Creative Glasgow x Collective Architecture: Spatial Ecologies for Culture

Creative Glasgow and Collective Architecture are collaborating on this special one-off Lightning Night event exploring spatial ecologies for culture in Glasgow. It will feature short presentations from a range of contributors from the architecture and design communities of the city, with opportunities to network and connect with attendees around this theme. 

This revisits Creative Glasgow's commitment to exploring both the emergent developments and pressures on the cultural spatial ecology, led by our members' interest in this area, and its impact on the accessibility and sustainability of creative practices and equity of participation and engagement. This was first explored in 2025 through our Symposium: Spaces and Places for Creatives in the City, held in Civic House, and resulted in a co-created Action Plan - which highlighted the need for greater mapping of available spaces, targeted research, knowledge exchange and training, policy advocacy, and focus on access and equity. This work has underpinned our commitment to exploring the city and its cultural venues, workshops, studios and creative spaces, with our membership community in our monthly Last Thursday member meet ups over the last year.

At a time when spaces and places for cultural production and creative practice, presentation and participation are changing rapidly and established approaches are increasingly precarious in the city, we are bringing the city's architecture and design communities together to share learning, build community and enhance opportunities for new cooperation and collaboration. This understands that the pressures faced in the built environment are not unique to the city's cultural sector, and that architecture and design practices can often illuminate connections across and between public sector, third sector and commercial sectors that have the propensity to open up new imaginations, possibilities, and approaches.

Thanks to generous in-kind contributions from our event partners Collective Architecture and donations raised through our ongoing fundraising campaign, this event is free! 

Can you help us continue to pay-it-forwards? We welcome donations from ticket bookers - all donations made will go towards our ongoing member support programmes, including monthly member meet up events, 1-2-1 support sessions, and member promotions.

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Running Order

6pm Networking and Refreshments on Arrival

6.30pm Welcome from event co-hosts Creative Glasgow and Collective Architecture

6.45pm Lightning Night Presentations

Contributors include: Collective Architecture, Neil McGuire of ArchiFringe, Alicia Storie, Josafinni Porter Chambers, Maeve Dolan and Chloe Spiby Loh - Tenements Magazine, and Graham Hogg of Lateral North (more details below)

7.45pm Agile City and Creative Glasgow - new project launch!

8pm Networking and refreshments to end

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About the Event Organisers

Creative Glasgow is a convening force in the city, with a membership community of over 450 creative practitioners working across a diverse range of creative disciplines, and scales of operation, from individual artists, and grassroots collectives, to large scale organisations and institutions. We work to connect, champion, and celebrate creative practitioners and their roles in Greater Glasgow – sharing knowledge, resources, and investing in skills, talent and new initiatives – contributing to the cultural, social and community wealth of the city in the process. We operate within the principles of contributing to a fairer, more environmentally sustainable, and collaborative creative and cultural sector.

Collective Architecture have been working for over 25 years within various sectors including housing, civic and culture projects, community facilities, learning and enterprise buildings, conservation/retrofit work and strategic planning. Working with both public and private sector clients, they encompass a wide range of views and approaches to the practice of architecture and foster friendly and collaborative working environments. Collective Architecture is a 100% employee-owned architectural practice, currently over 50-strong, working across studios in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Dundee. They shape buildings and spaces for, and with, everyone in society. They do this through their specialist skills, agility, and a participatory approach fused with empathy. We occupy, and enjoy, the creative space between idealism and pragmatism.

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ACCESSIBILITY INFORMATION

Creative Glasgow is committed to creating an inclusive, welcoming and accessible environment in all its programmed events.

This event takes place in Collective Architecture's Glasgow Offices, 4th Floor, Albert Chambers, 13 Bath St, Glasgow G2 1HY

There is lift access into the venue, and level access throughout once inside. The venue has accessible toilets.

The event is seated. Refreshments and food will be served on arrival.

More information about the venue can be found here: https://www.collectivearchitecture.co.uk/contact

Please note any dietary, access or support requirements when booking and a member of the Creative Glasgow team will be in touch if we need to discuss these further.

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About the Programme Contributors - more details to follow soon!

Graham Hogg, Director and Co-Founder, Lateral North

Lateral North is an engagement and design collective based in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded in 2013, they collaborate with clients, organisations and communities to co-design ideas and create memorable experiences. Their work has taken them throughout Scotland, the UK and internationally. Their projects are diverse and include collaborations with local community groups and artists to global institutions like UNESCO, Scottish Government, BBC, LEGO, National Trust for Scotland and University of Glasgow.

