Our next item is an evidence-taking session on the aftermath of the fire at the Glasgow School of Art.
The Mackintosh building is, of course, one of Scotland’s most important icons, and it is safe to say that we were all shocked when we saw the images of the building on fire. Personally, I had great fears for the entire building and its contents. I know that a lot of work has been undertaken to ensure the safety of the structure and, of course, to save the contents, particularly the students’ work. I should note for interest that, by a strange coincidence, this session also fits into our work on assessing the Historic Environment Scotland Bill.
I welcome to the committee Professor Tom Inns, director of the Glasgow School of Art; Sam De Santis, president of the Glasgow School of Art Students Association; and Diana Murray and Ranald MacInnes from Historic Scotland. Thank you for attending. I am sure that you are all busy at this time, and your appearance before the committee is appreciated by members.
I will kick off the questions by asking for a brief assessment of the current state of play. What is the extent of the damage? What work is under way to assess it? How do you see the next few weeks and months progressing?
I think that talking you through the timeline will be the best way of catching up on the state of play.
The fire was on 23 May. The fire service attended that afternoon and dealt with the incident as an actual fire scene. At the school, we set up emergency critical management procedures, which in the first instance were largely to do with the safety and security of staff and students. In the 24 hours that followed the fire, a great deal of our work involved assessing the situation and setting up the kind of work streams that we needed to ensure the academic continuity of the school as a higher education institution in its own right at a critical point in the academic year and to deal with issues associated with the Mackintosh building. After all, its contents have many different dimensions. There are contents of historical significance, student work and all the elements that are associated with the school’s administrative systems that live inside the building.
From 24 May to 30 May, we closed Glasgow School of Art to students and academic activity, and we had an intensive week of bringing things out of the building under the direction of the fire and rescue services and with the assistance and advice of Historic Scotland, particularly with regard to the historical items that needed to come out of the building during that time. On 30 May, we reopened the school to academic activity and the building was handed over to building control. From then on, it was no longer under the direction of the fire and rescue services.
During that period, many of the historical items, such as the moveable furniture that was still in the east wing, were taken out and placed in secure storage. Our archives and collections were also taken out and put into secure storage. Some archives, particularly the textiles archive, were water damaged, but they have been sent off for specialist restoration. All of that happened in the course of that week.
Since then, we have returned to some academic normality. We have completed all the assessment processes for all students. Last week, on 12 June, we opened our degree show, and this Friday, we will have graduation. In short, we will have completed the assessments and taken all the student work out. One hundred and two fine art students were directly affected by the fire; a good proportion of them lost all their work or had a majority of it significantly damaged, and we have set up all sorts of things for them that are associated with the degree show. With support and contributions from the Scottish Government, we have also put in place the phoenix bursaries, which will be announced formally today and will be significant in giving support to our students.
Our focus is now very much on business continuity, which has many dimensions. We have to deal with what happens in the next academic session by finding locations for students and staff who have been temporarily decanted, and we are obviously having complex negotiations with our insurance company. Building control will, I think, complete its phase of the work at the end of June, after which we will go into the different phases of restoration in consultation with Historic Scotland and other parties.
That is where we are as of today. Things are progressing.
Does Historic Scotland have anything to add?
We are working very closely with the Glasgow School of Art and Tom Inns. At the school’s request, we were able to be on the scene at the appropriate time, and we took responsibility for organising the salvage operation within the building, largely because we have staff who are trained and have qualifications in working in dangerous buildings. We were able to deploy those staff—the fire service was happy to let them into the building, whereas it was not at all happy about letting in other volunteers—and we were able to direct the salvage operations from within the building, which was really helpful.
We and the fire service were also able to salvage much of the building’s fabric and many of its contents. Without the fire service and its bravery, much more of the building would have gone.
We are now in a good position to look forward with the school to the next stage of the work. We have a little bit of time in which to reflect and think not only about the best way forward but about, as Tom Inns has said, the restoration project and how it should proceed. We are standing by to give as much advice and help as we can as the school takes responsibility for its building.
Thank you. We will now get into the detail because members have a lot of questions about the impact on the building, what will happen in the future and the impact on the students. Mary Scanlon will go first.
Like all members, I want to put on record that all credit should go to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. As an onlooker, I saw the height of professionalism.
I have questions about money and the restoration funds. An article in The Scotsman on 26 May estimated the cost of the building’s restoration at between £15 million and £20 million and said that the work would take four years to complete. Is that the sort of figure that we are thinking about, or is it still too early to say?
It is too early to say. Since the publication of that article, which was based on somebody on the outside suggesting what the cost of restoring the building might be, we have been in discussion with the insurance company, and an emergency team has been appointed to deal with the immediate securing of the building and so on.
The estimate is probably somewhere between £20 million and £35 million. Because the building is still being secured, as it were, by building control, we have not had complete access to it to carry out a complete survey in preparation for the restoration. There seems to be quite a high degree of variance in the estimates, but that is the reality of the situation. Of course, those estimates also include fees and VAT.
I note that, and I realise that it is bit unfair to ask you that question at this point. I also note that you are hoping for offers of practical as well as financial assistance. Given that we are currently considering the Historic Environment Scotland Bill, committee members are all very aware of the funding demands on Historic Scotland.
