Glasgow Events in October

Running from October into November, the Glasgay Festival is a citywide celebration of gay culture, and to be perfectly honest, given the amount of effort the organisers have put into the event over the years, even if you're not gay but you like the joy of a camped up party, if you're over here when it's on you should take a look.

This is one of the brightest Glasgow events of the Autumn season, and attracts loads of visitors from all over the world year in year out. Highlights of the programme normally include a number of high-profile drama commissions, haute couture, gothic drama, evocative music, boutique style musicals, one-man confessional stand-up, contemporary visual arts & fancy dress party nights. It all started in 1993, and since then it's expanded to a whole month in length. It's held in over 20 venues across Glasgow, and is the largest multi-art form festival of its kind in Europe, offering pretty much everything but the kitchen sink in terms of performance, film, theatre, music, dance, comedy, club nights, literature events and so on.

There's also four months of visual arts at the Q Gallery, Glasgow's main space dedicated to gay art and artists, so you might just catch some colour even if you miss the Festival itself. The whole point of the thing is to celebrate talent and diversity within the professional international lesbian and gay artistic community, as well as providing a platform for artists still trying to get their name about town, so it's well worth a punt.

Apart from that, Glasgow in October is awash with Halloween. Kids might go out less trick or treating than they used to, but that hasn't stopped the adult population of Glasgow!

At any given moment throughout the month you'll catch the unfortunate sight of grown men dressed as Harry Potter, and hysterical women squeezed uncomfortably into their old school uniforms. Halloween Glasgow events & parties are aplenty in the City, held in pubs, clubs, private function rooms, hotel bars and pretty much every pedestrian street in the City Centre, so if you're up for joining in the fun, rustle up your own costume or pop into one of the costume shops you see in the centre, and become someone you're not for a while. My costume of choice is usually Tom Cruise, but well, there's never been much 'dressing up' necessary for that! (ahem...)

Another option for Halloween is to head out on one of the Mercat walking tours or Murder Mystery Dinner Nights (check out the link from my walking around Glasgowpage), which always end up being a great laugh. And October in Glasgow wouldn't be the same without a scary movie. Pick yourself up a ticket for one of the many they trot out at the Cineworld or Odeon, and tremble behind the seats until it's all finished. Always makes for a great night's sleep!