101 Art Proposals for Livingston (That Won’t Ever Happen) 

1. Paint the high rise council flats on the main road through Ladywell in bright primary colours, using the special paint popular in the Netherlands that absorbs smog.
2. Line the ruins of Peel House with small tea light candles and candlesticks so that it looks like a memorial – tell no one what it is a memorial to and see if anyone brings flowers.
3. Install bee hives along the top of the Civic Centre and use the honey collected to donate to local food banks. Teach primary school children to be beekeepers.
4. Install large, 18 feet high, children’s rock pool nets along the river Almond at regular intervals for no apparent reason, tell everyone it represents catching dreams.
5. Install plaques on any and every burnt or damaged public litter bin which proclaim “Here Lies A Bin”.
6. Remove old, archaic 1970’s style concrete public art sculptures that are dotted throughout town and replace them with selfie opportunities in the style of the Selfie Museum pop-up down in London. Publish walk through maps of the route to each selfie location. 
7. In a similar vein, remove the archaic “public art” sculptures from the middle of roundabouts with large light up signs in the style of Nathan Colley, which proclaim “Please Use Your Fucking Indicators”, and “It Has Been X Amount of Days Since The Last Car Crash Here”. 
8. Paint the inside of the underpasses with mirror paint, so that people don’t need to look behind them whilst walking through them late at night (this can also be added to the “Selfie Map”)
9. Undertake a performance in Howden Park that depicts rolling down the hill as many times as possible before someone stops you – ask others to join in, and claim the performance is an attempt at bringing joy to the area.
10. Paint everyone on Eliburn South Road’s fence in bright colours and campaign to have the street renamed “Rainbow Road”
11. In a similar vein to Here Lies A Bin, attach memorial plaques stating the lifespan and a Rest In Peace message to all the stumps left behind from cutting down trees.
12. Arrange for the residents of the sheltered accommodation in Livingston Village to partake in a “memory bank”, where they are invited to record their experiences of Livingston orally in an archive for the ages.
13. Collect all the shoes left abandoned at the side of the Houston Interchange, and drill a hole in them for drainage, fill them with soil, and put hardy seeds in them. Return the plant-pot shoes to their original locations on the Houston Interchange kerb.
14. Go around town late at night, spray painting obscenities around pot-holes so that the council is forced to actually fix them.
15. On a similar vein, exactly 40 days and 40 nights after writing obscenities around all the pot-holes, do the same thing with all the broken drains. 
16. Walk around the Eliburn Woods, and whenever one finds a tree that has had low-level branches cut off to prevent children climbing it, attach a plaque that says “ouch!”.
17. Turn all the small, abandoned convenience stores dotted around schemes into 24-hour miniature recreations of iconic nightclubs (Blitz Club, Taboo, Batcave, Studio 54) for one weekend.
18. Recreate a 1960’s New York Happening in the middle of The Centre, at 12:30 on a Sunday.
19. Paint the Council offices beige, in representation of the beige-ness of their decision making. Should they begin to make decisions which are less beige, they get one square foot of colour painted on the building for each non-beige decision. A committee will be formed of 13 people to vote on the beige-ness of each decision made.
20. Convert the empty-for-years office complexes in Houston Industrial estate, built for a company that pulled out, into rehabilitation centres for people with mental health problems and drug addiction, featuring 24 hour support. 
21. Paint the Cousland Road tarmac rainbow colours, using the afore-mentioned smog absorbing paint. 
22. Build a to-scale replica of St Basil’s Cathedral (large enough that an average sized three year old could walk inside) in the middle of Howden Park and then apply for city status citing our new cathedral. Should they refuse, tell them they’re discriminating against toddlers. 
23. Upon receiving our city status because of our miniature replica of St Basil’s Cathedral, apply for City of Culture. Use the money to upgrade every small area of water to a pleasant duck pond.
24. Renovate the Dedridge (Lanthorn) duck pond, getting rid of a few disused buildings around it, make it bigger, add in a boating area and a large duck house. Employ someone to look after the ducks and sell free-range duck eggs at the Lanthorn Community Food Co-Op to promote ethical consumption of animal products.