Casting the net wider, I wonder whether you are confident that over the time period the money will come forward. Obviously, you will want to get back to business as soon as possible. The Scottish Government is providing up to £5 million of funding, and although our briefing paper does not mention any funding from Westminster, I am aware that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have said that, if necessary, they could make a contribution amounting to millions of pounds. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury has said that
“at the moment we don’t know the precise extent of the damage”.
Based on the offers of help and assistance that you have received so far, are you confident that if the figure for the restoration work is £35 million, that money will be forthcoming to enable you to get back to business as soon as is practically possible?
I think that we are reasonably confident. I say “reasonably confident”, because there are unknowns. We have an insurance policy on the building, so it is well insured. However, although the insurance will cover certain things, it will not cover others and indeed might not cover particular items. This is an extremely complex insurance case, and the situation will unfold over time.
We will obviously be fundraising; we have had the very generous offer that you have mentioned from the Scottish Government; and other offers are being discussed with the Westminster Government. We will have to raise funds, so we will set up a fundraising campaign. If all those things come together, we will be able to cover the restoration costs.
So you have a degree of comfort and confidence at this time.
As an optimistic person, I am reasonably comfortable about all of this.
I believe that the Mackintosh building fire fund that you launched had an initial target of £1 million. What is the situation with regard to pledges to the fund? A BBC report has stated that the restoration fund has already received pledges of millions of pounds. How accurate is that? Where do you think that you are?
We marked up the original fund at £1 million, but you should bear in mind that we did so on the Saturday after the fire. The pledges were coming through while we were still dealing with a critical incident, and we set the target before we had been able to sit down and work things out. We will formally launch the fund on Wednesday, and we are looking to raise probably between £10 million and £20 million. The figure depends on what we will need to be reasonably comfortable about the situation.
It is too early to comment on the pledges that have been made so far. I have some understanding of what has come in; I know that we have had some very generous contributions from individuals and one or two pledges from trusts and organisations, but it is a little bit too early to say exactly what has been pledged. However, I think that we are reasonably comfortable that if we work well and effectively, we will be able to raise the funds.
Have other institutions made similar fundraising efforts to support you? There was a press report that Edinburgh College of Art was considering doing something along those lines.
Are you talking about fundraising?
Yes.
There are lots of examples of organisations in the academic environment and the cultural landscape that have put in place development trusts to raise funding for things. There are lots of precedents for raising that level of funding.
10:15
I was asking not about raising that level of funding but about support for your own fundraising.
Yes, there has been huge support from other institutions. Some support has come from individuals and some has come from groups. Edinburgh College of Art, other art schools and groups of students have been fundraising and sending through funds to support what is going on. In fact, a huge amount of that work has been going on. There have been several thousand contributions to the fundraising from individuals, groups of individuals and so on.
And, because of that reaction, you are confident that you will achieve the £10 million minimum.
Yes, I think so. This is all new to me. I have never run an academic organisation going through this sort of thing, but we have put in place a professional team. My understanding is that, in such situations, we will get lots of offers of support from individuals and small groups, but to hit some of the higher funding targets, we will have to seek funding from trusts and organisations in a different kind of way. That will unfold as the fundraising campaign develops.
Let me break this down, so that I am clear about it. We do not know how much you will raise, but you expect to raise funding from roughly three sources. One is the insurance settlement. One is money coming from the Government—or Governments—and Government bodies. The third is public donations and subscriptions. Is that accurate?
Yes—public donations and those from trusts and other supporting bodies. That, in principle, is how we will fund the restoration.
I know that you do not know how much will be involved—you have not yet announced how much you are looking for from the public subscription and the trust funds—but is it clear how much funding you are getting from the United Kingdom Government, the Scottish Government and public bodies?
We are very clear about the funding support that we are getting from the Scottish Government for the phoenix bursaries. That is one particular element.
I was not referring to bursaries; I am asking about the restoration.
The Scottish Government has said that it will match fund up to £5 million to support the restoration. I have not yet had the detailed discussion with the Scottish Government as to exactly what the bandwidth of that funding is and how it will be constructed. We have not got to that point in the post-recovery process, but I think that we will be having that discussion reasonably shortly.
Mary Scanlon said that there was some comment at the time from the UK Government, although I do not know whether there is any more detail on that.
There is no more detail about it from the UK Government at the moment.
Have you sought details?
Yes—we have been having discussions with the UK Government, but there is nothing that I can articulate here.
Okay—fair enough.
The UK Government has said:
“we don’t know the precise extent of the damage or what the costs will be, so I can’t put a figure on it, but”
it will make a contribution
“in the millions, if necessary”.
It is waiting for the detail that we are all waiting for.
I accept that. I was just trying to get some clarity on the matter.
What exactly is Historic Scotland’s role in funding the restoration—or is there a funding role for Historic Scotland?
Yes, it is certainly likely to have a role as far as the building restoration is concerned. The building had just undergone a major conservation programme, to which the Scottish Government contributed more than £1 million, purely in terms of building grants. That was part of an £8.5 million conservation project, which was co-funded with the Heritage Lottery Fund and others.
The damaged part of the building will be consolidated, and that process is on-going. The restoration will be scoped as part of an existing contract with the firm of architects that has been appointed to do it. That will go out to tender and will be costed. At that point, we will know the amount of grant that is being sought.
You have mentioned the Heritage Lottery Fund and the recent work that has been undertaken. Is it likely or possible that there will be money from the Heritage Lottery Fund or from some other lottery funding source that will be used to assist?
