Sighthill Stories

Sighthill Stories

Documents three double multi-storey highrise flats several months leading up to their demolition.  I interviewed former residents about their lives in the flats and what they expected in the future for Sighthill after the flats were gone. I wanted to piece together some kind of historical documentation of the flats and the area before they disappeared forever.  The urban neighbourhood of Sighthill was built in the 1960’s as a response to the pressing housing shortage in Glasgow, a legacy left over from the city’s rapid industrialisation and consequential burgeoning population. Drawing on the most basic of modernist ideas, the estate was built with no democratic planning or input from the people it was intended to house. What resulted was a bleak and monotonous landscape that housed over 7500 people. By the mid 1980’s Sighthill was labelled a ’sink estate’ with high unemployment, drug abuse, high levels of crime and poverty. Three of the highrise blocks of flats were demolished in 2008 and the three remaining blocks of flats demolished at the end of November 2009.

The last three blocks of flats are scheduled for refurbishment and not demolition in an attempt to improve living conditions within the flats. Some residents living here are angered and confused that their homes aren’t to be demolished. The flats they live in are identical to ones being demolished and all flats shared the same problems, both physical and social. Everyone wished that Sighthill would return to the once happy and prosperous estate that it once was in the 1960s and 1970s but to date there has been no plans made for new build housing in area, leaving Sighthill in an strange juxtaposition of demolition and refurbishment.

Sighthill Stories was submitted as part of my MA Documentary course.  A talk and screening of this film and others about regeneration in Glasgow is available. More on this here.