25. Collect all of the rubbish from the River Almond, wearing hazmat suits due to the industrial waste in the river. Lay them out very neatly in rows outside of the Council buildings very early in the morning so no one can get to work without stepping in leaking car batteries and see if it gives them a nudge to enforce restrictions about illegal dumping in the waterways. 
26. Paint all the “Blue Huts” UV reactive green – monitor how long it takes for teenagers to stop referring to their meeting place as a “The Blue Hut”.
27. Now that the River Almond is nice and clean, let’s make it a part of the Union Canal system by extending, deepening and adding locks to the river, so that we can walk past lots of nice houseboats on the way to work. 
28. Since there’s now houseboats in Livingston, let’s go a step further and dig up (almost) every road, creating a town connected only by canal modelled on Venice. Every resident will receive an electric powered boat and training on how to use their boat, as well as swimming and water safety lessons. This will reduce all incidences of drunk driving, provide a tourism opportunity for the region because it’ll be like Venice but affordable and with less culture, and truly live up to the original concept of being a “Child Friendly New Town” because there won’t be any cars at all to run over children. There will also be business opportunities to be had upon the canals – water taxis, water buses, water tours etc.
29. Demolish the Livingston enclosed shopping centre, and in its place build a real high street with discounted business rates for local and independent businesses. 
30. Force high schools to publish the numbers of student suicides every year, and display the numbers on a memorial outside the school fence. Refuse to stop until the number is 0. 
31. Construct a bandstand in the new outdoor High Street and allow teenagers bands to come along and play every weekend in 45 minute slots. Bands participating receive payment and some food/drinks. 
32. Hold a punk rock festival at the area of Dedridge formerly occupied every evening by the “alternative kids” called The Pier, and market it as Punk On The Pier.
33. Create a travelling Record Library, which will go to one area of town per evening, in which people can borrow records they haven’t heard before, or donate to the library records they did not like, to promote a sense of community and shared resources. Have listening parties every Saturday afternoon. 
34. Have the local branch of the Women’s Institute collaborate with the artist to make all the street lamps woolly coats for winter, because they look cold. 
35. Erect a scaffold outside of the council buildings. 
36. Upon a satisfactory conclusion being reached with the residents of Deans South, use the land to build a mock-Tudor village. This mock-Tudor village will work like a living museum, with former residents of Deans South being given the first offer of a home in return for a wage and working the village (training will be provided). Other jobs of the village will be given to non-violent offenders leaving prison, those who have been long-term unemployed or who are recovering from drug and alcohol addictions. The mock-Tudor village will have a farm, blacksmiths shop, beehives and a farm shop stocking local crafts made in the village and thus will be completely self sustaining. All who work there will be given a mock-Tudor cottage to live in, and one of the largest buildings (the “town hall”) will offer counselling, sexual health support, domestic abuse support and other community services for residents and non-residents alike. It will become a tourist attraction.
37. Abolish the local branch of Police Scotland Constabulary and renovate their old Police Station building into a brightly coloured, helpful community oriented place. There will be some cells left, however they will be made to more closely resemble hospital beds than prison cells. Upon calling the 999 emergency number in Livingston you will as usual be put through to an operator who will ask what your requirements are, however instead of sending out one-size-fits-all police officers, they will instead send out situation modelled services (for example, if someone is drunk and disorderly they will send a team of people with experience in dealing with addiction counselling, in the event of sexual assault the victim will be met with a team of people who are experts in trauma counselling and in gathering evidence of that specific type of crime, etc). This will lower rates of incarceration for psychiatric patients and non-violent offenders whilst increasing the likelihood of residents who currently do not trust the local constabulary of actually contacting 999 for help when they need it. 