I would not like to speak for the Heritage Lottery Fund, but it is certainly a possibility.
I want to explore the impact of the support that is being given. I was interested to hear Diana Murray mention that Historic Scotland has experience with dangerous buildings. Can you elaborate on that, just for information?
Historic Scotland has 345 properties, most of which do not have a roof. Our teams of staff who deal with those buildings must be qualified in how to deal with buildings that have wall heads that are likely to be loose, and how to work with scaffolding on what are effectively building sites to ensure that buildings without a roof do not fall down. They have a lot of experience with that type of thing.
How many of your staff are involved at present in supporting the GSA? I saw that there were 35 originally, but I do not know where the figure currently stands.
Our involvement has been scaled down; the 35 staff were the people who responded in the first week. Various teams of conservation staff went in and provided the manpower to assist in removing items and securing the building. They also helped the fire crews in allocating the areas where they should go and in deciding what was most important to deal with in terms of the building structure.
In addition, the conservation teams assisted in recording the building in the state that it was in. We did a full 3D imaging laser scan of the building, which is an area in which we work in partnership with the Glasgow School of Art anyway. A team from the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland came in to ensure that the building was recorded from exactly the same positions that had been used for earlier surveys so that we could compare and contrast.
A lot of that work was quite important in determining what should be saved and what should be removed. Ranald MacInnes can say something about working with the people from the council’s building control department.
Yes—we worked closely with Glasgow School of Art, building control and loss adjusters. I should also mention the national collections of Scotland, including Museums Galleries Scotland and National Records of Scotland. All those bodies were involved in a co-ordinated, intelligent salvage operation.
We needed to consider the contents of the building and the surviving structure, which had to be made safe and consolidated. We were involved in that work in an advisory way and also physically, by removing some of the damaged material for conservation. That material is part of the building fabric, and it will stay with us and then go back during the building’s restoration.
It may be too soon to say, but in the longer term will you have staff involved in the project full time? What will Historic Scotland’s involvement be in the next few years as the restoration goes ahead?
We would expect to pass the damaged part of the building back into the school’s possession, but we will certainly not give up at that point. We will continue to advise by working in close partnership with whatever management structure the school decides is appropriate for taking the project forward.
My concern is to understand how much resource Historic Scotland and its successor body will have to commit to ensure that the project goes through.
We will commit the kind of resources that we would commit in any such event, in which we would provide mostly advice and help in kind where it is appropriate.
An application for restoration will have to be made through the listed building process, which will go through the local authority with Historic Scotland’s advice. There will be conditions attached to that, as there would be for any normal listed building consent case. We will revert to our normal role, which would be the same for any building.
Although the project will take up a lot of resource, we will not allocate any special resource to it that we would not allocate to deal with other buildings in Scotland, which is our job.
Unfortunately, all these considerations come back to budget. Can you indicate whether you are able to absorb those costs within your budget?
We have been tracking the costs that we spent during the emergency situation. One never wants to have to say, “We can’t do this because it will cost too much money”, especially with something like this. We responded, but we tracked the costs and are calculating those at present.
We will discuss with the Scottish Government’s culture and heritage department whether those costs can be reimbursed from any of the funds, or whether we will have to absorb them, but it is early days in that respect at present.
As things progress, the funding will come in by the route that has been described today. I expect that most of Historic Scotland’s contribution will be part of our business as usual. We will seek to provide assistance through our grants programme and our usual heritage management programme.
Historic Scotland is currently going through an important merger, which is having a considerable impact internally. Will there be any impact on the resources or efficiencies from that merger as a result of what has happened with the GSA? Does the situation change the make-up of the merged body in any way?
We will be doing a couple of things that we would do anyway. First, we will all sit down to look at the lessons learned and consider how we can respond if such an incident happens in the future. We will consider whether we responded in the best way and whether we could have responded in a better way.
We were going to hold a workshop anyway with the other national collections on incident preparedness planning. That event will take on a new focus when we come to it later in the year, because we will have the GSA fire as an example.
The new board may well want to look at how funding and grants are allocated in future, and we may be able to look at the work we are doing with the GSA as an example of where the new body might or might not have a role. That will be for the new board to decide. Otherwise, I cannot think of a direct difference, because the whole point of the new body is that existing functions will be taken forward, so there is nothing that can happen now that will not be able to happen in future.
I have one small question. I see that the national collections have committed resources. What is the extent of that contribution?
The national collections were also heroic in their response. Everybody was on standby on the Friday afternoon when it all happened; we were all aware of the fire. The national collections were all on standby to send conservators and experts along, and many of those were called on.
The National Records of Scotland sent its head archivist to help with the removal of the archives. Tom Inns asked me whether we could do anything on conservation of the students’ work, and the National Galleries of Scotland was able to send an expert in modern artworks to lend a hand in that respect.
Museums Galleries Scotland co-ordinated experts from right across its contacts, and Icon, which is the Scottish institute of conservation, was also on standby and ready to respond. A lot of people were there and were able to help in the first instance. Indeed, they are still there and are willing to assist in the future.
Joanne Orr from Museums Galleries Scotland has been helping to co-ordinate some of the response and advising on what sort of project management structure might be put in place to co-ordinate the conservation work.
