Eleanor Bell and Rachael Jones were delighted to attend a Glasgow850 celebration last month. “Archie Hind and Dalmarnock Power Station”, a portrait painted by Alasdair Gray, was brought out of storage and installed on the ground floor of the City Chambers.
Painted in 1977, Dalmarnock Power station was once a symbol of Glasgow’s industrial might and provides a fitting backdrop for the author of The Dear Green Place. The painting is one of a series of 30 paintings by Gray that record Glasgow and its citizens: an initiative by Elspeth King from the People’s Palace.
The installation at the City Chambers also includes artworks by pupils from St Mungo’s Academy that were inspired by the Gray portrait.
Find out more on the Glasgow850 news site.
All visitors can view the painting until 3 November 2025.
Find our Archie Hind updates by searching our blog-site for ‘Hind’.
Featured image courtesy of Glasgow City Chambers. From left to right: Sorcha Dallas, curator of The Alasdair Gray Archive; Dr Eleanor Bell, Postgraduate Research Director for the Department of Humanities; Lord Provost of Glasgow Jacqueline McLaren; Sheila Hind, daughter of Archie Hind; Rachael Jones, Assistant Archivist.
We are thrilled to share the news Eleanor Bell has been awarded a Catalyst Award grant by the AHRC to deliver the Archie Hind Centenary Project!
This grant will be supporting the cataloguing, digitisation, research into, and engagement with the Archie Hind papers as well as new oral history interviews with those who knew Archie. Detailed cataloguing and digitisation will open up this collection that was previously thought lost. Eleanor will study the papers and discover more about Archie Hind’s creative process, uncover his unpublished writings, and trace his wider literary and social networks. This ground-breaking project will add new knowledge to the field of Scottish Literature and make the collection available for generations of researchers to come.
We are very excited to begin the project, with Eleanor, in 2026. The activities will lead us into the centenary of Archie Hind’s birth in 2028 where the outcomes can all be celebrated in style.
Eleanor reflected:
Congratulations to Eleanor on securing one of the most prestigious and competitive funding awards in the in the UK!
Find out more about the Archie Hind Centenary project:
[image credits: Eleanor Bell and the collection]