38. On the main roads through town that link up the bars and nightclubs, install “police box” style structures which offer free drug counselling, free drug testing and sexual health guidance. These are police amnesty zones, where no one will be prosecuted for owning drugs. This gives drug users a chance to use safely with clean needles and sharps disposal and medical attention, whilst also forging relationships with drug users which may lead to them asking for recovery help. For more casual, party drug users, this will lower drug deaths and promote safe drug use, as evidence suggests that drug testing actually empowers users to dispose of drugs if they discover upon testing they are not the drug/dose they thought they had purchased.
39. Create a group modelled on Man Chat in Aberdeen, which will meet in the former police station, to anonymously talk about their problems and their mental health. Each member will sign a covenant agreeing that what happens in Man Chat, stays in Man Chat. They will then create a peer-support network, to directly tackle the high rate of male suicide and mental health problems in the region. They will meet several times a week, so that no one cannot attend due to work schedules. 
40. Convert one of the abandoned churches into Livingston’s first and only LGBT club, which will host drag shows showcasing local talent, as well as live music.
41. Turn the now abandoned paper mill building in Houston Industrial Estate into 74 artists studios at an affordable rate, possibly a collaboration with WASPS. This will increase the likelihood of creatives staying in the town, and can also feature a large project space for use as a gallery space, performance space, dance space, fitness space, etc.
42. Replace the stairs in The Centre with adult sized slides, leading into large ball pits, to allow the grown up population of Livingston to let their inner child out to play whilst running errands.
43. Using the honey produced by the local beehives from previous proposals, create a mead factory which will occupy the banks of the River Almond, and will make artisan mead sold at affordable prices, and offer tours of a traditional mead making facility. 
44. In acknowledgement of the cultural history of those who came from the Glasgow “slums” to Livingston in the 1960’s, and that many of their families would have originally hailed from the Western Isles, create a Gaelic language and culture centre in the town which will offer an all-Gaelic nursery, as well as classes in Gaelic language and culture for all ages.
45. Install colour-changing lightbulbs in the street lights of the town, so that they can light up different colours at different times – for example, the colour blue has been proven to reduce anger and aggression, so the lights could be blue on weekend evenings.
46. Create busking squares which are bookable (for free) for certain periods of time dotted throughout the main thoroughfares of the town – at a suitable distance so as not to create noise overlap and making buskers sound garbled – to provide music and encourage people to walk more.
47. During Summer, construct a large screen in Howden Park which will screen shorts created by local filmmakers, animators, visual artists and comedians. 
48. Renovate the local nurseries so that they are nearer to the local care-homes, to provide inter-generational socialisation for the elderly residents who maybe don’t have family, and for the younger students who perhaps don’t have grandparents.
49. Inspired by The Vennie’s Knightsridge Community Garden, create a Community Garden in each area of the town (Craigshill, Eliburn, Livingston Village, Deans, Dedridge, Ladywell and Howden), These community gardens will further offer employment in the areas, whilst teaching people how to grow their own foods, providing life skill workshops, and affordable allotment spaces for residents without private gardens. The social spaces of the gardens will be planted with year-round flowering plants to provide a safe social space. 
50. Convince the Scottish government to allow us to make changes to the towns education curriculum – these changes will include scrapping the antiquated “Social Education” and “Home Economics” classes and replacing them with Life 101, which will place emphasis on practical skills such as reading contracts, budgeting, how debt and loans work, how insurance works and what you need it for, how to run a small business, how to cook a basic week of meals that are actually nutritious, an introduction to employment rights and tenant’s rights, and various other hands-on life skills that so many teenagers leave high school without. 
51. Pass a local bylaw that states that for every one corporation or franchise store on our high street, there must be two locally owned businesses. This bylaw will also apply to pubs, cafes and restaurants. 
52. Introduce the Eric Scott Memorial Fund, a start-up grant for local businesses which will help them secure trading space and the necessary permits and insurance, and provide free advise and legal counsel for their first 3 years in business.
53. Install a heated pool on the Boulevard, and have a synchronised swimming team give nightly shows during summer in matching floral swim caps.
