“Here’s a piece of Dalmarnock Rock…a souvenir. It will be worth a fortune one day,” said 13-year-old Tony McDermott, holding a chunk of concrete from the demolished high-rise flats. It was 2008, a year after the flats had been brought down, leaving behind a desolate, lunar landscape of shattered concrete. This was one of Tony and his friends' playgrounds, nestled among abandoned shops and burnt-out tenement buildings.
Back then, imagining any value in the area seemed far-fetched. Much of Dalmarnock was in ruins and had become a ghost town – its population had dwindled from over 30,000 to just 1,700. But Tony’s optimism was not misplaced – Dalmarnock was on the brink of a rebirth. The Commonwealth Games were coming, positioning Dalmarnock at the heart of regeneration efforts and turning the land into gold dust.
It's been 17 years since I began documenting Dalmarnock, and 2024 marks a decade since the Games came to Glasgow, promising a legacy for the East End and the city. Beyond the Games is a community engagement project culminating in a multimedia exhibition in Dalmarnock, exactly ten years after the Games.
Starting in January 2024, I returned to the area to revisit the people and places I had encountered from 2007 onwards, as well as some of the new residents. I wanted to ask them about 'the legacy' – that branded buzzword every Glaswegian heard so much about before the Games. I aimed to find out from the residents what had changed, what worked, what didn’t, and what the future might hold.
Among all the residents I documented back then, Margaret Jaconelli and her family were at the extreme frontline of the regeneration plans, which soon became a battleground. She was the sole resident of her flat in an abandoned red sandstone tenement scheme.
She and her husband Jack had purchased their house in 1976 and remained there when all their neighbours fled and were rehoused elsewhere. In 2008, they were told their home was right in the way of the new Athletes Village and would be demolished.
As land values soared and big developers reaped windfall profits, no fair price was offered to Margaret for her home (the district evaluator put a price of £29,000 on her home in 2008). After refusing an unfair payout for her home, she was served a Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO). After a three-year battle, she and her family were forcibly evicted in March 2011 by more than 90 police and sheriff officers. Her home, along with other empty tenements, was demolished weeks later.
Margaret’s fight was about more than just a fair price for her home; it was also about 'the legacy' and questioning what it would mean for local people. Serving a CPO on someone’s property means that what is being built, what comes after, is for the benefit of the local population.
Margaret stressed that mega-sporting events like the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics seldom benefit local areas, with little or no evidence proving they ever would. Back in 2011, no one was listening – there were only three years until the Games arrived, and there was no appetite to question it. No one wanted to rain on Glasgow’s upcoming parade.
Ask anyone over 60 years old about the changes in Dalmarnock over the last 10 years, and they’ll reminisce about an even earlier era. To discuss recent changes, you have to start back in its heyday to understand its transformation. In the 1960s, Dalmarnock was a bustling, industrial, tightly-knit East End community, with a high street full of shops, churches, bingo halls, community centres, and pubs.
Artist and Church of Scotland minister Rev. Gordon Strachan’s silent 16 mm film, This is Our Parish, from the mid-1960s, captures this lost era beautifully. Packed streets of tenement flats, residents in their Sunday best heading to church, newly constructed high-rise flats, swing parks full of happy kids, tall chimneys, and factories. Sometimes a bit rough and ready-looking, but always full of life.
On a cold March morning in 2024, resident Peter Smith, aged 73, took me on a guided tour through many locations featured in the archive film. Nearly 50 years on, it was sometimes hard to work out exact locations because the landscape had changed so drastically.
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What was clear, though, were the stark contrasts between past and present—what Dalmarnock was back then, and the scale of what it had lost. Peter talked about the generations of families that had lived in Dalmarnock for decades but had now long disappeared.
He missed the old community and the pubs, but he also recognised that in the ‘good old days’ he had lost many of his friends to drink. “There’s not many of us left now—about 70% of my pals have died. I am hoping that all this new housing and development means it’s a healthier place, that it’s for the better now. It has to be.”
By the 1970s, de-industrialisation began to devastate the area, leading to deserted industrial landscapes, unemployment, and depopulation. Community activist and lifelong resident John McGregor recalls the stigma of being from Dalmarnock.
“If you applied for a job interview and said you lived here, there was nae chance of you even getting an interview.”
Having witnessed three versions of Dalmarnock in his lifetime, he is hopeful that this time around, the new homes and new community will push the area forward and restore its pride.
