Continuing our dialogue with Winnie Herbstein following her film and exhibition project Dampbusters that featured in the CCA gallery spaces Fri 6 August — Sat 4 September 2021, we hosted a live online-only conversation on CCA Annex at 6.30pm, 19 January 2022 between Winnie, Cathy McCormack and Joey Simons.

Cathy is an anti-poverty and housing activist from Easthall, Easterhouse and the principal protagonist in Dampbusters with whom Winnie has a longstanding relationship. A pivotal figure within her community, Cathy fought to raise awareness around the relationship of poor quality housing to the health and wellbeing of its inhabitants. Cathy’s book – The Wee Yellow Butterfly, is an autobiography chronicling the struggles of her and the local community.

Joey is a writer and researcher from Glasgow, and a tenant union activist with Living Rent. He has edited a collection of writing from the Easterhouse poet Freddy Anderson (Let Us Act for Ourselves: selected works of Freddy Anderson), and the pamphlet SCHEMING, which touches on the history of Easterhouse and Glasgow as a whole through archival and community research. His current exhibition The Fearful Part Of It Was The Absence at Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, explores the history of rioting in Glasgow.

Winnie and Joey discuss the legacy of Cathy’s activism and its ongoing relevance to contemporary issues around housing and health with questions invited via a live chat over CCA Annex. Cathy’s film; War Without Bullets,1995, 06:32 is screened at the start of the event and is also available to watch via this link here.

This event was live-captioned and recorded, captions for the in conversation courtesy of Eat The Pips and via Collective Text for War Without Bullets.

For further reading, both The Wee Yellow Butterfly and SCHEMING are available via Aye Aye Books.