New Social Art School Projects - Tillydrone Pamela
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Pamela with Tillydrone photographs in the artist's flat, May 2007
Pamela mum, student and community rep
Pamela was one of the first people I met here. But, with her involvement in the community, jobs, studies and a child, she’s always busy. We’ve not had a chance to really sit down and talk. So this is the opportunity. The only time she can meet is 7.30 in the morning! A bit of a tall order, but I manage. She doesn’t even want a cup of coffee and we’ve got little time before she has to go and clean in the local bar, the Broadsword. Pamela is 27 years old.
Ye ken most folk that live roond aboot ye. That’s lovely, and it’s nice to come oot your door and say, ‘Good morning’ to somebody. Other places people might be like, ‘What you speaking to me for?’ But it’s amazing what a Good Morning and a smile can do.
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I used to live in Alloa, a brewery town nine miles outside of Stirling. I lived there till I was ten. My dad worked for the council; he’s still there. He doesn’t like the big city, but my mum hated the small town. I had an aunt and uncle that lived up here, so we used to come and visit all the time. Then my sister married someone from Aberdeen and they used to live in Alexander Terrace, when it was called Kilgour Avenue; it was two separate streets. They used to have trouble and a bad reputation. So they decided to merge the streets and, by changing the name, thought it might get rid of the reputation. But it didnae! My other sister moved up and then my mum left my dad. She told me we were going on a holiday. It’s never ended! Haha! We moved in with my sister in Ritchie Place and then my mum got a house in Portal Crescent. We lived there until my mum moved into sheltered housing in 2003. And I moved to Alexander Terrace in 2005. So I’ve been in Tillydrone 17 years. I’m local!
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I plan to stay in Tillydrone for a long, long time. That’s why I got involved in the regeneration work. The first thing I did was going to the Tilly Youth Project when I was 13. And then I joined their management committee. Oh aye, TYP goes back a long time before I came here. You see the generations coming through. But they’ve got so much attitude now. Herman, the coordinator, ken he has an authority role, but they speak to him like they’re nae even worried. I would have been petrified when I was 13. Oh aye, there’s a major difference. They’ve got a total lack of respect. I mean, I’m all for equality, but they are taking it a bit to the extreme. They think everything is for them and the way they want it. I don’t know… the sociological perspective is that the role of the family has changed. Even just a few generations back, the family was there to serve a purpose; parents had children to do work and to look after them when they got old. Whereas nowadays, children are luxuries; we don’t necessarily need them. Therefore they are loved more, but they don’t have the same discipline instilled in them, that they are there to maybe do chores... I’m studying social sciences at Open University. And I’m doing an HNC in community work through Aberdeen College; it’s outreach at Donbank School. We’re one year into it and got another year to go. It’s good. I thought that you really need a social science background because a lot of it is about diversity and understanding aspects of life and the theories. Maybe nae even understand it fully, but have more of an open mind when you’re dealing with people. I would like to become a community development worker. Hopefully, if this regeneration thing really gets off the ground, I would have something to do with regeneration.
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My first job was as an auxiliary nurse. It’s a carer, but that’s what it’s called when you work in a hospital. I just loved it so much. And I did that for ten years until I had Abbi. I continued to work for the first eight months of her life. But they changed to twelve and a half hour shifts, which meant that I was leaving the house before she got up and coming in when she was in bed. I was missing whole days of her life. So I stopped working and tried being a stay-at-home mum for three months. I was going mad! After working for so long I couldnae dee it. And it wisnae good for her either because I think she picked up on my stress. I was trying to dee different things with her. But, her being so young, I was limited in what I could do with her. I was starting to get frustrated with myself. Then I got a part-time job in the bar, which gets me oot and gets her into nursery. She’s been there since she was one and a half, three days a week. It’s good and it’s an outlet for her. I fully intend for her to be an only child. Oh, I was never maternal in the first place. When I fell pregnant I was totally shocked! I was seasick on a boat and that was enough to knock my pill to port and here was Abbi! My family is very fertile; there are loads of us! I love her to bits but one’s enough. Definitely! I live with my partner, Mark. He works for the council. My nephew lives with us as well; he’s sixteen and he’s got a job. He lives with us because his mum moved to Sandilands and he disnae like it. I know it’s just next-door, but all his mates either live in the Terrace or Formartine Road or Ritchie Place. He baby-sits a lot if I’m working in the evening. He’s really good at taking care of Abbi and she loves him to bits. He’s been with her constantly since she was six months old. His mum is quite happy with him staying with us. That’s all her kids grown now, so this is her getting her life back.
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We were reckless when we were aboot 14. We went to the beachy bit doon at the Don. We used to stay there overnight and we all said to our parents that we were staying at somebody else’s house. We made up some lethal concoctions! We would mix maybe Drambuie, Vodka, Bacardi, Malibu, Pernod, everything in this one bottle. Looking at it now, we could have killed ourselves. There would be a whole group, about 15 of us. One night one of our chums came up with all this wood and we made a fire, ‘Yes, look at this!’ In the morning we were wandering through to go to the park. And there was someone’s fence missing. He’d stolen half a man’s fence to make a fire! Oh my god.
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I do worry for when Abbi gets older. That’s why I became involved in a lot of things. Herman was always on about us going to these network meetings. I went along to one and was just listening. People were getting quite heated about things that were happening. So I went back to another one. And then, some of the things they were talking about had actually been implemented and I thought, good you can get stuff done. Then Paula Mann said that the regeneration was about to take off and they were looking for local residents to meet with the consultants, to tell them what they would like to see in the area. I was the only local resident that turned up! Anne Knight was there as well, but as an official capacity in her new job as a regeneration network officer. We went on a walkabout and I was pointing things out; it was weird speaking aboot things to people that had never seen Tillydrone. We explained about the alcoholics that used to sit ootside the shops. Most of them were there that day, and some of the consultants were like, ‘Oh my god.’ I said that they dinnae bother me now cause they are such an everyday occurrence. They dinnae intimidate me, they dinnae annoy me, they are just there. You never realise how blasé you get to things. It’s the same with people who say, ‘You live in Tillydrone, have you never feared walking through at night?’ But, yeah, walking through Woodside or through Northfield I would be crapping myself, cause it’s the unknown. But when you know an area and you know the people that live there, you know everything. I have never ever feared walking through Tillydrone at night.
