A new resource that raises awareness of gambling harms for people living in Glasgow is now available.

Gambling harms is an emerging public health issue and has been identified as a priority in Glasgow and at a national level. The resource, ‘What's at Stake: Glasgow's Stories of Gambling Harms and Recovery’, is a collection of fully anonymised composite stories and posters. These reflect the realities and experiences of gambling exposure, participation, risks and harms for people who live in Glasgow. 

Mary Kate Harte, Health Improvement Senior, Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) said: “‘What’s at Stake’ is a creative arts project facilitated by Recollective, a group of artists that make art about people and places. Commissioned by our HSCP and Public Health Scotland, Recollective co-created a collection of fully anonymised composite stories and posters that reflect the realities and experiences of gambling exposure, participation, risks and harms for people in Glasgow. These stories are based on real people’s stories and have been told by people with lived experience of gambling harms. They should be used to raise awareness and encourage conversations around the impact of gambling harms for people living in Glasgow.”

To create these stories Recollective interviewed eight Glasgow residents between August and November 2023. Alison Irvine, writer at Recollective used these stories to create four composite stories shared on the website: Money for Milk, See. Recovery, Conversation Through a Window and Lifecycle of Caterpillar. 

Alongside this Mitch Millier, artist at Recollective created visual posters to these stories from another perspective. There are five posters: Areas of Effect, Chasing the Numbers, The Mask, Weight and Surrounded. You can find out more, read the stories and view the posters via the What’s at Stake website.

Alison and Mitch said: “Participants shared their stories with honesty and bravery. What became obvious to us the more we spoke to people was how little society in general knows about gambling harms, about how we’re surrounded by advertising about gambling and about the mental turmoil that people affected by gambling harms go through. It’s very much a hidden issue and we hope that our work, thanks to the participation of our interviewees affected by gambling harms, will go some way to raising awareness and will encourage people to seek help."

Mary Kate Harte continued: “We’re grateful to the participants who took part in this project to share their personal experiences of gambling harms. We hope these stories will help to raise awareness of the impact of gambling harms in Glasgow and encourage others to seek support.”

Ann Conacher, Organisational Lead, Public Health Scotland said: “We are grateful to all the people who have shared their experience and helped shape these stories and images with the Recollective, about the harm caused by gambling.  It’s vital we include lived experience in the development of a public health approach to tackling gambling harm in Scotland, to help us all understand the problem and to help reduce stigma.”

Participant feedback included: 
“Art is a great way to connect with people from all backgrounds, the art told the story.”
“It’s a great way of raising awareness about the help available to problem gamblers.”
“I felt it was very helpful and a good platform for people to understand if they have a problem.”
“A great experience highlighting the harms of gambling... a brilliant job all round with great results - delighted to have played some part.”

Gambling harms is an emerging public health issue and has been identified as a priority in Glasgow and also at a national level. Public Health Scotland worked with partners in Glasgow to pilot a whole-system approach to mitigate the impact of gambling harm in a local authority area. This work contributed to the prevention, early intervention and education around gambling harms and their impact in Glasgow. It’s contributed to the implementation of the Glasgow City Health Improvement Strategy and led to the development of the Glasgow City Gambling Harms Action Plan, which is implemented by a multi-agency group, chaired by Glasgow City Council.

For further information on the What’s at Stake project and the resource material available, please go to the Public Health Scotland website or contact the Glasgow City HSCP NW Health Improvement Team on NorthWest.YouthHealth@ggc.scot.nhs.uk

To contact the artists of Recollective, please email: info@recollective.org.uk