In early 2026, Lateral North launched a new campaign Reconnect Glasgow, a mechanism to develop a collective creative response to the Transport Scotland consultation on the future of the M8's Woodside Viaducts. 

https://lateralnorth.com/reconnect/

Neil McGuire, Designer, ArchiFringe

Architecture Fringe is a grassroots organisation based in Scotland that explores architecture and design in our social, political and cultural contexts. ArchiFringe is now a biannual festival - the next festival edition will take place in 2027. 

https://architecturefringe.com/

Maeve Dolan & Chloe Spiby Loh - Tenements Magazine

Maeve is a Glasgow-based architectural designer, facilitator, and educator, specialising in community-led development. Her work brings together engagement, brief development, meanwhile-use, spatial strategy and the delivery of built-outcomes. She is Associate of Place at New Practice and a studio tutor at the Mackintosh School of Architecture.

Chloe Spiby Loh (she/her) is a builder of creative projects. Originally trained as an Architect, she now applies her design-thinking to take creative ideas from concept to delivery - working with artists, cultural organisations and creative teams. In her current role as the Immersive Arts Producer for Scotland, she has distributed funding and support to artists working with creative technologies across the UK
Her expertise is in building interdisciplinary projects and programmes that both connect audiences to art and culture - managing public programmes at Wellcome Collection, RIBA and the Architecture Foundation. Prior to this, she worked in award-winning architecture offices including O'Donnell + Tuomey, David Kohn Architects and Eric Parry Architects.

Tenements Magazine

Maeve and Chloe will be sharing early plans and ideas for a brand new independent magazine about Scotland’s Tenement buildings and the stories of the people living inside who inhabit, adapt, and change these historic urban buildings into contemporary homes.
"We shape our tenements and they shape us."

Alicia Storie: Designing sustainable interiors that reflect your values

Alicia Storie is the founder of the award-winning, climate-conscious interior design studio AdesignStorie and a Design Council Expert, helping to deliver their Design for Planet mission. She creates biophilic, wellbeing-focused spaces with a strong emphasis on sustainable materials and delivers talks and training workshops on sustainable design, guiding designers and organisations to adopt climate-conscious practices. Alicia champions the transformative power of design to address the climate crisis and drive positive change. She has been selected by the World Design Organisation for the Designers Circle, an initiative that promotes design for a better world and supports the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Website https://adesignstorie.com/

IG @adesignstorie

Finni of Josafinni Studios: Participatory Design Practices

Finni is a participatory designer who connects design and community. Major works include interior design with Anna Campbell-Jones to co-design a non-clinical and welcoming design scheme for The Nook by SAMH. Finni worked as a research assistant for DesignHOPES at Strathclyde University. She designed a facilitation tool that engages NHS communities in co-designing inclusive healthcare gardens and hospital grounds to enhance health and wellbeing, exhibited at The V&A.

Other collaborators include Sustrans, Renfrewshire Council, and Creative Glasgow, for participatory spatial design projects. Amongst her achievements, Finni sits on the board of Architecture Fringe, advising on accessibility; was awarded a residency at Royal Designers for Industry; and her work has been featured in Disegno Journal.

https://www.josafinnistudio.uk/

Rob Morrison, Director, Agile City
Agile City CIC mission is to create work and event space for cultural, social and green enterprise to thrive. Based in Speirs Locks, North Glasgow, it has spent over a decade transforming a former post-industrial site into a living campus of creative and civic infrastructure, including Civic House, Civic Street, and the Glue Factory. Through retrofit, community energy systems, circular making, and public realm projects, Agile City demonstrates how cities can be reimagined as sites of innovation, social enterprise, and cultural production. Its work brings together artists, designers, communities, and researchers to test and scale regenerative approaches to city making in Glasgow.

Project Teaser – Design Audacity [working title]

Design Audacity is a new project led by Agile City CIC and Creative Glasgow, supported by Creative Scotland. It will bring designers and commercial businesses together to explore bold, speculative responses to the climate emergency. Through a series of live design challenges in 2026, creative practitioners will collaborate with business partners to develop innovative, future-facing ideas that move beyond “net zero” as a binary target, towards building a regenerative, climate-positive economy. The outcome will be a public programme of collective production that positions design and business as critical drivers for reimagining just, imaginative, and resilient urban futures.