Glasgow Museums and Glasgow Life have been involved in assessing the conservation work that is needed for the collections. The GSA collection is, of course, one of the recognised collections under the Museums Galleries Scotland scheme, so it is extremely important, and the building architecturally significant, both nationally and internationally.
The eyes of the world, and the conservation world, are on the work and the response in Glasgow. There has been a huge response.
10:30
As you have said, the eyes of the world are upon you, which puts quite a bit of responsibility on everyone, and you have also said that lessons need to be learned. I know that it is very early days, but what steps do Historic Scotland and/or the school itself intend to take to prevent any recurrence of such an incident?
The police and fire service are still investigating the incident and have yet to report on it. We have a good sense of what happened, but there are certain details that are still unknown, and we will have to reflect on the incident itself.
Obviously we intend to return to the Mackintosh building as soon as we can and to have a working art school in what is a historically significant and beautiful building. As we move through the restoration process and bring the building back on stream, we will probably need to learn a lot about the systems that we need to put into the building.
We will be looking very carefully at those things as far as the art school is concerned, and in the background there are the generic organisational lessons and learning opportunities that an organisation the scale of the Glasgow School of Art can learn from such an incident.
What lessons can Historic Scotland learn from this?
As I have said, we will, as we do periodically, review our incident preparedness planning, which will provide us with the detail of what actually happened. You can do these things theoretically but, having been responsible for a collection and done such planning for many years now, I can tell you that it is only when you go in and realise that the place looks and smells like a bonfire that it hits home what you need to deal with. That kind of planning will help with our approach.
For many years now, Historic Scotland and RCAHMS have been working with the fire service on an in-cab system to ensure that firefighters have plans and photographs of all A-listed buildings that they can use to prepare themselves on their way to a fire. They had that material for this incident—although I should say that they already knew the building quite well—and it was interesting to see the system at work. The fire service knew that it was a really important building—it probably knew that anyway, given that it was in Glasgow—had plans of it and knew the important things to save and how to fight the fire itself. Its approach to fighting the fire was quite different to the way in which it would deal with a fire in any other building.
We are really pleased with that particular system, but I know that Ranald MacInnes has been working on fire suppression in other listed buildings and how we advise on such matters.
We have been researching this subject for many years; in fact, as Diana Murray has pointed out, we pioneered with Strathclyde Fire Brigade the concept of in-cab information that can be delivered on the way to a fire. It has been successful and has been rolled out across Scotland.
Fire is, of course, such a danger. We see a lot of fires; indeed, we lose a building every month to fire. All our work has focused on preparedness, and we have reflected on situations that have happened and on how we can prevent fires themselves. We have issued a lot of guidance on this area, and we are also prepared to give building owners detailed advice on how they can best prevent fires.
As for our attitude to fires, we are always on the alert. When there is a major incident, we are bound to reflect on it and look for any learning points with regard to our reaction to it.
On the day of the fire—or certainly the day after the fire—the fire service, I think, estimated that roughly 90 per cent of the building and about 70 per cent of its contents had been saved. Are those figures accurate, or do you have a more accurate updated figure?
As far as the building structure is concerned, I do not know how one judges whether 85 or 90 per cent has been saved. It might be that 80 to 90 per cent of the structure is intact. Of course, it all depends on how you define the term “intact”, and I will defer to Historic Scotland on that matter, particularly now that the extent of the damage at the very top of the building is a little clearer.
I should imagine that the 70 per cent figure for the contents is reasonably accurate when averaged out across the interiors in the building, the archives and other elements such as the studios, the students’ work and so on. Probably more than 30 per cent of the student work went, but 70 per cent overall is probably right. As I have said, however, I do not know about the structure and how one can define 90 per cent of that as being saved.
When you visit the site now, you will see that the building’s profile and external structure are more or less intact. That is astonishing, and it all comes down to how the fire was fought. Some elements of the upper part of the building have been removed, but that is for reasons of safe storage, conservation and replacement. I would say that the figure you have mentioned is as accurate as it can be—the building certainly looks intact.
Thank you. I appreciate the difficulty of estimating these things but all I can say is that an estimate was made.
We would all echo Mary Scanlon’s comments about the fire service, and it is also to Glasgow School of Art’s credit that there were no injuries and that everyone was able to make their way safely out of the building. We should be very thankful for that. Losing the building would have been a tragedy, but things could have been far worse. How are the students at the moment, and how do they feel about the measures that have been put in place with regard to the degree show and the support that is available?
With the events on the Friday, things were very busy on Garnethill. It was a very shocking sight, and the following week, all the students, especially the final-year students, appreciated the distance and space; after all, everyone was still reeling. The amount of work that was being done by staff, the fire service and my team in the students association was clear to see. I have been in contact with a lot of students over the preceding week, who have told me that they have felt supported. The counselling service was available in Hope Street from first thing on the Saturday after the incident. It remained open over the weekend and the following week, and it remains open to the students who need it.
The following Thursday or Friday, a week after the fire, sensible questions about assessment, graduation and the degree show started to be raised. It was very quickly realised that there would be no fine art degree show. The decision was made quite quickly—and correctly—that the schools of architecture and design should proceed with their degree shows. The fine art students felt that that was needed; had either school decided that it would be inappropriate to display their final-year students’ work, that would have dragged the other students down.
