Do Regeneration Plans Acknowledge Culture Enough?
‘Culture’ often appears to be the optional add-on in regeneration. There may however be ways in which the arts and cultural community could do more to ensure that the benefits of embedding culture into regeneration are understood by those who lead development.
Is it important to encourage developers and planners to include culture in regeneration strategies and programmes?
Much of the physical context of regeneration and development is on or surrounded by publicly owned space. This leaves an important opportunity for local councils to insist from the outset on engagement with developers about the possibilities for public art. Perhaps more could be done to ensure that this engagement is assured, through training and awareness-raising of local government officials and elected representatives.
Awareness of the need to include ‘cultural space’ (flexible small theatre / gallery space, etc) in community regeneration programmes, e.g., alongside provision for / within the plans for schools and other essential public service buildings is also important. Are public guideline on these requirements and on their technical aspects easily available? Are they now part of planners’ and architects’ training? (The specific technical requirements of ‘arts space’ are rarely articulated or understood in dialogue about regeneration.)
On another level, what is being done to ensure that ‘culture’ is actually understood – or indeed appreciated – by developers and planners? It may be difficult to insist formally that private developers are acquainted with what culture has on offer (though project specs could include this), but at least it could be required that planners involved in cultural decisions actually attended or observed the sorts of ‘cultural’ phenomena under debate, before decisions are made….. The National Campaign for the Arts (NCA) recently pointed out that invitations to ‘new’ Councillors to attend cultural events tend to have a very positive impact on their thinking. Can arts and cultural institutions put their hands on their hearts and say they issue regular invitations to Councillors, planners and other decision makers to come and see what’s on offer?
And, once developments have been identified, what about encouraging local artists (performers, community activists, whatever…), equipped with appropriate info and guidelines, to become part of planning teams and community consultation processes, perhaps ‘adopting’ particular programmes of development? There is nothing like a real physically present person who represents a particular ‘take’ on a project, for ensuring that this aspect of the whole development is acknowledged.
This does not however mean that artists, unlike other professionals, should simply ‘give’ their time. Lead bodies could set up an identified fund to support artists of all sorts who are willing to give thought and expertise to ensuring ‘culture’ plays an active part in the thinking of regeneration decision makers.
Iconic Buildings, Local Communities And Cultural Capacity Building
People ‘in the community’ often seem to have a problem with proposals for iconic cultural buildings. Could this be because they only become involved (‘consulted’) after, rather than before, ideas of this sort have been floated? Would things be different if Artists in Residence were truly just that? And would this help ‘capacity building’ for the arts, as well as physical regeneration?
What impact and ‘meaning’ should iconic cultural buildings seek to achieve in terms of cultural excellence and relevance to their local communities? And could permanently established Artists in Residences have a role in working with local people to produce iconic developments which everyone values?
Issues such as this have been much discussed in cities like Liverpool in the past few years; and if anything the debate (e.g. about Liverpool’s proposed ‘Fourth Grace’, a notion initially imposed ‘top down’ and now abandoned, which did not derive from locals and cost much in terms of time, energy and other resources) seems to be becoming more rather than less heated. Local people often do not, at least initially, like change, or ‘iconic’ buildings which may appear to be strange, or which do not appear to have a clear purpose. Yet the wider future-facing view is that regeneration and cultural development must move forward and that special / cultural buildings must be ‘different’, excellent in modern terms, if they are to be effective in their own terms.
This hiatus of understanding will not be resolved just by ‘locals’ taking a few trips to see examples of innovative iconic development elsewhere. Perhaps only a serious willingness (and ability) on the part of decision-makers, to examine what local people understand their contexts and requirements to be, will enable genuine and constructive dialogue about the future to develop.
Such a willingness and ability would require a re-emphasis even before the initial stages of proposals, away from technical considerations to a long-term commitment to the community on the part of the professionals seeking to develop landmark buildings; and it would probably therefore also require a new approach to staff training and professional skills, or possibly a new type of role, as yet undefined, for some regeneration and cultural professionals… perhaps the ideal opportunity for Artists in Residence with a broad knowledge of the issues and excellent communication skills?
Local people may find change and cultural re-emphasis more acceptable, and better understood, when there is genuine embedded involvement by regeneration leaders in community development over time. The need, for instance, to build a new concert hall or gallery will be more easily appreciated – if re / new build is genuinely a better option that the less glamorous choice of refurbishment – where there have been efforts to establish to most local people’s satisfaction that such innovation is actually necessary or practically desirable for discernable reasons. And there is always the possibility that locals might in fact have views and opinions which could actually improve what is finally proposed for development.
Cultural and regeneration professionals need to to identify and value, on an equal basis, locally-based people who are already in a position to act as ‘translators’ or go-betweens in the necessary dialogue. To have significant impact, this would require that the roles and training of those engaged to lead development be revisited, so that (a) they are more easily able to identify appropriate local people, and (b) they become comfortable in valuing what locally-based opinion leaders offer, without any feeling on the part of the developers that they are thereby under threat from others, locals in the informal setting, who also have communication and developmental skills.
