Housing - an often contentious subject on film - is the focus of this month's Spotlight On.
Housing proved a valuable collection in the Geography classroom - in particular the films sponsored by Glasgow City Corporation between the 1940s and 1970s. These short, public information films form the basis of a unit of work analysing change in Glasgow's inner city housing from WWII onwards. Over the course of four lessons, students are introduced to conditions in Glasgow's 19th century tenement buildings, the corporation's redevelopment plans in the 1950s, the various initiatives to re-house people in different areas of the city as well the establishment of new towns such as Cumbernauld and Glenrothes. Glenrothes is also the subject of a starter activity using a short extract from A New Day (1959), which summarised the planning, building and layout of the new town.
A stand-alone Geography lesson uses two films, made nearly 40 years apart, to consider the benefits and disadvantages re-locating people from inner-city slums to high-rise, high-density housing. Housing Problems (1935), a propaganda piece made by the legendary documentary filmmaker John Grierson, uses the voices and stories of working class men and women in Stepney to demonstrate the slums' dreadful conditions and looks forward to the development of carefully planned, modern housing estates. 36 years later, such optimism seems misplaced. Nick Broomfield's Who Cares? (1971) listens to the inhabitants of Liverpool's high-rise housing who mourn the loss of the community spirit of the old terraces and talk of isolation and insecurity.
Meanwhile, in Citizenship, the hard-hitting Cathy Come Home offers a way into looking at the issues surrounding housing today, in particular the work of voluntary organisations in providing support to those facing housing difficulties.
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