54. Enlist the help of graphic designers to help every household in the town create a standard to fly on their electric boats on the new canals.
55. Get rid of the multi-storey carparks, because we won’t need them now we all have boats, and create mini golf courses with a Dada theme.
56. In the style of the pyramid schemes that have managed to trap so many residents of the town; create a get rich quick scheme that’s based around panning for gold in the burns running through the town. See if anyone shows up.
57. Pass a bylaw making it mandatory for every household to carve turnips at least once during October. Turnips will be provided.
58. Ban Christmas decorations of any variety, including in households, shops and public spaces, until the 12th day before Christmas. They must be removed before Hogmanay. Failure to do so will result in you, and your children, being forced to watch as your Christmas decorations are destroyed in front of you.
59. Revamp the nightlife, cash in on having the first custom-built nightclub in Scotland. Ban all Montagues and Capulets. Allow only banging tunes, and DJ sets, and dirty dance floors, and dreams of naughtiness.
60. Party boats for the canals. They’ll serve mead and the people will dress as Vikings.
61. Scrap mail delivery people, and instead train and use the first fleet of messenger pigeons in use in almost 100 years. If after five years the pigeons are doing okay, upgrade to owls.
62. In protest to the first custom-built nightclub in the country now being used as a church, assemble a large group of people outside to chant, lager, lager, lager, lager, lager, mega, mega white thing, mega mega white thing, lager, lager, lager….
63. Replace the free advertising circulars that get posted through everyone’s doors with the Livingston Good Newspaper. It’ll only feature good news like dogs being adopted from the adoption centre and people finishing their course of chemotherapy.
64. Install adult sized play parks in public spaces, to encourage exercise and improve mental health.
65. Create a skill-share network, in which people share their skills in exchange for other skills. Want to learn to crochet? Mark will teach you in exchange for that Victoria sponge cake recipe.
66. Convert the underpasses into small art galleries, where local artists can show their works under Perspex for a few weeks at a time. Turn the non-places into places.
67. Install a cascade of rubber bath ducks that appear to be falling from the windows of the high rise flats in Craigshill, just for a sense of whimsy.
68. Have a ballot in which every person in the town’s name who is a permanent resident of the town and is under the age of 18 is entered into. Draw it at random and declare them King or Queen who rules by decree for a weekend.
69. If for any reason, one must drive on the few remaining roads of the town, the only acceptable car to do so in is a 1980’s Volvo Estate, which must be decorated.
70. Using currently unused lands in the nearby Bathgate hills, build and run an organisation modelled on the Samadhi Living and Learning Centre in Nepal. Invite the Buddhist monastery in the Scottish Borders to contribute to the design, and use the space for retreats. The space will provide mindfulness and meditation guidance for all, as well as serving as a multi-faith education space.
71. Introduce an Open Doors Day, which is TRULY an Open Doors Day. Let people see the council offices where decisions are made, the prison cells, the psychiatric units and the nurseries.
72. Reinstate free music lessons, by having older experienced musicians teach the younger generation, and put on free concerts in all genres – folk music, rock, opera, etc. Have a mentoring system for every type of role around the production of live music.
73. Construct a large darkroom complex open to the public in Howden Park Centre, and dedicate a team to designing and building a 3D printable photographic processor to save the industry.
74. Open a strip club on the Boulevard, that works as a workers co-operative, and has a Union of Dancers.
75. Force everyone who joins a Multi-Level-Marketing scheme that sells any variety of “skinny tea” to volunteer on the Eating Disorders Unit for six weeks.
76. Open up a publishing company using a disused shipping container called Livingston Free Press, which will publish the works of unsigned and unrepresented authors, and upcoming magazines.
77. Employ a town crier, who will walk the streets with bells crying Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! before delivering good news updates, three times a week. In keeping with tradition, he will then attach his notice to the door of the Livingston Inn.
78. Turn any abandoned telephone boxes into “give one take one” public libraries for sharing books.
79. Clean up the small amphitheatre near the River Almond, and use it as a space for TED-Talk inspired lectures, talks, and shows.
