Vibrant Arts Pop-Up Announces Programme at Largest Free Fringe Space During COP26

The multi-purpose pop-up events space, The Landing Hub, is unveiled today (Wednesday 20 October). The Landing Hub also announces its exciting programme of film screenings, workshops, performances, visual art installations, talks and free fundraising parties which will run during the course of the COP26 conference.

Highlights over the opening weekend include The Landing Hub opening party which takes place on Friday 29th October from 6pm. The pop-up opens its doors to welcome artists and musicians: the Pilgrims of Nature, the Seed Sistas and Roo and Pablo for an evening of majestic performance. Expect Scottish folk music, plant wisdom and extraordinary audiovisuals. Join a group of ordinary people who set off on an extraordinary odyssey, walking 500 miles up The Spine of Albion, an ancient ley line running along Britain's longest north-south axis. After eight weeks of walking they've reached Glasgow ready for the opening weekend of UNCOP26. The Pilgrims have created an uplifting ceremony to celebrate the opening of The Landing Hub and kickstart the conference from the ground up.

The opening party also hosts Strange Loop (from VJ Jamie Wardrop and musician Sita Pieraccini) which will also be performed on Saturday 7 November. Bring an offering to the opening party, dress up as your favourite plant, and immerse yourself in a hypnotic visual installation. Partygoers are invited to bring foliage which, under the microscope, will transform into cosmic universes before your eyes.

Further highlights include Scottish conceptual visual artist Robert Montgomery's unveiling of a new large scale art piece Grace of the Sun on Saturday 30 October. The installation has been made using the Little Sun solar lamps designed by Olafur Eliasson and Frederik Ottesen, and realised in Glasgow through collaboration with the local art community. Measuring 11 metres by 5 metres the giant solar powered light poem will illuminate every day at sunset as a poetic beacon of hope for Glasgow. Visitors to the space are invited to join in with the installation each day between 2pm and 4pm.

Performance lecture The Seed Sistas present - Voices From The Hedgerow continues the opening weekend fun on Saturday 30 October. Come find the space between the worlds - where fairy folk play tricks, where hedgerow's open up with gifts of medicine, food and magic. Voices from the Hedgerow brings humour, joy and hope, where there has been destruction and loss. Come and learn from the plants themselves.

Katy Dye's Climate Grief Karaoke (supported by Tramway) which invites you to express Ecological Grief through song on Saturday 12 November. Whether it's Reef Grief, Glacial Depression, Heatwave Angst or North Pole Numbness, join her for a pop fuelled event in which your favourite power ballads or heartbreak anthems can help us release grief enormous enough to shake tectonic plates and Penny Chivas's creates a special version of her dance-theatre work Burnt Out for the Landing Hub on Saturday 12 November. The show intertwines fact with personal account and stands as intimate story and a universal meditation on one Australian's experience of our changing climate.

As well as centring indigenous voices in the programme, the Landing Hub will also highlight architectural responses to our changing world. Sunday 2 November sees Paris based architects Jakob+MacFarlane and Uili Lousi (Tonga-based artist and environmental activist) present their visionary project TongAbove. With sea levels rising due to climate change Lousi's homeland Tonga is threatened with disappearing underwater, TongAbove is a response to this extreme condition, using nature as inspiration to propose a new urban landscape.

Later that afternoon documentary film-maker Chris Leslie and architect Jude Barber discuss Glasgow's changing landscape at the second public screening of the documentary (Re)imagining Glasgow. Thursday 11 November sees Scott MacAuley, founder of the Anthropocene Architecture School, reimagine our built environments as, perhaps, the greatest opportunity for transformative climate action that we have close to hand, explore what that future could look like, and start to cultivate the conditions to make this a reality.

Pedro Perez premieres his project 'Artivismo Pintando Murales Derribamos Muros' on Wednesday 3 November ('By Painting Murals, We Tear Down Walls'), a "mural scale" digital exhibition where he has documented murals from around the world with a climate justice narrative. Pedro will introduce the work in the wider context of Artivismo in Latin America, and offer postcards of murals to be written and sent from The Landing Hub and will host a banner making workshops with local artists in preparation for the Global Day of Action on Saturday 6 November.