Iconic choices are not just a matter of local dignitaries’ civic pride, but mean that community dialogue must actually precede proposals, not simply emerge from them. At present this rarely happens, not least because regeneration officials are frequently only brought in as the proposals begin to take shape, and much of their initial briefing will be by those who already desire the changes proposed. There are obviously cost implications, but if a more genuine engagement is to be achieved these may be inevitable.
There is a strong case for capacity / audience building for artistic and other cultural activities, which is both a necessary pre-requisite and a desired (though unfortunately not an inevitable) outcome of landmark and iconic cultural building. It would be interesting to interrogate the extent to which capacity building is influenced by physical development, and how much this is true the other way around, as well as evaluating the synergistic impact each has on the other.
In cultural contexts, the desirability of long-term on-going dialogue with local communities is yet another reason for cultural organisations in any given location to develop genuine, deep-rooted (and preferably conjoined) community programmes. As with regeneration professionals, this would require considerable training and re-emphasis of role within cultural institutions if it were to have substantial and sustainable impact. The nature of the work which needs to be done is probably at present not fully appreciated.
MondayWomen-Liverpool (Meetings & Yahoo Group) 2003 –
Monday Women is an entirely free-to-join group of women who meet together and also have an e-group. It promotes the sharing of news, views and ideas and is also a sounding board for the friendly sharing of matters of interest and concern. As such, it is a social enterprise which manages without formality or funding.
Monday Women is a social enterprise of the simplest sort. It’s free and open to all women, both as an e-group and as a meeting point. (We meet 5.30 – 7-ish on the first Monday of every month, except if a Bank Holiday, in the Third Room of the Everyman Bistro, Liverpool.)
Setting up the Group was an experiment. At the beginning, on 3 March 2003, there were about thirty ‘members’, who already mostly knew each other. Now there are some hundreds of women who have been asociated with the Group, of whom about two hundred are currently ‘members’ of it. ‘Applications’ [*] to join the e-group arrive almost every week, and sometimes new ‘members’ simply arrive at meetings, having heard about the Group on the grapevine. The fact that there are no formal costs or structures means that the Group is sustainable in its own right, without funding or other constraints.
The issues which have arisen in Monday Women discussion and e-correspondence have been really varied, covering everything from parks policy and landscape gardening (the Sefton Park plans have attacted particular interest), to requests for domestic / personal support (including the loan fo a baby car seat for a visiting grandchild!), to enquiries from researchers about people’s views on and experience of a range of things (The Mersey Partnership’s ‘Gender Agenda’ has featured in several discussions, as has the ambitious cliam that Liverpool could become the most ‘women-friendly city in Liverpool’ by 2008).
The e-group has also become a ‘notice board’, with job vacancies, concert and theatre postings, information about outings and much else.
The e-group has hosted some vigorous debates on issues of equality, health, employment etc; some of these topics have also had a full airing at meetings, to which speakers are occasionally invited – though mostly people just bring with them topics they may wish to discuss.
And, importantly, the Group has been a source of new friends, pleasant company and sometimes positive support for women of many sorts and in many situations. Surely, then, an example of how e-technology can be adapted at almost no cost (except time) to serve a genuinely social function?
To join, please visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MondayWomen-Liverpool/, or contact the convenor, Hilary Burrage, direct. Or just come to a Monday Women meeting!
[*] To begin with there were some ‘technical ‘problems with the e-group, which appeared to be of interest to spammers. For this reason, and no other, the Group decided it would be necessary for ‘members’ to ‘apply’ through the website to join the e-group, rather than simply joining in. This necessary decision, whilst unfortunate, has removed the spam issue and made members of the Group more comfortable.
Cultural Leadership And Vision In Cities
When and how does a Big Town become a City? And, just as importantly, how does a Great City ensure it will never seem to be just a Very Big Town?
What part does cultural leadership and vision play in this transition? We take a look at Liverpool…
Imagine all the people – and all the things they’d do….
Cities are centres of communication, learning and complex commercial enterprises; …. they focus and condense physical, intellectual and creative energy. They are places of hugely diversified activities and functions: exhibitions and demonstrations, bars and cathedrals, shops and opera houses. I love their combination of ages, races, cultures and activities…
Richard Rogers Cities for a small planet (Faber, 1997, p.15)
When and how does a Big Town become a City? And, just as importantly, how does a Great City ensure it will never seem to be just a Very Big Town?
Doubtless we all have our first-off answers to this slightly strange question; but at base we would probably agree it’s not simply Size that matters. Quality rather than just Quantity is what counts in the metropolis status stakes.
