Glasgow's biggest street art festival started in 2017 with 125 artists and 400 metres of wall inside a disused warehouse. Ten years later it finished a different job: turning the most avoided stretch of concrete in the city into something people actually choose to walk under.
A grassroots gathering turned decade-long institution
Yardworks launched in 2016 and ran its first full edition in 2017 as Scotland's largest gathering of graffiti and street art, with more than 125 international and local artists painting across 400 metres of wall. It runs out of SWG3, the Glasgow venue and creative complex co-founded by Gary Mackay, known in the scene as Gaz Mac, who also helped start the festival. SWG3's founding charity, the Clydeside Initiative for Arts, has run Yardworks every year since, growing it from a one-off weekend into what the venue now calls one of Scotland's leading urban art events.
By 2026 that grassroots gathering had become something bigger. More than 120 artists and collectives took part in the 10th anniversary edition, held Saturday 2 May and Sunday 3 May, according to GlasgowWorld's guide to the anniversary weekend, one of the largest line-ups the festival has ever booked. Confirmed names included UK street artist .EPOD, Brighton veteran AROE, French muralist Williann, Glasgow painter David "PizzaBoy" Breen, and Scottish artist KMG.
The festival that keeps adding jobs for itself
The anniversary programme did not stay inside SWG3's walls. A Family Zone ran across both days with Spray Can Upcycling, T-shirt Design, and a collaborative mural station called The Cube, all included in the ticket price. Adult workshops covered traditional signwriting, Japanese calligraphy, and a session called Design Your Deck, where anyone could paint their own skateboard for £45. New for 2026, Street Art Cycling Tours left directly from SWG3 to guide visitors through what organisers now call the Yardworks-led Street Art District inside Glasgow's Riverside Innovation District.
None of that is the biggest thing Yardworks did this year. That happened under a motorway bridge two miles from the festival gates, and it took three years to finish.
Sixteen pillars nobody wanted to walk past
For three years, the people behind Yardworks have run a placemaking programme called GRID, using commissioned public art to change how Glasgow residents feel about spaces the city had effectively written off. The Glasgow Splash reported that GRID has delivered 41 public artworks across Govan, Partick, Anderston, and Finnieston since the programme started. Its final installation targeted 16 of the concrete pillars holding up the Kingston Bridge, one of the busiest road crossings in the city and, for decades, a stretch locals avoided on foot.
Around 90 artists applied before the January deadline, each pitching a design rooted in the identity of the neighbourhoods around the bridge. Organisers picked 16 finalists in February, and installation ran through the Yardworks festival weekend and into May. Yardworks director Laura told The Glasgow Splash the project came out of listening sessions with people who lived nearby. "These were places that people told us felt neglected, areas that were regularly vandalised and didn't feel safe or welcoming," she said. "By working with artists and the community, we can start to shift that."
What ten years of festival money bought a city
One weekend of live painting cannot fix a neighbourhood's relationship with a motorway underpass by itself, and Yardworks organisers aren't claiming it did. What the Kingston Bridge project shows is a specific bet: that a festival built to platform spray paint and live murals can also fund the slower, unglamorous work behind it, running an open call, picking sixteen artists out of ninety applicants, and following through on a build-out that takes three years instead of one weekend. Yardworks spent its first decade building the audience and the credibility to make that bet. The Clyde Walkway got a refreshed programme of live painting across its own established legal wall this year too, a sign the organisation isn't done finding concrete to paint.
Ten years ago, Yardworks needed a warehouse to prove Glasgow's street art scene could draw a crowd. Now it has a named district, a bridge full of commissioned murals, and a bike tour to show people around both.
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