The Glasgow Effect

Media

Too far to cycle?

20 May 2024
Edinburgh Napier University
Media

Mobility: An Interview with Ellie Harrison

1 Aug 2022
Sunlight Doesn't Need a Pipeline
Media

The Glasgow Effect – Book Review

17 May 2022
Goodreads
Media

Grappling with The Glasgow Effect: A critical artistic pedagogy to explode destructive success fantasies

1 Apr 2022
Art & the Public Sphere (p.37-53)
Media

Year-long projects with Ellie Harrison

8 Jan 2022
Neil Scott, Substack
Media

Wit Ye Readin? Ellie Harrison – The Glasgow Effect

2 Jan 2022
Colour Ways
Media

Glasgow: 18 million trees can’t be wrong part II

27 Dec 2021
Dr. Klangendum, de Concertzender (Netherlands)
Lecture

The Glasgow Effect online discussion

15 Dec 2021
Resurgence Book Club
Media

The Glasgow Effect

1 Nov 2021
Resurgence & The Ecologist (p.28)
Lecture

Art, Activism & the Climate Emergency

27 Oct 2021
Contemporary Art Practice Speaker's Programme, University of Dundee
Lecture

The Glasgow Effect – Book Launch and Q&A

15 Oct 2021
Innovate4Cities, UN Habitat
Writing

City as Social Sculpture

In this interview for LADA’s Live Art Sector Research report, Harrison reflects on how Live Art tools and tactics have influenced her practice, and explains how her Radical Renewable Art + Activism Fund project evolved into Glasgow Community Energy – Glasgow’s new community-owned renewable energy co-operative. (Word count: 1,010)
Media

The best Glasgow books to read this World Book Day

4 Mar 2021
Glasgow Times
Installations

Tonnes of carbon produced by the personal transportation of a ‘professional artist’

This graph was first compiled as the central illustration of Harrison’s 2019 book The Glasgow Effect: A Tale of Class, Capitalism & Carbon Footprint to illustrate the artist’s increasing amount of travel in the years running up to her 2016 project and the dramatic impact it had on reducing her carbon footprint for transport. It was updated in 2020 for display at Edinburgh Art Festival.
Media

Welcome to the 15-minute city

19 Jul 2020
Financial Times
Writing

Artist as Active Citizen

Harrison reflects on The Glasgow Effect for this new text commissioned to launch a-n‘s year-long research project with AirSpace Gallery: Artists Make Change (May 2020 – May 2021). It is published alongside a new text by Dave Beech reflecting on the history of political art, to provoke discussion about artists’ roles in affecting social change. (Word count: 1,540)
Media

The Glasgow Effect – Book Review

1 Apr 2020
Art Monthly (Issue 435 p.43)
Lecture

Toxic Inequalities in Glasgow & Beyond – Ellie Harrison & Mary O’Hara

12 Mar 2020
AyeWrite, Mitchell Library, Glasgow
Lecture

Each for Equal: International Women’s Day

4 Mar 2020
Trade Union Education Centre, City of Glasgow College
Media

The Glasgow Effect – Book Review

28 Feb 2020
Amazon
Lecture

Sonnet Youth

19 Feb 2020
Edinburgh, Stirling & Glasgow
Media

The Glasgow Effect: A Tale of Class, Capitalism & Carbon Footprint

13 Feb 2020
Social & Cultural Geography, Taylor & Francis Online
Lecture

Campus Cycling Officer Gathering

15 Jan 2020
Cycling Scotland, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh
Media

The Glasgow Effect interview

19 Dec 2019
Jackie Brambles, BBC Radio Scotland

Ellie Harrison Louise Haigh and Labour say that they will reform the complex fares system to ensure that passengers are confident that they are getting the best fare; confidence that X is the case, and X being the case are not necessarily the same thing. Simplification of fares would have to include the abolition of many fares. The assertion that simplifying the fares structure would reduce travelling costs is based upon a false premise, that being that the complicated-ness of the fares-and-ticketing structure is the reason why fares are expensive, that is not why they are expensive. They are expensive because the base level is too high. If you massively simplify the fares, one might then always be certain of getting the best available fare because there are no obscure cheaper fare hidden away in a Byzantine monolith, but that best fare is likely the best of a bad bunch. Railway fares are complicated, but it is within this myriad complexity that the nuances which facilitate cheaper options lurk; if you take a sledgehammer to the behemoth you bring down the cheaper options which lurk within the behemoth. If there are presently 18 options for doing Thing X, with 15 of those ways being cheap, and 3 of those ways being expensive, if you abolish the 15 cheap options for doing thing X you have massively simplified the paying-to-do-Thing X process because having 3 ways is much simpler than having 18 ways, and you have made it such that one is highly unlikely to not notice the cheapest of the available fares, because one is more likely to notice something when it is one amongst 3 than if it is one amongst 18, but it is nevertheless the case that the person is selecting the cheapest of the 3 most expensive. (i) Being guaranteed to always get the best fare; and (ii). getting cheaper fares are not necessarily the same thing. Be mindful of the actual specific wording of things: both before and after coming into government, Labour has never in actually promised cheaper fares, what Labour has promised is that one will be guaranteed to get the best available fare. The general public, politicians and public-transport campaign organisations alike have been seduced by the word 'simplification'. Simplification is not a virtue in and of itself. Simplification is a neutral concept, neither a good thing nor a bad thing; what is pertinent and important is the nature of the simplification. One can simplify travelling costs upwards. Simplification can simplify out the cheaper options. I deliberately say 'travelling costs', not 'fares', because thinking only terms of fares when it comes to simplification of railway fares and ticketing, and when it comes to Single-Leg Pricing is a proverbial red herring, one should think both in terms of fares AND in terms of travelling costs. Fare decreases do not necessarily mean travelling-cost. LNER is a prime example: with the June of 2023 introduction of Single-Leg Pricing on LNER, and the February of 2024 introduced of the Simpler Fares pilot, travelling costs for using LNER have gone up. Two halved-in-price Singles are more expensive than one Day Return; a fare reduction, but a travelling-cost increase. The changes December of 2023 fares-and-ticketing changes on c2c have many of the same fare-decreases-but-travelling-cost increases as LNER, plus its pay-as-you-go tap-in-tap-out integration with Transport for London (to simplify things) has necessitated the introduction of a weekday early-evening peak period between 4.00 p.m. and 7.00 p.m., which has numerous knock-on effects which can hugely increase one's travelling costs. The answer is not reform of the fares-and-ticketing structure. The answer is not simplification of the fares-and-ticketing structure. The answer is to decrease the price of all existing fares. Do not abolish any existing fares. Do not introduce any new types of fare. Just make all existing fares 45% cheaper, and leave it at that.

As the idiom goes: 'Be careful what you wish for, because it might come true'. Reform will only be good if it is good reform. We don't need reform, we need good reform. Some might fear that prices would inevitably be rationalised upwards. Inevitably, the rationalisation would rationalise out the cheaper options. Some might fear that reform of the fares-and-ticketing structure would, inevitably, reform travelling costs upwards, and reform out the cheaper options. Some might fear that simplification of the fares-and-ticketing structure would, inevitably, simplify travelling costs upwards, and simplify out the cheaper options. Just take a look at LNER. Be careful what you wish for, because it might come true.