STEP was an artwork created by artist Jacqueline Donachie for Glasgow International 2021. In this work, Donachie explores Glasgow’s architectural heritage, much of which was designed and built in the Victorian era. It examines the relationship between these built environments and how they can restrict different types of bodies accessing them. Probing at who is excluded, and what the implications 

Donachie undertook an audit of the access points for many of Glasgow’s arts and cultural venues as well as temporary sites used for the GI festival; this research formed the basis of STEP. The form of the artwork was bound to the simple structure of a step and how it both limits and provides access, exercising an overlay of the temporary solutions we often see when adapting old buildings for public use. It considers how we might get to them, both physically and conceptually.

STEP itself is a modular work cast from pigmented concrete covering 20 square m, sited at Govan Graving Docks. The location situates you at the edge of Glasgow city centre, which is visible to the east looking across the vast and vacant contested space that itself is weighed down by the demands of heritage, the restrictions of civic funds and the need for restoration and development. The piece is based on imaginary and unfeasible overlay ramps for two of the buildings originally surveyed – Civic House (built 1920’s) and The Royal Faculty of Procurators building (built 1850’s). The concrete access ramps combined act as a visualisation of something awkward and cumbersome that is the standard response where steps make an entrance inaccessible; broken up, they create a place to commune and begin a much needed discussion about new ways for everyone to access their city.

The works sited at Govan Project Space are made in response to the borderline absurd idea, due to the number of steps, of producing a ramp for the low-level Queens Park railway station, a place which is also home to the cherished arts space Queens Park Railway Club. Like many older railway stations in Scotland including most of the Glasgow subway system, Queens Park was built with many stairs and no lifts. Our ambitious Victorian infrastructure, designed by ambitious Victorian men, yet again catching out every pram, limp, stick or wheel that approaches it.

The sculpture was created to make a vibrant place to commune and begin new discussions; however, COVID interrupted these plans and the project had to pivot from the initial plans which included a symposium called Step To, which was organised in collaboration with Glasgow City Heritage Trust to discuss the issues of accessible urban space in our changing cities. An iteration of this event happened online and the activation of the artwork was a performance by poet San Alland.