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I got involved in the design panel. But it didn’t really work oot the way we wanted because people were trying to talk about issues like housing policies. That panel was meant to be about designing the area. As part of that we went to schools and spoke to the children. I went into the primary six classes at Donbank School and asked everybody that lived in Tillydrone, ‘Do you still see yourself here in 15 years time?’ Not one of them said yes. ‘It’s a shit hole, there’s nathing here for us, it’s a dive and there’s dog shit and broken glass everywhere.’ My god, ken, these people are only nine years old, and they are already picturing a future getting away as quickly as possible. A nine year old should be thinking about playing and having fun. That was quite scary. We asked them to draw pictures of things they wanted done. And some of them were so simple like cleaning up the dog mess, clearing up the glass and making the play areas playable. Most of them were such little things, that it should be done.
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We went on study trips to Manchester and Liverpool to look at regeneration areas there. The people we met all said that it is a long slog, but it’s worth it. And we went to the Ardler Village in Dundee. It is just amazing. We asked them if they had problems with crime before the area was regenerated and they said that they did, but it wisnae major. Now they only had the odd things happening. But the biggest difference is that it used to be all flats, flats, and flats. There was very little front and backdoor housing. It was all high-rises and tenements. This guy said that, once they were knocked doon and houses were built, there wasn’t this thing with everybody living on top of one another and neighbours getting on one another’s nerves. Everybody had their own private space. People were just calmer and more relaxed. In Dundee the agreement was that everybody that was moved out of their flats got into a house. So it’s exactly the same mix of people. You have to put the same people back if they want it. And they said that, however many hooses you knock doon, there'll always be a house for everyone to stay in the area.
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With the new Donside village that’s about to be built, something has to be done about Tillydrone. Otherwise you can just picture a fortress roond it. Them and us. If nothing’s done, that’s how it’s gonna be. Picture the poor kids standing at the wall, gazing down into the big back gardens with the trampolines. That would be such a shame. That would turn us into a slum.
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Not everybody wants to live in a house. If you’re single or if you’ve just got one child, people are very happy living in flats. As long as there is a good mix of people. And, down here, the flats are really nice. They will look at them block by block and maybe just do a bit of a face lift on them, maybe just fresh paint outside, new doors and new windows. They are nae gonna come and demolish everything.
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It’s hard to get rid of a reputation. And the media never prints good stuff. Good stories dinnae sell. Bad stories sell. It’s a shame. Folk only focus on the negative and say there’s nathing to do here. Fair enough, from the outside it might nae look like it. But we’ve got the River Don, beautiful walks doon there and we’ve got Seaton Park just at the back of us. The city centre is a five-minute bus journey away. Duthie Park, if you get the 17 on Great Northern Road, is only a bus journey away. There is so much green space and beautiful things roond aboot us. But folk dinnae appreciate it. I think it’s modern living…
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The vision of the design panel was to make a green belt through Tillydrone, leading from the river and going through to the other side, to St Machar Drive. They call it a green boulevard. So people would realise that, if they follow this trail, there’s this beautiful river at the bottom. They want to try and bring more emphasis to the fact that it’s a riverside location. That’s their vision; almost to advertise Tillydrone as a beautiful area, next to all these great amenities up in Woodside. Ken, you’ve got the shops up there and the university close by. So, hopefully, that vision continues. But it’s about keeping with it. I don’t know how the new government will change things and, if it’s a new council, will their vision be different? Are they gonna back all this? Are they gonna go down the same route? The design brief is meant to be done within the next year and, within two years, we should see the first phases starting; the demolition and the new buildings. Major building work is probably within the next five to ten years. Big things, maybe even the skyscrapers.
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We’re speaking at least 15 years. At the end of the day, if people think they’re nae getting the benefits, their kids will. But, if people don’t see anything happening, it’s all just words and they’ll say, ‘Look we’re still living in the same dive.’
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I love Tillydrone and I want to stay here for years upon years. I’ve only been a community rep for two years, so it’s all relatively new. But I’ve joined Community Voices Network and attended some of their events, trying to learn from other areas about regeneration and their practices and what went wrong. A lot of it is political and a lot of it does go over your head. But the only way to learn what they are speaking about is to go and find oot for myself. I’ve got a good tenants’ conference coming up in Glasgow. It’s about how to get your voice heard as a tenant and how not to let authority figures talk down to you. They may be authority but, at the end of the day, you’re the tenant, it’s your house and it’s your area. I still sometimes have this thing about authority and I need to make my voice a tad louder. But I’ve been learning and I’m gradually gaining more confidence.
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Getting people involved is the hard part. It is really hard. I think people need to have a bit more belief and they need to strive for it cause we’re nae gonna get it without a fight. Councillors don’t live here. If we want change it needs to come fae us. We need to say, ‘Okay you’ve promised us this. We want it!’ Ken? It’s different than saying, ‘Okay, you’ve promised us this but we’re nae gonna get it.’ No. We want this! We want a better place to live. It takes a united and stronger voice. We need mair folk. Get involved! Come to the meetings! It will be worth it in the end. And we’ll have a community we can be proud of. In the future, when people ask where you stay you can say, TILLYDRONE, best community in Aberdeen!
Recorded 8th May