About the Project

January 2012

The Glasgow School of Art in partnership with the CCA: Centre for Contemporary Arts, has been awarded a significant grant by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for a speculative research project that will open up previously inaccessible archive material to assist research and reflection upon the causes and conditions which encouraged the renaissance of the visual arts in Glasgow since the late 1970s.

The research team, led by Francis McKee, will organise existing archival material from the Third Eye Centre and CCA (material spanning the period 1972- the present) and conduct a series of interviews with artists and art workers across that time span to construct an archive for future investigators.  The Glasgow Miracle project is not designed to write a definitive history of this period, simply to organise and provide access to a spectrum of materials that will provide a starting point for further exploration and a variety of potential histories. New and previously un-explored evidence sources from four main strands of enquiry include:

• The archives of the Third Eye Centre and the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA); Glasgow's two main contemporary arts venues of the period.
• The George & Cordelia Oliver Collection; a personal archive of an important art critic, commentator and collector, housed at the Glasgow School of Art (GSA).
• Captured on Film; in addition to the Third Eye and CCA archives, we also have access to a set of video recordings, on VHS format that were made during the staging of events at these venues.
• Artist to Artists; led by Ross Sinclair, we draw on the insights of the artists themselves through a unique arrangement of artist interviewing those who have played significant roles and have contributed to the contemporary art movement in Glasgow.

Consolidating these research areas will form a coherent index of past events around the Third Eye Centre and CCA, which can be considered as a contribution towards the anticipated foundation of convivial networks between the multiple histories of Glasgow’s art institutions.  In the immediate future, all the evidence collected through the project is intended to be made available for public access and enjoyment and as a tool for furthering specialist research and general debate on the subject of contemporary art in Glasgow and beyond, to help ensure Glasgow remains a creative centre with the right conditions for artistic practice.  

November 2014 - Project Update

After over two years hard work by the team with the support of the CCA and GSA Archives and Collections Centre a new online resource and Archive Reading Room at the CCA is now available, making accessible a number of original archive sources relating to the Third Eye Centre (1975-1991) and CCA (1992-the present) with a newly created archive of Artist to Artist interviews. 

A system of box listing and index terms developed as our methodology, and we have now fully listed to box level over 200 boxes of paper work, 400 VHS, thousands of slides and a large amount of publications and ephemera. The fully searchable catalogue available here we hope will provide an initial finding aid for your research. 

We have been able to piece together a timeline of events which is now here online along with a collection of recently digitised film from the Third Eye Centre. These materials provide a simple overview of the history of the two organisations and represent a fraction of the material we have now indexed for public access in our archive reading room at the CCA.

For all enquires regarding the Third Eye Centre and CCA Archive please contact archive@cca-glasgow.com