Alistair Payne, the acting head of fine art, and his fine art team were very quick to realise the need to have a physical presence on 12 and 13 June in the current degree show, and they quickly pulled together the showcase—the single image for each student—and the publication that was brought out. The fact that all that was pulled together by last Friday, only three weeks after what had happened, is very impressive. The students are obviously extremely disappointed that they have only one image to represent four years of work, but it was a great gesture and they have benefited greatly from being able to show a physical object.
Also, the phoenix bursaries are coming through—there will be an announcement later today and the details will be known to students later in the week. Students are still waiting for specifics and they have questions, as they should do. However, I have been heavily involved and I am confident that they have a lot of good things coming to them and that the process of the bursary and the residency scheme will benefit the students greatly.
Being a students association, we are supported by the school, but we are independent of it—we are in the position of being a critical friend. Being on the ground throughout that week, I was amazed and immensely proud of everybody who was involved in the process. The delicate approach that was taken and the respect that was shown to staff and students, particularly with regard to the students’ work, were impressive to see.
The fire service was very respectful of the students’ work and treated it exactly as they treated the rest of the contents.
Absolutely.
That is important. Is the documentation—the visual images—something that the students would normally have done in the process of the creation of their artwork? I was really intrigued that that was available to everyone at the time.
Throughout the development of the degree show and heading into the show, the constant message is “Document your show.” I graduated from fine art photography only two years ago, so the memory of the degree show pressure is still very fresh. You document, you document and you document your show, so a lot of students have photographic images of their final installations. In terms of how that relates to assessment and evidence of the work that is produced, it is extremely difficult. For me, once one student’s work is completely lost, nobody can base their assessment on documentation of what was in that degree show space. Some students did not document because their shows involved installation, performance, or video works, so it is very difficult.
As regards documentation of the spaces after the event, every studio space that we could get into was well documented by the fine art team, so if students really want to understand what their studios are like, they can see those images—which I think would be good.
Professor Inns mentioned the capacity issue—where students will be placed, and so on. Is the bursary intended to support the current student cohort or will it be available to new students coming in who may not be able to study in that building any more? What are the impacts on capacity?
The bursary scheme is very much directed at the group of 102 fine art students who will be graduating on Friday. The key point is that when they graduate on Friday, they will receive their degree certificate from the University of Glasgow—because the university confers our degrees—but they have lost the body of work that is critical to their professional networking and to their lives as professional artists. They have lost the degree show moment.
Those students have had their showcase moment, but the degree show moment, when all their work is on display, is not only when students sell some of their work, but is when they make professional contacts with galleries, for example. That is the key thing. A huge number of UK, European and international galleries come to that degree show. In terms of professional networking, it is a critical moment for the students.
The bursaries will provide those students with the opportunity to spend some time—probably about three to four months—creating new work. We have had numerous offers from other institutions, including other Scottish art colleges—Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Edinburgh College of Art and Gray’s School of Art—institutions in the UK and institutions in Europe, America, Japan and so on, with which we have relationships.
We cannot accommodate those students in Garnethill, but it has offered to provide studio space and some tutorial support. The bursary will not involve an academic programme; it is more a type of residency scheme. The bursary will pay a small stipend to the students and will cover some of the costs of engaging in that activity. Students might take up studio space in the professional sector in Glasgow, as well.
At the beginning of next year, in March, we will be able to have an exhibition of those students’ work, which will be the equivalent of the degree show moment. There will be clear water between that exhibition and the degree show for the graduating students of 2015.
You are right that the students who will be coming into programme or continuing their programmes in September will not have the opportunity to be in the Mackintosh building. At the moment, we are considering a variety of different sites in Glasgow to which to decant them.
It will take us at least 12 to 18 months to get back into the east wing of the Mackintosh building. It will take us 36 or, possibly, 48 months to get into the west wing. We will gradually bring the building back on stream, but we will look after the students who are continuing to study or coming into programme by finding suitable accommodation.
10:45
The Scottish Government press release on the phoenix bursary scheme that was issued this morning states that the Government will provide up to £750,000 in student aid, which is welcome. Will you go into detail, given your knowledge of what is happening? We have only just seen the press release, which says that the money,
“alongside donations to the School, will go towards funding short term living costs, academic supervision and other items such as provision of studio space.”
What can an individual student who has lost some or all of their work expect from the scheme?
I do not have the financial breakdown per student, but the expectation is that each student would receive the opportunity to, in effect, undertake a residency for, I think, 15 weeks.
The students will receive a financial stipend during that time to pay their living costs. They might return home, so a student from Edinburgh might go back to Edinburgh but choose to use studios in ECA, for example, because they have been offered to us. The students’ travel costs to wherever they work will also be paid for and they will have money for consumables and materials to reconstruct the work physically. A small amount of money will also be assigned to support from a professional adviser or some kind of tutoring system within the host institution; I think that it will be something like 25 to 30 hours’ worth. That is the package for each student. The students do not know that detail, so perhaps I am giving away more than I should.
That is what we are here to find out. It is what the meeting is for.
I wonder whether the students are tuned into the committee online.
The students will bid for that support, so they will make professional applications. We are borrowing models and frameworks for dealing with the fund from other places, such as the residency scheme that Creative Scotland operates. Those students are graduates now and the fund is about providing them with a platform on which to rebuild their professional lives.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that you said that 102 students have been affected.
There are 102 students in that final year cohort.
Can you give us a breakdown of how many were impacted by the fire and the extent of the impact? Are any students in that 102 completely unaffected and are there any who have lost absolutely everything?
