The badges were one of the first signs that something was stirring in and around Glasgow's Tramway.

Wee white metal badges with the message "I'm on Albert Drive" were sitting, proud and visible, on the lapels of kids and adults alike. Men, women, children – all ages, and from all quarters of the rich cultural mix that characterises the 1.6 miles of this south side thoroughfare – were pinning more than a slogan on their jackets, however. You could even say they were wearing hearts on sleeves, walking proof, in effect, that Albert Drive wasn't just one of the city's busiest main roads: it was a community with a sense of purpose and shared identity.

That positive energy will spill out onstage this weekend when 20 members of the community open up their stories, their experiences and their hopes to audiences in a performance simply called Albert Drive.

In it, the women – the group is mostly female, but there are a few guys stepping up to the plate – talk about their neighbourhood, and in the process they don't just create a collage of impressions about Albert Drive, they reflect on how we respond to the people around us. Especially the ones who live next door, or over the road. We're talking the nitty-gritty of interacting or not with your neighbours.

Now it just so happens that among those who chose to put down roots in the vicinity are Jess Thorpe and Tashi Gore, co-directors of Glas(s) Performance and co-founders of Junction 25, the youth performance collective based at Tramway.

And yes, the Albert Drive Project is essentially their initiative, though since they started researching and developing the concept over a year ago, more and more artists and facilitators have come on board; partly because Thorpe and Gore wanted the project to exist on several levels beyond the theatre work they draw out of their workshop participants, but really, they needed extra hands because of the community's response: "enthusiastic" barely scratches the surface of how Albert Drive residents and associates have embraced the opportunity to show and share how they feel about their particular part of Glasgow's cityscape.

In a break during rehearsals for the stage show, Thorpe and Gore attempt to bring me up to speed on the what-and-how of the project's burgeoning outreach. There are fits of laughter as they outline the goings-on of the Albert Drive Neighbourhood Watch, a determined posse of white-boilersuited dudes on black scooters who primarily engage with the youngsters on the block and chirpily blog online about all the positive, upbeat things that are happening in the area.

"They're so well-known, now," says Thorpe, "that kids are happy to stop them in the street. Chat, joke, get pictures taken with them that get posted on websites, which means the whole Albert Drive Project has a profile beyond what we could ever have imagined. It really has become so huge."

With that in mind, the project commissioned five other very different professional artists to develop other elements – a bit like weaving together colourful strands in an Albert Drive "tartan". Nic Green, whose explorations of identity include the highly acclaimed Trilogy, has been trowelling away at the nearby allotments, chatting to folk for an aural tour of the plots that echoes how neighbourly relationships, as well as plants, can grow and flourish there.

Choreographer Janice Parker has been popping up in people's living rooms, to get people dancing together while elsewhere photographer/film-maker Basharat Khan is keeping all the activity in a documentary frame.

Visual artist Shauna McMullan has been drawing inspiration from her encounters on Albert Drive including the ones that have come about thanks to the wee transparent house created by Edo Architecture whose own studio is in Albert Drive.

This portable open house has hosted tea parties, jam sessions and drop-in events where the see-through nature of its walls allows passers-by to suss out the action in a way that is totally user-friendly. Bricks and mortar buildings, even ones as keen to engage with the local community as Tramway, can't always reassure the same passers-by that they will be welcome. No wonder, then, that Tramway is one of the backers helping to fund and support the Glas(s) Performance team as they join up an ever-increasing spread of dots.

For Ria Din, one of the performance group rehearsing for the forthcoming theatre piece, the whole initiative has seen a breaking down of barriers, not least between the venue and the community.

"It's almost like creating a bridge across Darnley Street," she says, and as a member of the local community council she's well aware of how important that inclusive connection is. Her own mixed-race background feeds into that perspective.

"My Dad was from Pakistan," she adds, "and my mother was from Glasgow. So I'm always interested in bringing those two sides together – and I was drawn to Albert Drive because it had both sides. Yes, getting involved with this performance was a leap of faith – there's no script, the material is coming from us. But what Jess and Tashi have done is bring people together, get them talking together – and that's fantastic in itself."

Rizwanah Ajaib – "but everybody calls me Rozy" – has lived in the area all her life, works in a pharmacy on Albert Drive and probably knows most of the local community by sight. But she's the first to say that doesn't mean she knows them.

"You maybe would love to talk to your neighbour, but would they want to talk to you?" she says. "That's the question we've looked at in the show. And sometimes it been a very personal thing, even ideas you wouldn't have talked about with strangers. And you know, we were strangers when we came into this room. Now, we're more like a little family. You start to realise 'these people are really my neighbours – they should know what I'm about, and I should get to know them'.

"Somehow, Jess and Tashi have made this happen for us, without putting any pressures on us. Just by asking us to talk from the heart. They are awesome, and it's been brilliant."

You don't have to be a resident of Albert Drive to see this latest stage of the project.

Tramway, Saturday (3pm and 7.30pm) and Sunday (7.30pm only).