The Glasgow Effect

About the Book: 

How would your career, social life, family ties, carbon footprint and mental health be affected if you could not leave the city where you live?

Artist Ellie Harrison sparked a fast-and-furious debate about class, capitalism, art, education and much more, when news of her year-long project The Glasgow Effect went viral at the start of 2016.

Named after the term used to describe Glasgow’s mysteriously poor public health and funded to the tune of £15,000 by Creative Scotland, this controversial ‘durational performance’ centred on a simple proposition – that the artist would refuse to travel beyond Glasgow’s city limits, or use any vehicles except her bike, for a whole calendar year.

Includes 26 black and white illustrations.

It’s horrendously crass to parachute someone in on a poverty safari while local authorities are cutting finance to things like music tuition for Scotland’s poorest kids. I don’t know the artist personally but I think we’d all benefit more from an insight into what goes on in the minds of some of Scotland’s middle class. DARREN McGARVEY, Daily Record, January 2016

I’d already lived in Glasgow over seven years when the ‘chips hit the fan’ in January 2016. It was frustrating how the media took everything out of context. The Glasgow Effect was an epic undertaking resulting from years of research – a project which has shaped my thinking, action and life course ever since. This book is that hidden story. ELLIE HARRISON, March 2019

I can’t say that this book has been an easy undertaking, but it was a necessary one. I have emerged stronger and with more conviction than ever that in order to address the ‘climate emergency’ we must urgently reduce the amount we travel and the amount of energy we consume. Not least because a happy, healthy and sustainable life can and should result from committing and contributing to the community where you live. ELLIE HARRISON, The Glasgow Effect, July 2019

Quote from the Foreword to the Second Edition

‘This new edition is being published to coincide with COP26 – the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP) held in Glasgow this November (the history of the COPs is woven into the other personal/political histories in Part 1 of the book, see pages 29 and 62). As Glasgow City Council Leader Susan Aitken has said ‘this year, Glasgow is the world’s most talked about city’. It is a chance for Glasgow to become known by yet another short catchphrase. Not ‘the Glasgow miracle’, used to promote its cultural credentials within the artworld. Not ‘the Glasgow effect’ coined in 2008 to highlight our comparatively poor public health. But soon, perhaps, ‘the Glasgow agreement’ – a legally binding global treaty committing all nations of the world to tackle climate change before it’s too late.’

This new updated ‘green’ edition features a new Foreword written in light of the pandemic and in anticipation of COP26 in Glasgow, alongside a ‘Summary of Key Ideas’ re-framing the book as a handbook of ideas for activists and policy-makers working to transform towns and cities across Britain and beyond.

Find the New Online Bibliography here

Reviews and Media Coverage:

So well done Ellie Harrison, take a bow you have produced a bold, vital and thoroughly researched piece of work and this should be stocked in every library, book shop and place of learning throughout the length and breadth of Scotland.
Keen on Goodreads, 2022

Glasgow Effect artist Ellie Harrison launches book in response to 'social media ****storm. The Scotsman

Ellie Harrison’s project – her ‘extreme lifestyle experiment’ – is an anticipation of what’s to come. We will all have to relax our standards on what we regard as a legitimate or respectable ‘job’, as the new pieces of our socio-economic future settle... Harrison’s mix of occupational skills, community activism, education and self-expression – and her enthusiastic interest in how all these elements fit together – is going to be more and more the mainstream experience of ‘work’ in our societies. We should learn from her, and from the new wave of socially-engaged artists like her. PAT KANE, The National, January 2016

Brava to Ellie Harrison for continued integrity and conviction, as she uses her education, skills and (self-acknowledged) privileged position as an artist to challenge the failing economic status quo and ruffle the feathers of our corrupt, complacent establishment in Glasgow and beyond. ZARA KITSON, Head of Community Engagement for Princes Trust Scotland, Facebook, January 2017

This is a most excellent book for anyone who is interested in public transport, local democracy, and seriously addressing the climate emergency and socio-economic inequality in the world. 5* Goodreads Reviewer

Ellie Harrison: Glasgow artist on a poverty safari? She better not forget the pith helmet. The Independent // Paid to Live Like Common People. The Daily Mail // Outraged over a £15,000 Glasgow art project? Look at the bigger picture. The Guardian // I’m a posh punchbag, says artist in Glasgow row. The Times // read all of this coverage from the original 2016 Glasgow Effect project and many more articles like them on Ellie’s website.

About the Author:

ELLIE HARRISON was born in the London borough of Ealing in 1979. She moved north to study Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University in 1998. In 2008 she continued northwards to do a Masters at Glasgow School of Art and has been living in Glasgow ever since. She has previously described herself as an artist and activist, and as ‘a political refugee escaped from the Tory strongholds of Southern England’. In 2009 she founded Bring Back British Rail, the national campaign for the public ownership of our railways. As a result of thinking globally and acting locally during The Glasgow Effect in 2016, she is now involved in several local projects and campaigns aimed at making Glasgow a more equal, sustainable and connected city. Harrison also lectures at Dundee’s Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design.

The first book about Harrison’s work, entitled Confessions of a Recovering Data Collector, explores the negative impact of microblogging, a pre-cursor to Twitter (an example of which is Harrison’s Tea Blog). Harrison “confesses” that "Web2.0 has spawned a whole new generation of data collectors. There is now such a ridiculous abundance of boring information about other people's lives on the internet, I felt obliged to stop adding to it". Her Twitter boycott as a result of both this and the reaction to the 2016 Glasgow Effect is still in place.

You can learn more about Ellie, her current and past projects on her website.