Brighton's ONCA Gallery are the hosts in the Landing Hub space on Thursday 4 November. Join representatives from a range of grassroots campaigning organisations for a series of talks and short films by indigenous artists and land defenders from Brazil, Cambodia and the UK. Defenders and researchers will share films that explore and highlight a wide range of lived experiences and resistance to ecologically and culturally destructive extractive projects, ranging from mega dams and logging to the construction of HS2.

On Friday 5 November the Landing Hub welcomes the Xingu Indigenous Occupation in collaboration with People's Palace Projects for a day of films, music, language workshops and climate conversations for all ages connecting the Kuikuro Indigenous village in the Amazon basin and the UK. Award-winning indigenous filmmaker Takumā Kuikuro will showcase a programme of short films from his personal archive of of more than 10 years of filmmaking, traditional singer Yamalui Kuikuro will lead a workshop on the Karib language, spoken only by the 650 Kuikuro people in six villages along the Xingu river. People's Palace Projects will host a panel, a cultural exchange between young people in Wales and young Indigenous people in the Xingu who are documenting their experiences of climate change and what it means for their way of life.

The COP26 coalition's The People's Summit takeover is at the Landing Hub from 8 - 10 November. While world leaders meet to discuss our future at COP26, the COP coalition and People's Summit will be building power for system change together. Bringing together the climate justice movement to discuss, learn and strategise for system change. Join them in person, or online for their launch at the Landing Hub, see https://cop26coalition.org/peoples-summit/ for more details. Watch our socials for full programme updates.

Radio Buena Vida's Scottish based guest DJs and selectors will play music from all over the world connecting with the voices, cultures and energies that will be passing through the Hub. DJs include Butoh The warrior, Neighbouring Sounds w/Osh', Conna Haraway of INDEX Records, Femmes 45, Sacred music from Brazil with Nightwave and Georgina Penstkart.

The Landing Hub will also host further panel discussions, workshops, film events and talks throughout the programme - please see the Sustainable Glasgow Landing website for full details.

At the wider Sustainable Glasgow Landing site, Glaswegians, visitors to the city and delegates are invited to explore vertical farming to Passivhaus technologies, via sustainable power generation and active travel solutions as well as an avenue of local and international exhibitors alongside an 'Exhibition Arbour' leading to The Landing Hub.

Watch our social media for further announcements from The Sustainable Glasgow Landing, Landing Hub and Landing Hub event partners.

Becca Thomas (ARB), Creative Director & Architect, New Practice, said: "New Practice are delighted to bring together this project, in collaboration with Inhouse, for Glasgow City Council which will provide a valuable public space for gathering, discussion and learning during COP26. We will be bringing life to this vacant site and hosting local and global organisations that are responding to the challenges of the climate crisis. New Practice are excited to invite Glaswegians, local organisations, global communities and delegates to this new space on the riverfront"

Leader of Glasgow City Council, Cllr Susan Aitken said: "While global leaders are meeting at the SEC, the Sustainable Glasgow Landing is a place where the city's people and communities can come together and have their own conversation about the climate crisis.

"The exciting programme of events reflects the fact that Glasgow, its city region and Scotland are all innovative and ambitious places; where sustainable solutions to immense challenges can be found and the lives of ordinary citizens are absolutely central to a just transition to net zero.

"I'm looking forward to seeing how Glaswegians and visiting delegates alike respond - and how they make it their own."

Kirsty Hood and Bex Anson of Glasgow based events company Inhouse said: "After an incredible summer of community events at Queens Park Arena in Glasgow's Southside, Inhouse were delighted to be invited by New Practice architects to collaborate on bringing to life 'The Landing Hub', a new temporary events space on the banks of the Clyde, at 220 Broomielaw.

"With all eyes on Glasgow for the vital COP26 conference we are focussed on widening the reach of climate justice movement through the arts, and have welcomed aboard theatre maker provocateur Bex Anson (Megahertz) who has background in site specific interventions and multi-artform projects to co-programme the space with us.

"With our collective passion for creating thought provoking events with accessibility at their core, we are eager to facilitate front line activists and artists, and give space to indigenous voices that must be heard."

Web and social media links:

https://www.thesustainableglasgowlanding.com/thelandinghub | @landinghubgla (Twitter, Instagram and Facebook)

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