In the Archives : Livingston Festival

By 1981 Livingston Festival was the largest community festival in Scotland.  But in the early years of the new town annual gala days were only held in Livingston Station and Village, where they were already an established tradition.  It was the celebration of Livingston’s tenth birthday in 1972 that inspired the beginning of a new West Lothian tradition in the form of an annual festival. 

The Livingston Development Corporation organised the first festival it was huge success and included art and industrial exhibitions, a Ladies Football match, schools open days and the Livingston Village gala.  The celebrations ended with a jazz concert and a fireworks display. The Corporation also staged the opening of the newly create Howden Park Centre. According to files in the archive, this first festival cost the Corporation £14,000

The town accepted the challenge set by the Chairman of Livingston Development Corporation to make the festival an annual event, - though with a lower budget, the 1973 and 1974 festival cost just over £1000. From 1973 the festivals began to roughly follow the same pattern.  The week opened with a parade of floats from each housing district, during the week the schools and housing districts competed against each other in a variety of organised events, there were schools open days, an art exhibition and a motor gymkhana.  The end of the festival was celebrated with a fireworks display in Howden Park.

Records in the Livingston Development Corporation collection include minutes of the Festival Committee, souvenir programmes and promotional material. They give an insight into the planning and organisation required to hold the Festival each year. 

'Ownership' of the festival changed through the years. After 1972, Livingston Community Council agreed to arrange the festivals but the Council was itself dissolved by 1975 (when Community Councils became the most local level of government in Scotland - Livingston had jumped the gun a little here and re-organised its community councils into districts) . A festival and gala committee was formed in 1975 with encouragement from Steve Trivett, Community Development Officer at the Corporation. The Festival association continued to arrange the festival until the mid 1990s, when the town wide festival was replaced with district gala days.

An early constitution of the Livingston Festival Committee, held in West Lothian Council Archives, stated as one of its main objectives:

 “To promote a Festival of which Livingston people can be proud”.

The records and photographs held in West Lothian Council Archives indicate that this objective was readily achieved.  The Festivals included a diverse range of events and activities such as festival floats, raft races, rock climbing, soap box derby, mini tattoo, Victorian Cricket Match, kite flying competition, athletics, Highland Dancing, roller derby and wheelbarrow races.

During 1985, the International Year of Youth, a Youth Theatre/Youth Arts project was formed under the umbrella of the Festival.  Their production ‘Spectrum’ was performed three times during the Festival and featured a cast of over 50 young people from all over West Lothian.

Over the years local communities within the town established their own galas and the town wide Festival was reduced to a one-day event.

Youth organisations at the festival, 1974

Festival Floats, 1974

Highland Dancing at the Festival

Tug of war at the festival

Livingston's First Festival, 1972

Howden Park Centre

For over forty years, Howden Park Centre has been integral to the cultural output of Livingston so I thought I would look, briefly, at its history.

Invitation to the opening of Howden Park Centre, 1972

In 1972, as part of the tenth anniversary celebrations of the Livingston Development Corporation, the stable block and coach house of Howden House were developed into an arts and conference centre.

 The building was opened by the actor Andrew Cruickshank. This new centre provided the Mews Theatre, an exhibition space, and accommodation for other groups involved in the arts. The Centre was administered by the Community Development Team of the Livingston Development Corporation until the Corporation's Wind-Up in 1997, when the Centre was taken on by the newly formed West Lothian Council.  Refurbished and extended, Howden Park Centre reopened in Spring 2009 following redevelopment to designs created by architects Nicoll Russell Studios.  In 2010 the Centre was named "Building of the Year" by the Edinburgh Architectural Association.



Cover of brochure for conference facilities
at Howden Park Centre



The local amateur dramatics society, The Livingston Players, put on three shows a year in the theatre, and have done since before there was a theatre.  Again, even before the buliding’s conversion, the stable block had been used by Livingston Arts Group as a meeting place and the Corporation promised to incorporate for facilities to use once the building had been converted – the group still meets there today. There have also been countless business conferences and art exhibitions and concerts and gigs held at the centre.



