The tenth edition of the popular annual anti-racist festival has drawn to a close with over 10,000 people attending 70 events in 27 venues across Glasgow’s Southside.
Musicians, performers and artists took to the streets and parks of Glasgow’s Southside on Sunday 16 August for the finale event, as Govanhill Street Music Festival set up stages along Victoria Road, the Cooperage and Queen’s Park. Buff & Sheen, Vince Virr, Mark Bleakley, El Rboukh, Decades of Dub, Soul Level Collective, Tami Pein, Low-Fi Beatroots Hip Hip Radio and Requiem by Kaleider were just some of the highlights from organisers Love Music Hate Racism, Duende, Snack Magazine, Sound Thought, Tramway, The Community Newsroom and Absolutely Flawless.
This year’s festival commemorated 25 years since the public occupation of Govanhill Baths. GIFC is organised by Govanhill Community Baths Trust, the organisation formed following the building occupation. From the powerful opening parade along Victoria Road to Dive: the Ballad of Govanhill Baths, a beautiful, colourful and atmospheric group performance in Kingarth Lane, and Solidarity Screenings of films about protest including Beats, United We Will Swim and Everybody to Kenmure Street, GIFC boldly marked the momentous anniversary weekend of the end of the protest back in 2001.
This year also saw the launch of The Pineapple Trophy – won by Glasgow Women’s Library. The Pineapple Trophy draws inspiration from the final day of the Save Our Pool campaign which saw mounted police and sheriff officers clear the protest at Govanhill Baths, where legend has it someone threw a pineapple at the police. The Pineapple Trophy – created by artist Nathan Coley and silversmith Hamish Dobbie – will be awarded every year for the next two decades to an organisation or individual whose work contributes meaningfully to activism, public culture, community solidarity, or civic transformation in Glasgow and beyond.
The celebration of activists and activism ran throughout the sixteen-day long festival. From Jeremy Corbyn in conversation with Josie Long, Equal Pay or We Walk Away, Breaking the Silence of the British Slave Trade, An Anti-Racist Walking Tour of Govanhill, Love Punk Hate Racism, The Revolution Against Fascism, and Poetry, Prose and Protest, the programme centres those who challenge injustice, hatred and inequality while standing up for their communities.
Simone Stewart, Arts & Heritage Manager, said “Ten festivals in, and twenty-five years on from the occupation of the Baths, Govanhill showed again that it knows how to fight for what it loves and celebrate it at the same time. This year we launched the Pineapple Trophy, a new civic honour created by artist Nathan Coley, that will run for the next twenty years, recognising that same spirit of resistance and solidarity. We’ve also scaled up our ambitions, bringing international artists and shows into a festival built by this community, because a festival like this is a genuine act of civic practice. None of it happens without our partners. Thank you to everyone who performed, organised and showed up. This one belongs to the whole community.”
Govanhill International Festival and Carnival will return for its eleventh year in 2027, with the annual parade and carnival taking place on Saturday 7 August.
The event is supported by Creative Scotland, Glasgow City Council, the Scottish Government and a huge number of partners across the community without whom the festival would not happen.