Greenock's Beacon arts centre celebrates the work, and the hard lives, of the men who built the British empire's maritime base
On a rare sunny day such as this, it is easy to see why, in the summer of 1833, William Wordsworth was captivated by Greenock. The town sits on the Clyde, 30 miles west of Glasgow, and the old river always favours it with its most fetching garments.
Helensburgh is directly across the firth and further to the west lie Dunoon, the Holy Loch and the mountains above Loch Lomond. Behind the town the ground rises gently and, if this were Greece or Italy, stuccoed holiday villas would pepper its slopes.
This is the post-industrial west of Scotland, though, and the terraces are instead home to grey housing schemes. These are largely populated by the descendants of those who worked in the shipyards that sustained Greenock and Port Glasgow for more than 300 years. Occasionally it has provided the setting for gritty west-of-Scotland dramas such as Sweet Sixteen and Just Another Saturday. Sometimes you wonder if the business development community missed an opportunity here. They could have turned the empty shipyards into a vast film studio for churning out edgy, violent and rainy dramas.
The presence of hills and water and the testimonial of a Lakeland poet have not spared Greenock and Port Glasgow the deprivations that have blighted other urban communities in Scotland. This place existed to make the ships that built Britain's empire and enriched the merchant classes. The wages for doing so, though, were too scant for workers to save for the day when the yards shut.
Jimmy Watt, one of Britain's finest maritime artists, was born and brought up here and has chronicled the heyday of the Clyde shipyards and their subsequent demise. His vivid, moody oils are a unique reminder of how grand and dramatic this place once was, and what it has now become. "I painted these places when they were busy and I painted them when they became empty. People need to know how wonderful was the work of their fathers and grandfathers, but also how dirty and dangerous it was."
Now, 55 years after Watt started his Clyde shipbuilding tapestry, the local community has decided that his collected art shall now reach its intended first audience. Fittingly, Watt's ships and harbours will help mark the beginning of one of the most enlightened and progressive initiatives bestowed on Greenock and the Port since the shipyards died. Around 80 of his works have been solicited from collections around the world for an exhibition to mark construction of the Beacon, Greenock's new £9.5m arts centre. Watt describes this as "the greatest honour of my life".
Central to the Beacon's plan is a desire to reach out to schools, local communities and people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, and it's this mission that makes the artist proud. The new building replaces the Greenock Arts Guild Theatre, which closed last year. That venue, Jimmy points out, "brought the arts to our community for more than 60 years. My children all painted, danced, sang and played music at the old Arts Guild, and this new space will continue that legacy."
The Arts Guild raised the £9.5m to build the Beacon over a seven-year period, with partners Creative Scotland, Inverclyde Council and the Big Lottery. A youth theatre within the new waterfront location was built with help from a £100,000 grant from the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation.
"Apart from my family, the shipyards were the most important presence in my life growing up here," said Watt. "Every male between the ages of 14 and 65 worked in the yards, and it defined their lives and who they were."
Watt once taught art in the local secondary school and he is now preparing some old lessons for a new generation. Primary school children have been invited to see his exhibition, and Watt will be using his paintings to conduct workshops with them.
"I just want to tell them the story of their place and their people. It's important that they know where they came from and how beautiful it was."
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