, demolition of local amenities, derelict and abandoned land and a context of the top 5% deprived most areas in Scotland (SIMD, 2016, 2020).

BSAP came about after the ruthlessly designed and over-promised Commonwealth Games project demolished local services, amenities, housing, and community spaces. Together with Assemble (a Turner-prize winning architecture group) and local residents, BSAP challenged the status quo and classist assumptions put onto Dalmarnock via top-down regeneration attempts and privatised land development.

In response to dereliction and deprivation, BSAP runs via a child and local-led governance system to provide risky play and food for free for all who enter. The food provision grew exponentially over the past three years, to establish a composting area, the capacity to feed over 10,000 people in summer and distribute much-needed food parcels in winter, as well as a twice-weekly food hub stocked by FareShare, Amazon and Personal Collection Points.

Out of a landscape of loss and ruination came a space which contends with a complex set of tensions daily. From scalar questions, to questions around the climate, BSAP grapples with such complexity and resource-constraint through reckoning with what have we lost, what are we willing to lose, and what do we stand to fight for.