Tuesday, March 31, 2026 — Edition No. 45 — The Cornmill Intelligencer

← Past Editions · Edition No. 45 · Tuesday, March 31, 2026

Today’s outlook: March goes out like a lamb — wrapped in kindness, stitched with love, and ready for spring

Health

A Sister's Love Built a Better Hijab — and It's Changing Lives

Occupational therapy student Najma Omar created SereniHijab for her autistic sister Nasteho. Now the sensory-friendly design is sparking a quiet revolution in inclusive clothing.

When Najma Omar's professor at the University of Minnesota asked her doctoral class to imagine tools that should exist but don't, she didn't have to think very long. She thought of her sister.

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What's On Glasgow

First Scottish Production of Pulitzer-Winning 'Sweat' Opens at Glasgow's Citizens Theatre This May

Lynn Nottage's searing portrait of deindustrialisation finds its natural Scottish home in a co-production with the Royal Lyceum Edinburgh

Glasgow knows what happens when the factory closes. The shipyards that once lined the Clyde, the steelworks that lit up Lanarkshire, the engineering shops that earned the city its title as "Workshop of the Empire" — all of it dismantled, piece by piece, across the second half of the twentieth century. Communities built on shared labour watched their foundations crumble.

Which is precisely why Lynn Nottage's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Sweat belongs on a Glasgow stage.

Opening at the Citizens Theatre on 2 May, this co-production with the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh marks the first time Sweat has been staged in Scotland. Directed by CATS Award-winning director Joanna Bowman — the Citizens' inaugural Associate Artist — the production runs until 16 May before transferring to Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum from 27 May to 13 June.

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News Glasgow

113 Days and Counting: Inside the Push to Get Glasgow's Commonwealth Games Venues Ready

From a brand-new athletics track at Scotstoun to a refurbished competition pool at Tollcross, Glasgow's four Games venues are entering the final straight — with no public funding in core delivery

Walk along Danes Drive in the west end of Glasgow on any given morning and you will hear it — the unmistakable percussion of a city preparing itself for the world's gaze. Behind the hoardings at Scotstoun Stadium, a brand-new world-class athletics track has already been laid, the old surface ripped out and replaced in a three-month blitz completed last September. Temporary stands, dismantled to allow the work, have been rebuilt. The venue that will host the Commonwealth Mile — one of the most anticipated moments of Glasgow 2026 — is, by all accounts, ready and waiting.

With precisely 113 days separating us from the opening ceremony on 23 July, Glasgow's four Commonwealth Games venues are entering what organisers call "the critical delivery phase." And for a city that stepped in at short notice after Victoria, Australia pulled out, the progress is quietly remarkable.

The 2026 Games are deliberately compact: ten sports and six para sports across four venues, all within an eight-mile corridor. It is a model designed not for spectacle but for sustainability — a leaner, smarter Games that organisers hope will serve as a blueprint for smaller nations and cities to host future editions.

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What's On Glasgow

Irvine Welsh Is Coming to the Barras — and You Really Don't Want to Miss This

An Audience With Irvine Welsh lands at Barras Art & Design on 24 April, with stories, a DJ set, and industrial-strength profanity guaranteed

There are literary events, and then there are nights where someone puts Irvine Welsh in a room and basically says: go on then, tell us everything. An Audience With Irvine Welsh at Barras Art & Design on Thursday 24 April is firmly in the second camp.

The format is beautifully simple. Welsh — the man who wrote Trainspotting, Filth, The Acid House, and Crime — will sit down in one of Glasgow's most characterful venues and hold court on his extraordinary career, his characters, and whatever else comes spilling out. The evening also promises a DJ set from Welsh himself, because of course it does. The man runs his own dance music label, Jack Said What, and has been spinning records at festivals for years. Literature and beats under one roof, at the Barras. It's almost too perfect.

Speaking of perfect — the choice of BAaD is inspired. Barras Art & Design sits at 54 Calton Entry in Glasgow's East End, right in the heart of the historic Barras Market. It's a light-filled space of shipping containers, murals, and a courtyard that somehow manages to be both industrial and inviting. Winner of Scotland's Most Stylish Venue at the Scottish Style Awards, BAaD has become one of Glasgow's most exciting cultural spaces — a place where decades-old market traders sit alongside young designers and street food vendors.

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News Clydebank

Clydebank Pupils Rally Behind SCIAF's Clean Water Appeal

Students from St Eunan's Primary and St Peter the Apostle High School back the WEE BOX campaign to bring safe water to communities in need

In Clydebank, looking out for others has always been part of the deal. Now a group of young pupils is proving that spirit stretches far beyond their own postcode — all the way to the parched landscapes of Ethiopia.

Students from St Eunan's Primary and St Peter the Apostle High School have thrown their weight behind SCIAF's annual WEE BOX appeal, which this year focuses on one of the most basic human needs: clean water.

The Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund — Scotland's official overseas development agency of the Catholic Church, tackling poverty and injustice since 1965 — runs the WEE BOX campaign each Lent. The idea is simple but powerful: give up a treat, save the money, and drop it into a SCIAF WEE BOX. The funds go directly to communities facing poverty, conflict, and the effects of climate change.

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Health

At 11, She Designed Colour-Changing Glasses to Help Dyslexic Readers — and Beat 70,000 Rivals

Millie Childs first imagined a solution to her reading struggles at age eight. Now her Rainbow Glasses have attracted NHS interest — and could help millions.

When Millie Childs tries to read, the words don't stay still. They swim across the page, blur together, and leave her with headaches so severe they make her feel sick. It's a daily reality for the 11-year-old from Salford — and for roughly one in ten people across the UK who live with dyslexia.

But Millie decided to do something about it. At the age of eight, while a pupil at Light Oaks Junior School, she began sketching out an idea: a pair of glasses with colour-changing lenses that could reduce the visual stress that makes reading so punishing for dyslexic people.

Three years later, that sketch has become a working prototype, a gold medal, and a genuine prospect of changing lives.

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Science

One Teenager's Dream to Clean the Ocean Has Now Removed 110 Million Pounds of Plastic

From a scuba dive in Greece to a global cleanup operation, Boyan Slat's nonprofit has hit a remarkable milestone — and Scotland's coastlines stand to benefit too

When Boyan Slat was sixteen years old, he went scuba diving in Greece. What he saw beneath the surface changed his life — and, as it turns out, the world. There was more plastic than fish.

Within two years, the Dutch teenager had founded The Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit with an ambition so audacious it drew equal measures of admiration and scepticism: to rid the world's oceans of plastic. Now, thirteen years on, the organisation has reached a staggering milestone — 50 million kilograms, or 110 million pounds, of plastic removed from the seas and waterways of the planet.

It is, by any measure, a remarkable achievement.

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News UK

More Money From Today: Scottish Workers Get a Pay Rise as New National Living Wage Takes Effect

Hundreds of thousands of workers across Scotland will see bigger pay packets from today as the National Living Wage rises to £12.71 an hour

From today, hundreds of thousands of Scottish workers are getting a pay rise — and for many, it's one they'll feel in their weekly shop.

The National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over rises from £12.21 to £12.71 an hour from 1 April, a 4.1% increase that puts an extra £975 a year into the pocket of someone working full-time. For younger workers aged 18 to 20, the minimum wage jumps from £10.00 to £10.85 — an 8.5% boost.

When similar rates took effect last April, the UK Government estimated up to 220,000 workers in Scotland benefited directly. A comparable number are expected to see their pay rise this time around.

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