Alive and Kicking: Curating Riverside Museum’s Record Shop Exhibit
Is the Record Shop today as “Alive and Kicking” as it was 40 or so years ago? A trip to the exhibit, ‘Spinning Around Glasgow’s Remarkable Record Shops’, at the Riverside Museum, Glasgow, Scotland, reveals how passing through the record shop’s doors signified an escape and immersion into a world of infinite possibilities, and a journey of self-discovery – all thanks to the music in the racks and, possibly, what was blasting through the shop speakers.
Using Primary Research from interviews with shop owners and musicians, reading rare fanzines and trawling through years and years of old Glasgow BT Phone Books and Yellow Pages, informed the production of some of the exhibit’s key moments for dynamic engagement, including a tactile interactive, audio-visual presentations, and the engaging of a visual artist to illustrate the vast span of record shops across Glasgow in map-form. The immersive audio soundtrack, comprising a song from every record, cassette and CD on display, also emulates a record shop ‘atmosphere’ and offers visitors – old and young, from near and far – the chance to enjoy music memories or hear something previously unknown.
Primal Scream, Strawberry Switchblade, Billy Connolly, Carol Kidd are exponents of just a fraction of the diverse genres coming from Glasgow in the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. Together with the more than 100 record shops of that same period, they made a significant contribution to Glasgow’s internationally-renowned music, creative and cultural scene, which led, ultimately to becoming a UNESCO City of Music.
Recent research revealed an opportunity to increase diversity representation, particularly Glaswegian musicians of colour. Work is now progressing to update the exhibit content and keep the exhibit, in the words of Glasgow band, Simple Minds, “Alive and Kicking”.
Keywords: record shop, interactive, museum, Glasgow
Biography
Neil Johnson-Symington joined Glasgow Museums in 2005 and is Curator for Transport and Technology, responsible for Cars, Emergency Vehicles, Motorcycles, and Bicycles. With a multi-disciplined and dynamic approach to curatorial projects, his displays and research work features many crossovers in transport, design, social history and the arts.
Neil gained his undergraduate degree from the University of Edinburgh and his postgraduate degree from Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has worked widely in the arts curating exhibitions for the National Maritime Museum, London, Design Museum, London, Pittenweem Arts Festival in Fife, Summerlee Museum in North Lanarkshire, and the Lighthouse Centre for Architecture, Design and the City in Glasgow.
Glasgow Life Museums, United Kingdom – neil.johnson-symington@glasgowlife.org.uk