80. Find the plans for the old The Forum venue, where David Bowie played. Rebuild it.
81. Ban any property developers from building those heinous, play-set like, cookie-cutter new build homes that are all identical.
82. Construct a planetarium in Dechmont Law, with a special exhibition about the only time in history an alien abduction resulted in a police investigation.
83. Make World Goth Day an official public holiday in the town, complete with a fête.
84. On account of the risk of water-borne crime upon the new canals, including piracy, create a small anti-pirate navy who will fly the Jolly Roger and other pirate standards to intimidate other pirates.
85. Introduce airship construction facilities, and airship parking will be provided at all public places to encourage travel via airship.
86. Install Bladerunner inspired neon signs on the sides of buildings, and on roofs, which will show newsreels, clips of films, VJ sets, and create a bit of atmosphere at night.
87. Build an elevated electromagnetic suspension rail network that will fly over the houses and thoroughfares below to provide another alternative means of transportation.
88. To prevent any disagreements coming to blows, henceforth all disagreements must be settled with duelling until first blood on the third Thursday evening of every month, at sundown. Anyone unwilling to face his opponent in duel automatically admits defeat.
89. All airships must be registered and fly their assigned standard – any airship in violation of this rule will be considered a pirate airship, and risks being shot down.
90. Create an aerial race course over the whole town, allowing us to become not only the inventors of airship rally racing, but also the hometown and best track for it in the world.
91. Construct a wind-farm powered, heated blue lagoon in Eliburn Park and construct an artificial coral reef. Give glass bottomed boat tours of the coral.
92. Ban radio stations being broadcast in the town from playing the same song more than once in a 24 hour period.
93. Temporarily rename the town Brigadoon, and pay for an advertising campaign to see how many tourists will appear on the day we advertise as being the only day that Brigadoon appears every 100 years.
94. Make it a legal requirement that on the last Friday of every month, and during all important astrological events, the town observes a “Dark Skies Blackout”. The only lights permitted during these Blackouts are those of emergency services vehicles/boats/airships.
95. Reintroduce capital punishment for the following offences: wearing brown shoes with a black belt, using any variation of the phrase “it’s more than my job is worth”, for ever writing, saying aloud or promoting the idea that “Andrew Eldritch is a really charismatic guy who just writes terrible music”, and for any variant of the question “Have you heard of this band called Tame Impala?”
96. Encourage the use of Citizen’s Band Radio, including an underground fund to provide equipment to set up transmitters from your home. Illegal music is killing the music licensing and recording industries, and we’re here to help.
97. In the style of Speaker’s Corner in London, provide a Speaker’s Corner on the town High Street, which will have a microphone set up, and any citizen of the town is free to speak on any topic for 30 minutes. Any use of Speaker’s Corner for the spreading of xenophobia or hate speech will result in a lifetime ban from the Corner.
98. Create a known Red Light District, where sex work of all types is legal so long as you have a permit. The area will have security and panic buttons, and attract a mixture of people – like Montmartre of days gone by.
99. In the new town, the punishment for sharing hateful, misogynistic or abusive content online will be to walk into Almondvale Stadium, and read it aloud to as many random strangers as you have followers or friends on the platform you were spouting your hatred on.
100. In the style of the Welsh tradition of Tÿ Unnos, any building or structure that is erected on common ground over the course of one night, and has a lit fire in the hearth before sunrise, becomes the erectors legal property and official residence.
101. The town will become the first town in the UK to grant all of its citizens Universal Basic Income. This Universal Basic Income will come in the form of – vouchers for enough nutritious food for everyone in the household, clothing allowance that can be spent at clothes stores in the town, and additional needs tokens that can be used at hardware stores, entertainment venues, book stores, etc. This should provide a comfortable level of living for everyone in the town – if you wish to work in addition to your Universal Basic Income, this will be given to you as additional income without detriment to your Universal Basic Income. Universal Basic Income tokens will be paid for by the tourism we bring into the town and the goods we export.