That is interesting and has been vexing our minds over the past three and a half weeks. Of the 102 students in that cohort, some have lost absolutely everything; their studios have completely gone and all their work was in the studios.
Can you quantify that “some”?
Probably about 35 per cent have lost absolutely everything. That is four years’ work. They were getting ready for their degree show, so all their valuable items were located in the studio space for that one moment. That means that everything is gone apart from the digital records that they might have.
Another 20 per cent or 25 per cent of the students have significantly fire-damaged work. The fire crews took work out of the spaces, but it is significantly damaged.
Some students’ work is water damaged; even in the east wing, there was a lot of water. Sketch books that are water damaged are being frozen as we speak. The rest of it is smoke damaged and has significant smoke penetration.
The key thing about that is that some students’ work still exists and was not damaged, but they have lost their degree show moment—their professional networking moment. Although some of them have physically intact work, it is difficult for them to exhibit it until it has been through restoration and conservation.
To answer your question, across the 102 students there is a bandwidth, all the way from the 35 per cent who have absolutely nothing, to the group in the middle whose work is significantly damaged, to the others whose professional networking moment has been damaged and whose work is damaged in the sense that it is complex and difficult for them to exhibit.
Other members have questions, and I will bring in Neil Bibby in a second, but I have one final question. For the group who have in effect lost nothing—that sounds terrible, but they have lost nothing in the physical sense, because their work is intact—as you say, their moment in the sun and their networking opportunity have been affected, which could have an impact on their professional careers. Are they as entitled to apply for bursary support as those who have had their work damaged?
Yes—they will have the opportunity to apply. They might frame their application differently, because their needs in creating a new platform of work and exhibiting it might be different from the needs of those who have lost everything.
The support is open to all 102 students.
Yes. When we thought about the issue and dug into the nitty-gritty of it—bear in mind that we were planning this 24 hours out from the incident while there were lots of other things going on—it became apparent early on how difficult it is in reality to make the judgment in black and white terms whether or not someone is affected, when the totality of the 102 students were inside the building on the Friday afternoon.
I am not sure about the timing of the events. In relation to the students being awarded their degrees, had the final marks for students been collated prior to the fire?
No. We were just running up to the point at which we were to close for the assessment process. Everything was to be frozen at 5 o’clock on the Friday afternoon—that is when all the work was to be inside the degree show spaces—and the assessment teams were to go in on the following Monday. That critical part of the process had not been completed on the Friday afternoon.
Have students been awarded an estimate on the basis of their previous work?
We have completely gone through the assessment process and all the students have been awarded their marks and degree classifications. Obviously, that was reasonably complex, but we were able to do it because, generally speaking, individual students quite often have mitigating circumstances. With this particular incident, we had collective mitigating circumstances. With an individual student who has mitigating circumstances, we systematically go through their circumstances and all our assessment records running up to the point of mitigation. That allows us to make a judgment. In this instance, we had to explore that in great detail for a large cohort of students. However, we feel confident about the judgments that have been made. That is largely down to the frameworks within which assessments take place.
What percentage of the students were you able to mark fully on the basis of the work that had been done, and for what percentage did you have to rely on an estimate?
To go right down into the nitty-gritty, normally when we do the assessments, our assessment teams walk round the degree show spaces and assess a collective body of work in exhibition format. We were not able to do that for any of the 102 students, because all the work was set up in the studios of the Mackintosh building. The Mackintosh building usually has first, second, third and fourth-year students in it during the academic year, but when the fire struck, no first, second or third-year work was in the building because it was totally given over to the final year students in fine art, who were setting it up as a big exhibition space. None of the students was able to benefit from that final phase in the assessment, so there had to be mitigation for all the students at that final moment. However, as I said, we have robust assessment records, systems and structures in place for dealing with mitigation.
We have talked about the support from the Scottish Government and the UK Government, but I think that Glasgow City Council has offered assistance by providing areas for graduations, for example. Would you like to comment on the city council’s role?
We have had fantastic support from Glasgow City Council right from the beginning, in particular from Gordon Matheson, who was there on the Saturday. Within 24 hours we had to phone him and say, “We really need help, not in the next hour but in the next 10 minutes.” He gave us access to the McLellan galleries; that has been instrumental in the recovery effort, not just in relation to student work and the exhibitions but in the context of our work with Historic Scotland to bring valuable items out of the building. That has been hugely helpful to us, and support from the council has continued as we have looked for potential places to which to decant students in September.
Many other people in the city have been extremely helpful and supportive. The other universities and institutions were also there offering help on the Saturday morning. Security teams from the University of Glasgow and the University of Strathclyde helped us to secure the building, which was a key issue. We had a building that contained incredibly valuable items, and very complex operations were going on on the ground in Garnethill, so we needed more security than we have on hand for normal operations at Glasgow School of Art. We are very, very appreciative of all that help.
Academic excellence and student welfare are core objectives of the Glasgow School of Art, but what impact will there be on GSA’s wider activities, such as enterprises and exhibitions, if restoration takes four years?
There will be an impact. Glasgow School of Art Enterprises is the limited company that runs all the tours. Some 20,000 visitors a year go on organised tours of the Mackintosh building. There is a retail element to that, too. That small but significant part of GSA’s activities will be greatly affected. All sorts of things will be affected. The tours are run by students, whom we pay for that; it is an income stream for them. We are looking carefully at how to deal with that. The impact on that activity will be felt especially over the next 12 months; once we can get back into the east wing of the Mackintosh building we will be able to resurrect at least some of the tours. We will work with Historic Scotland on how we will tell the story of the restoration, which will be of significant interest to visitors.