Livingston Development Corporation letter
regarding management of the Centre, 1974



In the archive we hold a variety of material relating to the centre.  We have the agreement to let the stables to Livingston Art Group, for example, and the minutes of the management group that directed the conversion of the building (and papers to do with the management of the facility in general). We also have brochures that advertise the conference facilities of the centre. More importantly, the Livingston Players, have, over the last few years, been depositing their records with us so we also hold a record of their performances.  We do, of course, as with anything that was built by the LDC, also hold an abundant amount of technical data on the construction and renovation of the building!

A lot of the cultural, social and economic conditions of Livingston today are a direct result of the decisions made in the 1970s - Howden Park Centre is one of the most positive results of those decision.  

Going back before Livingston New Town and the LDC, during World War II a bomb fell on the building Tuesday 25 June 1940 a bomb fell on the coach house and stables.  Mrs Maria Fleming and her granddaughter Margaret, aged 10, were killed.  These were the first civilians to be killed on the Scottish mainland and the only WWII deaths by bombing in West Lothian.

Housing visitors’ Report for October 1972



Livingston was proud of its ability to attract industry,
but many still found it hard to find work. This image is
from Cameron Iron Works on Houstoun Industrial estate.
When it was built the iron works had the largest iron press
in Europe.



Again it was noted that the new tenants visited seem to be settling well, and that they are in employment, have furniture, and seem to be able to cope with the expense and problems of moving here.

The mood in town is that the employment situation is improving and I have noted a few men who have been able to gain employment here within a few weeks of coming to the town.

Since the current intake to Ladywell is financially ‘better off’ than that of last year, the problem of garage lets has been raised to me a few times by the new tenants.

Howden Park – since the opening of the Arts Centre, Howden House is often locked up during the day, and children who come to play in the park now have no toilet facilities available to them.



Livingston was constantly expanding. Many new schemes
had events to celebrate the work - this is an image from the
ceremony that began ALmondvale Bridge, which links
north and south Livingston



Knightsridge – people in Kr seem ready to grab any passing LDC official and pump for information as they know very little about the area (i.e. Kr not the town as a whole). Mostly, they do not have family or friends in the town (was this known?) and the general feeling is that it is an area where ‘people keep themselves’ – although everyone says this. They would all be very glad, they say, of a place to meet, and I think a notice board available to these tenants would be a boon as they are finding contacts, both with those who can help them, and with themselves, a problem. Can any facility be provided Kr this winter?

Note:  in addition to the visits or the returns, there were 76 visits to pensioners in Deans for the garden survey.

Women in Livingston in the 1970s

As it is International Women’s Day on Friday the 8^th March, I thought I would look at how women are portrayed in these Visitor Reports, and then take a wider look at women in Livingston in the 1970s.

One of the reasons I like these assistant housing visitor reports so much is due to the way they capture reflect the way out society has changed in the last forty years. This week, I thought I’d look at the changing role and perception of women. In previous entries women are mentioned in ways which, I hope, reflects how much things have changed since the 1970s, when the 1950s ideal of a housewife still held sway...

There were three comments that jumped out at me:

“It is now obvious that a percentage of women work either part time of full time and that it is not possible to make contact with them during working hours. Perhaps evening visiting might be considered in appropriate cases.”

This implies to me that the housing visitor is expecting to find a woman at home at every house at which she calls. As though it is a shock that they are out working... Then this is followed up by -

“It would appear that there is a shortage of jobs for the under twenties as well as part-time work for women and according to tenants, the Department of Employment & Productivity hold out very little hope of any immediate improvement.”

Which again implies how women really only work part time, definitely a sign of an age before it was considered women could have careers and a family. Finally comes this comment -

“Three homes were revisited because the assistant housing officer considered on her first visit that the women were unsettled and depressed.”



