Across the world, things are happening that no prayers or pieties can undo, events so terrible they make the dysfunctional nation I call home appear normal. Here on the periphery of Europe, I have the luxury of thinking about writing and filmmaking. On a good day it’s my highest aspiration. On a bad day, it’s a lost cause. I’m not alone. Many in Scotland share the same thought – how can I have a career in the arts or creative industries and not die of disappointment?

For the working classes today there’s no route to becoming a professional anything in the arts, not when the portal to free higher education was slammed in our faces last century. Whether through creativity or patronage, art is once again restored as the plaything of the moneyed, the unpaid interns able to work for free at the expense of those who can’t. In this context and in the absence of a living wage, who gets to make art?

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Outside my window the rowan across the street is in full autumn pomp, a flame in the dreichness. Next month migrating waxwings will land as they do every year to steal its fruits. This scene, of nature in balance is reassuring, especially when I can’t bear to hear the news: Gaza, Ukraine, Government corruption, culture and gender wars, mass surveillance, poverty and, most frightening, the bitter whirlwind about to be reaped as a consequence of climate change.

With world events so bleak and overwhelming, I cling to small things: the rowan tree, the wildfowl in my local park, music, cooking, writing, photography and making small forward steps on my Tilo film. I also have the welcome distraction of watching films submitted to the 2023 British Independent Film Awards – aka BIFA. This is my fourth year as a voter in what’s arguably the most interesting category. It’s also a chance to bring my critical skills to the table and help decide the winner.

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It’s September. Summer in Glasgow has been a mix of short-lived sun, biblical rain and broiling skies. Elsewhere the climate in southern Europe and the aptly named Furnace Creek in Death Valley, California have endured temperatures up to 55 degrees Celsius – 131 degrees Fahrenheit. On social media, tourists to Furnace Creek post selfies standing beside a large thermometer as if it’s some kind of trophy, incognisant of the world’s highest recorded temperatures. That asteroid can’t come soon enough.

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In 2018, over the course of a year I made several trips to a derelict shopping precinct in Shawlands, Glasgow; the Shawbridge Arcade. Among the last units operating when I arrived were the city council’s housing offices, a branch of William Hill Bookmakers and a motorcycle workshop. Here were signs of previous shops and businesses: Character’s Lounge Bar, a kebab shop and the New Wine church, long since shuttered and abandoned. The Arcade, late-Brutalist in design, featured a car park on its upper level that overlooked an open courtyard from where a concrete staircase led to ground level with seating areas and planters. On the main façade was a sign, Shopping Precinct. Or rather, S opping  recin t.  

While shooting Tilo in Real Life, virtually every location I’ve used has since been demolished. Some have even re-built on to become new places. The disappearance, not only of buildings, but entire streets and areas of my native city, caused a deep-rooted anxiety I’ve carried my whole life. The loss of physical surroundings and what it meant was unexplained to me as a child and, as if living through war, the destruction of my home, street and district was an ever-imminent threat.

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