There are many other aspects of GSA. Exhibitions will be affected, because we will not have access to the Mackintosh museum, which is one of the key exhibition spaces. We might well work with Glasgow City Council to seek to use the McLellan galleries and other exhibition spaces. Many organisations in the city and elsewhere have been very supportive.
A key thing for us is that Glasgow School of Art has ambitious plans for development. We had been looking at developing a variety of things from the platform that we have, and we have to be determined to see those plans through, alongside the work that we must put into the Mackintosh building. The school is an international art school based in Scotland—in Glasgow—and has an extremely high international profile. We cannot be deflected from our ambitions; we must push forward as far as possible with our plans for the school.
I think that Mary Scanlon has a question.
No—I was just nodding because I was pleased to hear what Professor Inns said.
Professor Inns said that many lessons will be learned from what happened. I was glad to hear that the fire service was respectful of students’ work as well as the rest of the building’s contents. I understand that it adopted evacuation techniques that would normally be used for people when it was getting things into the McLellan galleries. I am sure that all the learning from that will be used in future.
The Mackintosh building is probably one of the most accessed and documented buildings in Scotland. Will lessons be learned about the vulnerability of other, less well-documented historic buildings and the need to document them, in case there is an incident in such a building?
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That is a very good point. One of the lessons is that records should be made in the event that there is a calamity on such a scale. It is incredible what we can now do with digital technology. It is possible to have a minute record of every part of a building.
You are right that the Mackintosh building was extremely well photographed, recorded, measured and drawn, so there is a record of exactly how it looked and exactly how it was. In general terms, I suppose that it could be said that it is an extraordinary building that is made of ordinary materials, so it will not be impossible to recoup the design using the materials that were used to create the building.
I agree that the lesson is that people should record and document historic buildings as insurance against the possibility of loss.
One of the things that has been happening in the school of art is that there has been a programme to digitise the collections. Museums Galleries Scotland has extended the grant programme to continue the digitisation. Obviously, a digital record is not the same as the original, but at least it is a record.
Digitisation of buildings through three-dimensional imaging and digitisation of collections through digitisation of individual items is quite slow and expensive, and it is almost impossible to get grants for it, because it is seen as routine. What has happened at the school of art will allow us to emphasise how important recording and digitisation are, because they at least leave us with a record, if not the original.
Because so many things have been salvaged that appeared to be past saving, it will be possible to do some forensic analysis on them to find out, for example, what wood was used, how things were constructed and what the dimensions of objects were. It is possible to record a lot through photography and laser scanning, but it is not possible to record the key details. The fact that some of those details will emerge from the salvage operation will allow the reconstruction to be as authentic as possible rather than a pastiche. That is extremely important, because when people go and see a building or a painting, they do not want to see just a reproduction. They want it to have something that gives it authenticity. That will be crucial for the future and for the continuation of tours of the school of art. People will want to know what was salvaged, what was learned and how the restoration was done.
As far as lessons learned are concerned, we will need to wait and see the outcome of any investigation into the school of art fire. On historic buildings in general, what are the guardians of historic buildings expected to do when it comes to fire risk assessments?
Before you continue, I would like to ask a supplementary. I am interested in something that Ranald MacInnes said. You mentioned that we lose one building per month to fire. What type of building were you referring to? Did you mean one Historic Scotland property per month?
Oh no. At that rate, we would not have any left.
I assumed that it was not that. Could you give us some detail on what you meant?
I meant one historic building per month.
Do you mean a listed building?
Not necessarily. I was talking about a traditional or historic building—in other words, a building that was built before 1919—or a listed building.
I am sorry; I just wanted to clarify that.
What are the protocols for fire risk assessments and for ensuring that we protect our historic buildings from the risk of fire? Are there any extra things that should be done? How regularly is risk assessed? Will you review any protocols that you have?
We keep all the protocols under review. For our properties, we carried out a major review about six or seven years ago.
Every case is different. Fire prevention is not a one-size-fits-all strategy. We ask owners of historic and other buildings to assess their properties. As I said, we are happy to advise on the issue and we have a lot of published guidance on it.
The approach needs to be kept under review. There are all sorts of measures, such as compartmentalisation and fire suppression systems. The best way of protecting an asset depends on what that asset is.
I will check something with Sam De Santis. What is the process for keeping students informed about and up to date with what is happening? Are proper lines of communication in place?
Yes. The message from us was to stay in tune with the internal virtual learning environment, which has regular updates when students log in, and with the website. In the week following the fire, it was important to have one channel of communication for students and to ensure that I did not say something incorrect or misleading to them. I left it to the school to take the lead. The response from students was that communication was thorough. Every other day, if not every day, a comprehensive update was given about the situation.
Now that the dust has settled in a sense, there is more communication. Students are back at Garnethill, people are enjoying the degree show and people are talking. We are constantly being fed updates.
As the head of the student association, I sit on the board of governors and I get updates at regular meetings with Tom Inns. That ensures that my information is as up to speed and accurate as possible when I relay it to students. So far, there have been no complaints from the fourth-year cohort about the level of communication.
