The Bridge Birthday Party!

What an incredible day celebrating The Bridge's Festival Day and 20th birthday in the sunshine!

Celebrations got off to a great start with our community procession filling the streets of Easterhouse with colour, music and vibrancy!

Beginning at FARE, the parade was made up of local organisations, friends and families and creative artworks, banners and costumes made by Platform’s participants and partners. The procession was led by a piper and backed up by a samba band and DJ!

The festival day itself had a host of activities for all ages to enjoy, free sports sessions from Glasgow Life, arts workshops, screen printing from Print Clan, live portrait paintings by Project Ability, caricatures, face painting & balloon modelling as well as stalls, rides, inflatables and food and drinks. The outdoor stage showcased performances from the Glasgow Kelvin College Musical Workshop, Sprog Rock, DJ Lewis, Glenburn musicians, Pop! dance performances by Vince Virr and performances of ELECTION.

The roller disco was a hit with all ages having a go and our friends at The Bridge Library also joined in the celebrations with a special visit from Bookbug, 

For parade makes, Platform artists worked with groups that meet at BEE Club, FARE, Glenburn Centre, Growing 21 and Pavillion. This led to the creation of a Dragon artwork by a group from FARE, led by artist Joanna Twaites and attendees of Platform's summer holiday food programme worked with Kate Seaton to create a caterpillar inspired creature. 

A beautiful hand sewn banner was created by Elise Prentice, who worked with Platform's Clack and Yak knitting group:

"My main objective with this banner was to capture the spirit of Platform across different age groups and sentiments. I got help from young people and their parents during the Holiday Food Programme to draw and embroider, and the ladies from our knitting groups to help patchwork and come up with our slogan. The "Made in Easterhouse" banner nods towards historical banner-making traditions of trade unions and other protests to celebrate all the work and community spirit that goes into everything we achieve within Platform and champion us East-end locals as the creative and self-sustaining folk that we are. By hand-stitching its construction, my hope is that the banner can be easily disassembled and worked upon with various other groups and at different events for years to come.”

Alongside this, a series of banners were printed of drawings created in a series of workshops led by Pearl Kinnear and Celie Byrne, capturing as many people as possible from local groups.

It wouldn't be a birthday without some treats and we served up some special ‘Made in Easterhouse 20’ cake as well as giving out more than 500 free ice creams.

It was fantastic to see so many people having a great day - thank you to everyone who joined us on Saturday!

Can you spot yourself in any of these photos?

Thank you to our funders and National Lottery Community Fund for supporting the event.

Photos: Andrew Perry