“It’s different now because we have a brand-new community who have moved here, and their expectations are a lot higher than ours ever were.”
For other long-term residents, Dalmarnock’s community feels fractured or non-existent. Ruby Hunter, aged 67, has lived in the pre-war flats in Connal Street all her life and feels betrayed by what she sees as the broken promises of the Commonwealth Games.
“Nae shops, nae community centre,” is her war cry, and it’s a cry shared by nearly all the residents I speak to. The star attractions of the regeneration – the Velodrome and the Athletes Village across the road – make no difference to her life. Despite the fact that some original residents from Dalmarnock were relocated to the Village, she views it as a separate entity, disconnected from the old community she laments. “New hooses disnae make a community,” she tells me.
When I first photographed Councillor George Redmond in 2008 he was buzzing with excitement and optimism about the Games' impact. The people of Dalmarnock had waited over 30 years for this, he would tell me. A decade later, most of that excitement is gone, and he shares a more realistic and cautious view. He agrees with Ruby that new housing alone does not create a community. More concerning, though, is his acknowledgement that 10 years on, there is sharp housing inequality, with some of the best modern housing in Scotland in the Athletes Village now sitting alongside pre-war homes needing repair and maintenance.
He freely admits that the regeneration of Dalmarnock is a work in progress and stresses that the master plan was always intended to span 25 years. In response to Ruby’s comments about ‘nae shops,’ he explains that a new Lidl supermarket will open sometime soon after a six-year delay (and over 14 years since the original shops were demolished).
But it’s not all down to the council and developers to shape the next few years, he tells me. It’s up to residents and individuals to shape Dalmarnock’s future. “It’s a thriving place, it really is, and a lot of work still to do, but people can’t just sit back and look out their window and watch the world go by.”
In 2008, much of 'the legacy' messaging and PR spin was about the opportunities for young people in the East End. New developments and investment would mean new apprenticeships in construction – joiners, electricians, plumbers – and training schemes in other sectors would be accessible and plentiful.
I caught up with Tony McDermott, now aged 30, and we did a walkabout around the Athletes Village. I showed him the photos I took of him holding the piece of Dalmarnock Rock as a youngster. “Everything is so different. Back then this was all derelict and run-down houses, the community was in a lot of poverty. Myself included.”
For young people like Tony, growing up in Dalmarnock at the turn of the 21st century, future prospects were limited. But because of the Commonwealth Games and the opportunities it offered, Tony’s life took a different and better turn. In 2011, he took up one of the trainee schemes and ended up working as a leisure centre attendant with Glasgow Life. Today, at 30, he now works as a prison officer. Without the Games and the area’s regeneration, he fears his life might have turned out very differently: “I could have easily got involved with the wrong people, done the wrong things, but instead I’ve been able to get a good job, buy a house, travel the world.”
For Dalmarnock’s new generation, the Riverbank Primary School kids who live in the Athletes Village and attend the brand-new school, life couldn’t be more different. Their new homes and playgrounds are a far cry from what Tony and the Dalmarnock kids of 2008 had.
They play on traffic-calmed streets and in the nearby Cunnigar Loop park, with different priorities and outlooks for themselves and their area. When I interview them about Dalmarnock and ask what they want to see for the future, they envision cleaner streets, more trees, and less plastic pollution – reflecting broader global concerns.
Ten years on, the impact of the Commonwealth Games Legacy elicits mixed responses. While everyone acknowledges and appreciates the improvements in the built environment, comparing them to 2008’s desolation isn’t a fair contest. The biggest issue for the long-term residents is the loss of their tight-knit community, and most acknowledge that those days are in the past.
“But it could come back,” Margaret Jaconelli tells me as I join her on a walkabout to locate where her old home once stood. She had always questioned what the legacy for long-term residents would be, and she learned the hard way.
Now living back in Dalmarnock, she wants to see greater cohesion between residents of the Athletes Village and other new housing developments with the residents of the ‘Old Dalmarnock.’ “Dalmarnock will never be the same, it'll never be the same with all the people that’s left, but we could build a community here.” With another decade of the master plan to go, there is hope that renewed efforts will secure a lasting legacy for all of Dalmarnock’s residents.
Beyond The Games – Dalmarnock 10 Years On, A Photographic Journey by Chris Leslie. Multimedia exhibition runs until July 28 at Strangefield Gallery, 105-109 French St, Dalmarnock. Wednesday – Sunday 12-5pm
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