The lofty ground-floor windows of Glasgow’s former Centre for Contemporary Arts are masked in metal sheeting and peeling posters. Six months after entering liquidation and making all staff redundant, the A-listed Victorian strip has been reduced to another doleful Sauchiehall Street eyesore.

Inside, I picture dust blanketing the exposed steel bridges and staircases crisscrossing through the old stone of the courtyard, and dancing in the natural light coming down from its glass roof. The building is fascinating; it’s like a clutch of old buildings stitched together in a way that reflects the ethos of the old CCA. The way the ground floor shops bled into the café space, and the varying promenades connected performance and exhibition spaces, reflected its remit as an open hub for the arts.

But thanks to our history of treating key public arts institutions as either expendable or commercially exploitable, it seems any hope of a multidisciplinary, egalitarian arts centre reopening at 350 Sauchiehall Street is slipping away.

Culture Secretary Mairi McAllan has confirmed that Creative Scotland, which owns the building, intends to sell it as a “cultural asset”. This would be the final nail in the coffin for the arts centre, which has been the victim of a string of lousy governance decisions over the years.

The CCA grew from Scottish writer Tom McGrath’s Third Eye Centre, which opened in the 1970s as a home for experimental art. In recent years it was funded to the tune of about £640,000 a year by Creative Scotland before securing a £ 3.4 million three-year deal in 2025. But it closed permanently in January 2026 amid a torrent of financial problems behind the scenes, with 39 staff made redundant.

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