MARKET MARKET to Transform Glasgow's Historic Fish Market Into Live Dining Experience

In Glasgow's former fish market, five local people invite audiences to join them for comfort food and stories as artist Craig McCorquodale presents Market Market, a new interactive performance event exploring belonging, memory and community through food taking place this weekend. Performances will run Saturday 25 July and Sunday 26 July 2026.

Presented as part of Merchant City Festival and Glasgow 2026 Festival, Market Market transforms Clydeside Hall at The Briggait into an alternative marketplace where stories, experiences and personal histories are exchanged alongside comfort food. Across one-hour lunchtime performances, five people connected to Glasgow's Merchant City share the dishes that sustained them through moments of uncertainty, survival and personal triumph.

Market Market uses comfort food to create an intimate space where memories, opinions and questions of identity are negotiated in real time. As audiences eat together, conversations emerge around how people live side-by-side in a changing city and what it means to call a place home. 

Craig McCorquodale is an artist based in Glasgow, pushing theatre into public space and public space back into the theatre. Often working with local people rather than actors, his projects ask us to look more closely at the people we share our streets with. The project forms an early public experiment within McCorquodale's wider national artwork State Banquet, a large-scale participatory project set to premiere in 2028.

Craig McCorquodale said: "I've always lived in Glasgow and so often I find myself lost in conversation with people I bump into while waiting for a train or quickly nipping to Morrisons – suddenly I'm wrapped up in the story of their life. We have sharp tongues in this city, and I wanted to make something that harnessed that funny sense of intimacy between strangers."

"When public debate feels increasingly polarised, and vested interests sow misinformation and division in this city, my work asks how we can come together in all our complexity. Because no one is just one thing, we are all multiple and constantly changing."

Describing the inspiration behind the project, McCorquodale said: "The project is unapologetic in its simplicity: five people connected to Merchant City ask us to join them in comfort eating. The audience will taste the food that's been a constant during life's turning points."

"Food allows people to reveal something magical about themselves, more than our public presentations ever could. It's also incredibly disarming, and I hope will allow the audience to look a little closer at the people we walk past on the street every day."

Audience members seated at the table will be served five dishes throughout the hour-long performance, while additional visitors are welcome to observe the work from around the edges of the dining space once ticketed places have sold out.

McCorquodale added: "Market Market is for you if you like to people-watch or eavesdrop on conversations you overhear on the bus, or if you're looking for something a bit different for an hour this weekend. I'll see you there."

Taking place within the historic surroundings of The Briggait's former fish market, the work asks audiences to consider how public spaces can once again become places of encounter, exchange and collective reflection. Through food and conversation, Market Market offers a portrait of contemporary Glasgow told by the people who live it every day.

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