Scottish Ballet at the Tramway

If you've been travelling down Pollokshaws Road lately, you'll have noticed the building works going on at the Tramway. It's the new Scottish Ballet HQ, due to open in January 2008. The 11 million pound building has been designed by Edinburgh based Malcolm Fraser Architects.

Scottish ballet is Scotlands award winning national dance company, the company presents world class dance pieces within Scotland, UK and all over the world. This new building is seemingly going to make a huge difference to the Scottish Ballet, as the building they are in is dilapidated and not fit for purpose. The new building's facilities will allow young talented dancers to stay and train in Scotland. The Scottish Ballets website has a walkthrough of the new building and other information on the project.

The Tramway is one of my favourite places in the city, so I am reserving judgement on the design [see pictures above] and location of the Scottish Ballet HQ. Hopefully the opening of the HQ will increase the number of visitors to the Tramway creating more of a creative buzz in the area. It is a great thing to have in the Southside.

The Tramway itself is having a bit of a makeover and at the moment it's only partially open.

The cafe bar is set to have a larger kitchen enabling the tramway to have a larger menu, which is great because it would nice to have dinner there, before a show.

There is a new gallery space opening - Tramway 5 and it'll be located opposite the box office between Tramway 2 and the main street. The space will be visible from the street with large floor to ceiling windows. Another gallery space regularly showing exhibitions is what the Tramway needs, if there was always an exhibition on, I would be more likely to just drop in. The first exhibition planned for the space is Rachel Mimiec and it's part of the Glasgow International festival in April 2008.

For more information on the changes at the Tramway click here