This boardwalk has a basement.
4
4
Date of visit: October 2025
I am a disabled person. I have experience of challenges around: a hidden impairment and moving around.
I use or have experience of: hidden impairment, powerchair, walking aid, wheelchair
Overall Rating
Good
The Boardwalk is the home of Impact Arts and also an event space. I visited as part of the Scottish Queer International Film Festival (SQIFF), which does a great job at prioritising accessibility and communicating access information. I hope my review can expand on that work! I found the layout around the entrance and the lift a little bit unwelcoming as a wheelchair user or someone who cannot take stairs or walk very far, but the space itself feels cool and well laid out for socialising. The rooms are all colour-coded, which is a fun touch, and seem to offer a neutral space to be used in a myriad of ways – for example to screen short film programmes or to provide a quiet space.
Disabled Access In and Around
You can access the eponymous boardwalk, a walkway made from dense slats going through between and underneath the buildings, from Hutcheson Street and Brunswick Street. There is an incline up at either end with handrails on the sides. There is a bar on the side of Brunswick Street and an ashtray, so if you want to avoid possibly going past people smoking, you might prefer coming from the other end. The slats make a noise when you go over them, so especially when you are wheeling it can get quite loud. There are spotlights in the floor along the sides of the walkway, but a lot of them are not working. The main entrance to The Boardwalk (the venue) is pretty much in the middle, maybe slightly closer to Hutcheson Street. If you are coming from there, it will be on your right. The doors are non-automatic double doors that open to the inside. There is a bell you can ring for attention on a post to the left of the door. The venue also has a glass front, so you will be able to see into the foyer where the reception desk is. In order to exit, you need to press a door release button on the right side of the frame and pull the door. The button is quite high up, so as a wheelchair user I appreciated someone assisting me. When you enter into the small foyer, the low reception desk is to your right, the stairs are ahead and the lift is to the right of the stairs. The stairs go down in three sets of eight or nine steps with half-circle landing between them and railings on either side. There is a sign on the wall to the right of the lift with a label in purple writing on white background and Braille. The lift call button is on the right of the lift doors and has no markings. The lift is too small to turn around in, but the door was wide enough to easily get in and out. There are handrails on all sides and a mirror on the back. The buttons are on the left. They have raised letters and symbols but no Braille. I could not see a sign for a hearing loop in the lift, although the venue itself should have one. (Or at least SQIFF are providing them for their events.) The call button in the basement has a raised arrow up symbol. When you arrive in the basement, where the main part of the venue is, the lift opens up into a smallish space between the back of the stairs and doors to the courtyard. There is a bench along the back of the stairs, so first thing I did when reversing out of the lift was bump into it! Next I saw and heard all the other attendees on the other side of the stairs and I got worried that I would not be able to get there. But my worry was short lived when I spotted that I could pass by on the right side of the lift and get to a corridor that would take me down to the left and into the atrium. If you keep going in that direction until the far side of the atrium, you will find a non-automatic single door on the right that leads to the toilets. On your way you will first pass the entrance to the Purple Room and then to the Black Room. The Green Room is on the other side of the middle area opposite the Black Room and the Gold Room is past the stairs to the left of the Green Room. To get to the Gold Room, you will need to go up a corridor at an incline without handrails leading up to a flat bit in front of non-automatic double doors that open with a push. The door to the Gold Room is a non-automatic single door opening to the inside left with a lever handle. The floor slopes down slightly from the door into the room and there are tactile/contrast markings for that. The other rooms all have non-automatic double doors opening to the outside. They are recessed so that the doors do not open into the corridor. There are signs on the walls to the right of the recesses labelling the room in a colour that corresponds to the name and Braille. The doors have small windows and vertical metal bar handles. The floors are smooth wood/laminate and linoleum and the thresholds are low. Many of the rooms have coathooks and at least the Green and Gold Room have a low as well as a high-up row. There is quite a bit of seating in the middle atrium, mostly in the form of cushioned benches, some with and some without armrests, and sofas, but there are also some bar height-tables and stools. The seating in the rooms is mostly movable chairs with cushioned seats and backrests.
