Deferred promises, uncertain futures: The ambivalent politics of infrastructure in the Scottish studio saga (1997–2018)

This article examines the long and uneven struggle, from the late 1990s to 2018, to establish a permanent film and television studio in Scotland, situating the eventual delivery of large-scale facilities at Leith and Wardpark within wider transformations in the global screen economy. Drawing on policy documents, parliamentary inquiries, trade press coverage, and more than a dozen interviews with practitioners and officials, the article traces how devolution-era aspirations for an indigenous national cinema gave way to digital creative-economy strategies centred on Pacific Quay and skills clusters, and how Film City Glasgow emerged as a bottom-up counter-infrastructure that converted affective labour, lobbying, and “making do” into a tangible production base in the absence of a national studio. The Scottish case illuminates the ambivalent politics of screen infrastructure in small nations: studios now function less as engines of local culture than as logistical hubs for mobile capital, even as symbolic claims about national screen futures remain powerful. By foregrounding the frictions between local workers, public agencies, and transnational investors, the article argues that the Scottish studio saga exemplifies the unresolved question facing many incentive-dependent locations: whose screen industry is ultimately being secured, on what terms, and with what consequences for sustainable, place-based production?