7-84 were looking for venues in Fife so I liaised with them to come to Glenrothes to present a new production, 'The Game's A Bogey,' a play centred on the life of John Maclean. There was no theatre in the town and I thought anyway that a working mens' club would be a better setting to present the play. Little did I know what I was letting myself and 7-84 in for. I had to work hard to secure the venue and my friendships with so many tradesmen smoothed the way. One of them was an electrician with the Development Corporation who was the secretary of CISWO (Coal Industry Social and Welfare Organisation), the miners' social club. He arranged for me to meet the social convenor who was much opposed to the idea as there had never been a theatre performance at the club and he did not think the members would enjoy it. Eventually I got him to agree to put on the play but the conditions were that the regular bingo session should precede the performance, that the number of tickets would be limited to allow everyone the comfort of remaining at their tables and that the lights would have to be on and the bar remain open throughout the performance! McGrath agreed to all the conditions except the lights and a compromise was reached. The tickets sold out quickly and I tried to persuade the social convenor to allow more to be sold. He adamantly refused. Crowds with no tickets turned up on the night but were refused entry including Sandy Dunbar the Director of the Scottish Arts Council. I got an urgent message minutes before the play started, 'Somebody's at the entrance demanding to see the management.' I went outside to be met by an uncomprehending Sandy and told him of the ticket limitation and the reason for it. The social convenor was at the door still adamant, 'I don't care who he is, no ticket no entry.' I had to get the secretary of the club to explain to him who Sandy was and why it was necessary to make an exception. The Scottish Arts Council was of course funding the production. He consulted other members of the committee. Though it was felt that it was unfair, discriminatory and that the Director of the Scottish Arts Council should know better and should have booked in advance, under the greatest sufferance Mr and Mrs Dunbar would be allowed in. The specific reason for Sandy driving from Edinburgh to see the show in Glenrothes was that he wanted to experience a 7-84 production in one of its much vaunted non-art venues. For 7-84 the stakes had been upped. The club members had turned up in their best 'night out' clothes and there was a palpable feeling of excited anticipation. It started badly as the noise from the bar and people getting up and coming back with drinks drowned out Bill Patterson's attempts to grab the audience's attention. It was only when Terry Neason came on and banged out a song, vamping it up mightily that the audience settled. From then on the audience loved every minute of it When it came to the last chorus attacking the bosses which went something like, 'Get them out, make them work, They don't own us, whatever they say. We'll all stay together....' the whole audience was up on its feet with glasses raised repeating and repeating this chorus led by the whole company. The cast knew they had won over the audience and at that point could get them to do anything they wanted. In his book, 'A Good Night Out,' (Methuen 1981) John McGrath says, '....the performance that will always stay in my mind was that in Glenrothes CISWO Club.... The reason I remember Glenrothes so clearly is that it was the very first miners' club we had ever played in and the very first time we performed 'The Game's a Bogey' to an audience in that situation. I was literally terrified: the consequences of failure to please would be direct and painful; the consequences of pleasing but failing to communicate would be indirect but even more painful in the long run. The company were also terrified, but heroic.' I of course was overjoyed at how successful the night had been. The company came back to my house for a party. Back at work on the Monday I buzzed round excitedly to my secretary friend - ' Great night. We could have filled the place twice over. What did you think?' 'Well I liked it,' he said, 'but we had a committee meeting yesterday and some of the members thought that the play was a bit political!' Well you couldn't make it up. What would John have made of that response.

New Towns it must be stressed had very different structures to other towns. What happened in Glenrothes could not have happened in towns with a normal local government structure and certainly not at the speed with which it happened. New Town Corporations had the power to short-cut much of the lengthy processes of local politics and government and there was always central government pressure to expand rapidly by attracting new industry and businesses under favourable terms. It is important to describe and emphasise the political structure and climate within which I was operating since it allowed me an immense amount of freedom. On one occasion the Chief Architect sent me a memo saying that he had read in the press of sculptures appearing which he knew nothing about and could I take him on a tour of them! Of course these had been done in close association with the architects designing the area of housing in question. It was just that the proposals did not have to be approved higher up the chain. This trust was endorsed by the General Manager of the corporation, Brigadier Paddy Doyle, who stated in a press interview that appointing an artist was one of the most valuable things that the corporation had done. However I was not only getting this kind of support from the upper reaches of the corporation staff but also from elected politicians who served on the board of governors. Alex Devlin and Alan McLure, senior Labour Councillors on Fife Regional Council, became two of my most ardent supporters. Later when I began teaching in art schools I would advise students that if they wanted work in towns and communities and to get things done they must, 'first find your councillor/politician' supporter.

I have often been asked about the term, 'Town Artist', which became the way to describe my job. It was coined by an artist acquaintance of mine, Paul Millichip. He had written about the need for artists to play the role that I was now doing and ran an Environmental Design course at Barnet College in London. I had had difficulty in describing to people what I did. I needed a name for it. When I asked him what he thought it should be, he immediately said, 'Why not Town Artist?' I liked the sound of it and proceeded to promote it and, more importantly, to define it. A town artist I believed had to be a contributing member of the planning department of a town, collaborating with the various design teams and be engaged on a long-term and full-time basis. This was not the artist as consultant nor, what was soon to be described as, the 'artist-in-residence.' This was the artist as a fully-functioning member of the staff employed to design and build a town. In the book, 'Art in Architecture in Great Britain since 1945', Richard Cork's assessment was that, 'David Harding was able.... to produce a series of deliberately varied works for a community he grew to understand with exceptional intimacy.... they were all informed by a knowledge of the locality as it evolved and this sense of engagement compared very favourably with the suspicion which blighted other attempts at collaboration between artists and architects of the period.'