Parking & Transport
Average
I travelled to this place by personal vehicle
While the address is Brunswick Street, the entrance is off an actual boardwalk between Brunswick and Hutcheson Street, so you can come from either side. You can get dropped off at the entrances to the walkway, but both streets have no parking in that area. There are all lowered curbs between the street and the footpaths there. The footpaths in the area are tiled in stones, which is generally even but not necessarily smooth. The lowered curbs are properly low, but there are no tactile markings. There is a small car park on the nearby (dead) end of Brunswick Street but no Blue Badge spaces. There is some on-street parking on Wilson Street as well as the NCP The Glasshouse multi-storey car park around the corner on Glassford Street. The Boardwalk is a 0.2-mile/6-minute walk or wheel from Argyle Street Station, 0.3 miles/7 minutes from High Street Station and Queen Street and 0.5 miles/12 minutes from Central Station. The closest subway by just a little bit is Buchanan Street, but St Enoch, one of two wheelchair-accessible Glasgow subway stations (along with Govan), is half a mile or 11 minutes away by walk or wheel. The closest bus stop is Garth Street on Stockwell Street (6, 7 ,7A ,21 ,75 ,267 ,N267).
Accessible facilities: Public or on street parking
Accessible Toilets
Average
The toilets are down a corridor in the back right corner of the atrium as seen from the stairs. They are through a non-automatic single door that opens to the inside right. There is a sign on it for the toilets in white writing on black. A few metres down the corridor, there is a nook on the left with doors to gender-neutral bathrooms on either side and the door to the accessible bathroom in the middle. The door to the right is a single door that opens to the inside right into a small vestibule with a door on the left into toilets with cubicles and urinals. The door on the left opens to the inside left into a vestibule with another door to the right into a bathroom with only cubicles. The door into the accessible bathroom has a white on black sign with a wheelchair symbol and opens to the outside left. No key is needed to access the bathroom. There is no door opener. The handle on the outside is a lever. There is a handrail and another lever handle on the back of the door and it locks with a twist lock. The bathroom is just about big enough for me to turn around in my powerchair careful. There is a bin, a shelf with sanitary products and a sink with a mirror on the wall to your right when you come in. There is a wall-mounted fold-down baby change on the wall to your left. The toilet and another bin are on the back wall. There is a fixed vertical and a horizontal handrail to the right of the toilet that can be lifted and moved out of the way and a fixed horizontal handrail on the wall to the left of the toilet. The flush is a lever on the front of the cistern. The toilet paper holder is above the handrail to the left of the toilet. There is a narrow sanitary bin underneath. There is space for a left-side transfer, but there is another bin in the corner of the transfer space. The red cord is to the right of the toilet and ends a few inches above the floor. There are vertical handrails on either side of the sink. The sink is a small wall-mounted sink with a mixer tap. There is a mirror above the sink. There is a liquid soap dispenser on the sink. There is also a wall-mounted soap dispenser to the right of the sink. There is a shelf for sanitary products and paper towels on the wall to the right of the sink with a bin underneath.
Facilities: Accessible toilet
Comments
The Boardwalk
20 Apr 2026
Thank you for providing such a detailed review! We're so grateful that you took the time to share this. As a social enterprise venue, we're always looking for new ways to make The Boardwalk more accessible and we're continually looking for funding to make upgrades possible. We recently secured funding for new automatic doors throughout the venue from the FCC Communities Foundation, which we're very grateful for as it will allow us to make a major accessibility upgrade to make the building a more welcoming and inclusive venue. You can learn more about the updates here: https://www.theboardwalkglasgow.co.uk/2026/04/13/fcc-communities-foundation-accessibility/ We're also looking at a long-term plan for future improvements so feedback like this is super useful. Thank you again and have a lovely rest of your week! We hope to see you at The Boardwalk again soon. Sophie Campbell The Boardwalk
