Devon Street Urban Park
The Devon Street Urban Park project has been driven by Glasgow’s urban sports community. Neil Davidson, a Glasgow skateboarder since the late 1980s, originally spotted the opportunity to utilise the canopy of the newly created M74 motorway back in 2012.
It took a skateboarder’s fresh eye and sense of how to re-purpose the urban environment to spot the rich potential to transform a mundane and blighted space beneath the motorway that disconnected surrounding communities by turning it around to create a positive space for all with cover from Glasgow’s prevailing rain.
The journey to date has taken 10 years and is now gathering real and meaningful momentum.
Since 2014 the project’s design has been lead by Scottish artist / skateboarders Toby Paterson and Raydale Dower who teamed up with BMX rider and professional ramp builder John Bailey in 2020. John had recently completed the successful Loading Bay skatepark in Port Dundas, North Glasgow. The Loading Bay now receives 30,000+ visitors annually, providing urban sports programming to schools and community organisations across Glasgow. It has recently being recognised as the first national Skateboard Hub for the UK.
With a close alignment and shared goals, Glasgow Urban Sports and The Loading Bay have now formed a partnership to deliver urban sports facilities and programming across Glasgow. The design launch for the Devon Street Urban Park, on the 2nd October at Tramway, is the direct result of this creative partnership and its innovative way of looking at and repurposing the urban environment.
In 2023, the team worked with Glasgow City Council on the city’s Cycling & Urban Sport Strategy. The strategy identifies opportunities for provision of urban sports within Glasgow neighbourhoods at different scales. An example of one of these opportunities is a new set of bespoke skate features at the Riverside Museum, delivered in partnership with Glasgow City Council and Glasgow Life to coincide with the opening of the new Govan-Partick Bridge.
The already very popular new ‘Transport’ skate spot has been realised in high quality granite paving to integrate with the wider museum landscape, and reinstates a series of sculptural interventions originally delivered by Glasgow Urban Sports and Concreate Skateparks in 2017, and partially removed prior to the creation of the Govan–Partick Bridge. The Riverside Museum ‘skate spot’ is exemplary of the ideas that Glasgow Urban Sports are proposing for the Devon Street Urban Park – a new type of integrated urban space, designed to support social and cultural activity for all ages. A creative re-imagining of the concept of public space.
Devon Street Urban Park pushes this design concept forward at a scale not realised before in the UK with the inclusion of public art, active green space and urban sports landscape. The proposals are ambitious and will transform approx 8000 square metres of under-utilised ‘lost’ space into a new type of public park and urban space for all.
The project has already attracted significant investment from a major US-based foundation: The Susanne Marcus Collins Foundation have supported the design process though 2023-’24 and recently confirmed an offer of a initial £1.2m in funding to support the capital delivery of the project. Skateboarding’s DIY ethos has just grown up!
The next crucial step is to gain public support for the proposal to secure further private or public funding and match the offer from SMCF. With funding in place this project, led by Glasgow’s skateboarders and BMX riders, will create a new thriving, accessible and active cultural landmark on the Southside of Glasgow, celebrating the city’s built environment through a uniquely creative response to it.
If you are interested in learning more about the Devon Street Urban Park proposals please visit the design presentation at Tramway’s upper foyer space between 3-6th October.