If the fire had not happened, the people in that group would have finished their degree show, would be waiting to be awarded their degrees and would be scattering not just around the country but around the world. I assume that many of them will still leave Glasgow now or in the next few weeks. Are processes in place to keep them up to date with what will happen, what they can do and what the bursary application processes and timings will be?
The graduation ceremony will take place this Friday; the morning cohort is the fine art group. The announcements on the phoenix bursary were to be considered and made before graduation so that students do not disperse before receiving information on how to apply and the guidelines. I hope that that information will be ready for graduation and that they will get it on Thursday morning.
We are aware that many people’s friends and family turn up for graduation and that people book holidays that start on the Saturday after they graduate, when they disappear for two to three weeks. Those two to three weeks will be a crucial period for the application process.
I will work closely with the people who are working on the phoenix bursary scheme. Communication through me and the team that is in place will be key. I am confident about that.
Is Professor Inns confident that the school has all the structures in place to keep in touch with the affected group of students? I would not like to say that the dust has settled, but Sam De Santis has put that phrase in my mind. I will try to avoid it. Now that you have had a little time to think, do you have in place the structures to take forward the project and do you know what will happen when the school reopens after the summer holidays?
That is in place. Technically, we were in critical incident management mode for 10 days, but we have now handed responsibility back to Glasgow School of Art’s executive group. We are doing a business continuity exercise now and we have structures and workstreams in place to deal with that.
Diana Murray touched on the restoration process. There is always a tension between the preservation, restoration and Disneyfication of important older properties. Where will the balance be struck in work on the library and other damaged parts of the building? How will that be decided on?
Historic Scotland will give advice. We will not be taking the decision; the decision is for the Glasgow School of Art and, presumably, its trustees.
There are various options with regard to the stage of the building that you restore and what sort of detail you put in place. Because of the national and international reputation of the library and the other parts of the building that are quintessentially Mackintosh, it is essential that we restore them as best we can. That is what people will expect to see. There may well be items that can be put back in to assist with that authenticity. However, there are decisions to be taken. No building, including the one that we are in, survives without change, and even the school’s library has changed over the years since Mackintosh built it. The question is whether we go back to the original state or to the state that the building was in when the fire started
Those are decisions that will have to be made. Historic Scotland stands by to give our advice on that and to offer our expertise. Obviously, the funding will have to be raised and worked out. We have a lot of expertise that we can offer in terms of research and understanding and we have earlier records of the building, but it will be up to the trustees and the school to lead on that. We will offer as much support as required.
What is the school’s view of how much to restore? Do you want to return to the original state or to the point at which the fire occurred? Will parts of the building be renewed or replaced instead of being restored?
Obviously, certain parts of the building have been damaged, but they will be restored. There is nothing that has been lost. It is all still there. It is a question of restoring the key elements in the building, and we are determined to restore them.
The work will be complex, because there is a complex set of trade-offs between the academic institution that has always existed in the building, the historical significance of that beautiful building and the funding. As I articulated earlier, we have a significant platform of funding but we have to raise funds above that platform. In the fundraising campaign, we have to articulate extremely clearly what we are raising the funding for.
The restoration intent is to bring the building back as a Mackintosh masterpiece. A lot of that is embodied in the material and the construction. Inevitably, as we go through the work around that, we will have to be extremely conscious of issues of fire safety and so on. There will be some complex trade-offs, but we have an absolute intent to bring back the Mackintosh masterpiece and to bring back a working art school within it.
We would have expected nothing less with regard to some of the more obvious examples, such as the library. However, there are other parts of the building that have been damaged or destroyed internally that are not so critical in terms of the integrity of Mackintosh’s design. Do you intend to restore everything?
In a sense, it is all critical to Mackintosh’s intent, it is just that the library is the thing that is in the foreground of our minds when we think about the building. Even the way in which things are detailed throughout the building is part of the holistic whole of the Mackintosh building. Again, there will be a complex set of trade-offs as we work through that network of related variables.
The significance of the building is thorough and deep rooted. It is not just an appearance of Mackintosh.
Tom Inns has covered this to some extent, but the design of the building, the design of the spaces in the building, the materials and the construction are all part of the building’s overall significance. You can see how Mackintosh used steel and other everyday materials in a particular way and bent them to his artistic will. That is where the significance lies, along with everything else that the building contains.
Obviously, the school has a lot of famous graduates and I am sure that you have already been contacted by some of them. Has there been an opportunity to see whether they would be willing to, at the very least, throw their names behind the appeals for public funds?
Absolutely, and all will be revealed on Thursday.
I thought that you might perhaps have told us, but you are just teasing us.
When all is revealed on Thursday, I think that you will be intrigued by some of the people who have thrown their hats into the ring.
“Intrigued” is an interesting word. We await that news with interest.
I thank you all for attending. Like everyone in Scotland, members of the committee were extremely upset and devastated by the fire. We are delighted and relieved that so much has been saved due to the excellent work of the fire service and the work of the school’s staff and students and other volunteers, as well as the work of Historic Scotland, the experts from RCAHMS and others. We hope that everything goes as smoothly as possible and that the funding is in place as quickly as possible, particularly with regard to the bursaries for the students, so that they can get on with their lives and their artistic work. We wish them well, in particular.
The committee is keen to be kept up to date on progress over the next few months and years. Thank you again for your attendance.
Meeting closed at 11:16.Previous
Subordinate Legislation