Were women in Livingston in the 1970s
restricted to being mothers and housewives?



Although probably an issue for all women across the country at home all day with the baby,  this last issue was particularly acute in Livingston because the population was made up of immigrants, people who had moved away from their friends and family to start a new life in Livingston. This meant that, for all the women not out working, they could not call on their parents friends. There, was, also, at the beginning, a lack of established groups and societies. The problem was such that Leslie Higgs, Livingston Development Corporation’s head of Housing and Social Relations for twenty years summed up the problem like this:

“It cannot be overstressed enough that probably one of the greatest problems facing community workers in new towns is the housewife with a baby to look after and who is then unable to take a job, or has to leave one, and is then alone all day.”

Given all that, I thought I would have a root around in the archive to see if I could find any other records which reflect how women were living their lives in Livingston in the 1970s. 

Firstly, some statistics for you. Livingston Development Corporation was great at collecting statistics as it had to plan services and future developments in the town around its population. An example of this is that when the town was first occupied, it had a very young age structure. As the town matured, so did its population and suddenly the town needed to provide such facilities as day centres for the elderly. Anyway, as a result of this planning there are plenty of statistics available on Livingston. Here are some stats from the Livingston Household survey in 1977 (which includes comparative information from the 1972 survey too) on employment:

In 1972, 34% of Livingston’s population was a “working population” – of that 34%, a third were women. So, assuming a total population  of 50% men and 50% women (and also assuming that I have got my maths right!), only 1 in 5 women in 1972 were looking for, or already in work. Another stat from 1972 – women made up 94% of part time workers, although that figure is still about 75% today across the UK, it shows how women were expected to look after the kids.

Another comment from the Household Survey comes in the recreation section. Whilst teenagers were apparently outdoors (an age before computer games...), and OAPs were gardening, “women were more likely to be home doing housework, knitting or reading.”

That’s in the evening, but what about during the day? Moving away from the Household Survey, there were a variety of groups set up in Livingston and a lot of them were aimed at women. Take, for example, the short course run by the Electrical Association for Women. The course was intended for “students of any age, many of whom may have no formal knowledge of science or electricity. It is intended that they handle as many appliances as possible and do practical work such as meter reading, rewiring a fuse, wiring a 13 amp plug. The information given, must, of course, but accurate but it should not be too technical otherwise the students will get bored.”

For some reason this group flopped the first time it was run in 1973.

Finally, to take us back to International Women’s Day I thought I would have a quick look at... “Women’s Fayre”, events held as part International Women’s Year (more information on which can be found in our collections in LDC/PS/3/3/37/7)

Livingston was one of five towns in Scotland to hold 2 days of events over the 21^st and 22^nd October. In Livingston the fayre was held at Howden House.  Over the two days 2000 people attended the event and it raised £173.57 which went towards the International Women’s Year African Water and Indian Literacy projects.

Again, reflecting slightly different attitudes at the time (and not just relating to women), notes for possible stalls at the event included:

“Police: recruitment effort Community Liaison information, attractive policewomen for help with stewarding etc?”

“Knitting Machine demonstrations and mannequin parade”

“Scottish Gas Board Demonstrations of economic cooking”

“Demonstration by Beautician from Bangour Hosptial...”

I  have been slightly cruel there, because there were plenty of stalls that are perhaps a bit more positive, the Department of Employment was there to talk about retraining, equal pay and equal opportunities for women for example, whilst Livingston’s Voluntary Organisation’s Council had a stall to try and channel people into voluntary groups in Livingston. Bangour hospital, as well as there to give beauty courses, were also appealing for new nurses, or trying to get old nurses to return to work.

In fact, 40 groups expressed willingness to be involved in the exhibition “to draw attention to women’s needs, publicise their potential role in society, and enlighten them of the prospects open to women who want to work voluntarily or for payment.”

So, although the Housing Visitor still expected to find the majority of women at home when she called at a house, times were a-changing. How much they have changed is, of course, open to debate.