So what does lie at the heart of a city, especially a great one such as Liverpool? What exactly does define its soul?
For me, and I suspect for many others as they ponder such questions at this pivotal point in Liverpool’s development, the critical aspect of our city’s renaissance must be a focus on what is most creative: both what we already have, and what we can forge for the future.
But this is in no way just a plea in disguise for ‘more arts funding’. Rather, I want to propose that Creativity in the City be seen as the critical factor which defines us and holds more promise than anything else for what Liverpool could become.
Thus, the real challenge is to shape and nurture a vision of our future which engages the entire creative process, the arts, the sciences, the full spectrum of the intellectual infrastructure and more…… For there is also a Plus Factor in all this to which we shall return and which we neglect at our peril.
What a modern, thriving, thrusting city needs more than almost anything else is continual recharging and renewal, a culture which challenges what is already known and done – however splendid that culture may be historically.
A city which delivers well the known and acknowledged needs of its citizens will also be one which looks to produce creative synergy with sometimes unanticipated outcomes. There can be no standing still in the search for excellence in the city.
So, to formalise the initial proposition, a Great City is one which
¨ does not just celebrate its past, but works hard to create it own future;
¨ does not simply curate its history and acknowledged culture, but seeks always to support the living arts and to ensure that benefit and creative process evolve from them;
¨ does not offer handed-down knowledge alone for its citizens, but strives ceaselessly to promote and engage the processes of learning and discovery which produce new understandings and insights across the spectrum of intellectual and creative endeavour.
Put thus, we see that Liverpool, more than many other cities, is well-blessed. We have in our heartlands an abundance of internationally recognised organisations and institutions which seek insofar as their resources and vision currently permit to deliver just the requirements listed above. The fight to ‘save’ our theatres and world-class symphony orchestra has been long and hard but, after almost decades of uncertainty, it seems we may indeed have won. Our universities and colleges permit comparison with many others, and are in significant respects outstanding. Our architecture and cathedrals are world renown.
But this inventory alone is not enough. The Great City demands more of itself than satisfactory audits of institutions, however important. Great Cities engage and nurture the best creative practitioners that can be had, put together in organisations which reciprocally appreciate and enhance the skills and traditions which are thereby brought together. Great cities value their indigenous artists and intellectuals but also welcome to their lead organisations both students and distinguished visiting practitioners who will inform and challenge current beliefs and thinking. And so through these same organisations Great Cities facilitate and even thrust upon us thriving collectives of artists, scientists, intellectuals, power elites of all sorts who can and will not accept on our behalf that which is routine or can be taken for granted.
A city’s creativity must not however remain solely civic. For it to mean anything it has also to be communal. The synergy of the city’s formal creative enclaves must be engaged and by mutual consent brought to bear on the lives of the people. This is the Plus Factor to which reference was made earlier.…..
And here lies the fundamental challenge for Liverpool at the beginning of the new Millennium.
Our city, Great City though it is already in many ways, is also a fragile, vulnerable city which is only now repositioning itself after many years of decline. The poverty of experience and expectation of many of those who have grown up and live in this city is part of the urban tragedy of our times. For too many here, Liverpool is the only place they know, the small-community-defined comfort zone from which they must collectively emerge if they are to demand the standards which those with wider and more privileged experience already expect. For too many of our citizens, impoverished both materially and ‘culturally’ through accident of time and place, the leap to acceptance and engagement in creativity in its fullest sense is a step to ‘high culture’ too far.
It would be very serious act of decontextualisation and of course entirely improper to suggest that perhaps there are communities in Liverpool ‘suffering’ from a ‘cultural deprivation’ which somehow diminishes civic pride or reduces the people’s determination to see their city great again. I hope therefore that I can avoid any charge of cultural / intellectual imperialism in pointing to a number of what I see as significant discongruities in the cultural fabric of this city – discongruities which I believe must be recognised and addressed by anyone who seeks to offer Liverpool civic (and therefore cultural) leadership.
But significant discongruities there are, disconnections of understanding between civic excellence in the cultural / intellectual infrastructure and socio-economic well-being, or between artistic / creative engagement and personal fulfilment. For instance, like parents everywhere, many here regardless of their own background would dearly wish for their own children to achieve success in the formal education system; yet these same people often express considerable antagonism towards the students who live in flats and bedsits in their midst and who thereby help to keep local shops and businesses viable – and who as graduates could with the right persuasion stay on in our city and help to revitalise it.
Likewise, many would see the flagship arts organisations of our city as indispensable elements of our civic identity – yet few expect to patronise these same bodies personally. And how many people in Liverpool know that the eponymous University has to its credit impressive numbers of Nobel Laureats? Indeed, how many people know anything much at all about what goes on in the research institutions of our city’s universities, or anything about the significance of this research in the regional economy or indeed on the world scene?
And so we could go on; for there are, to put it starkly, parts of our local communities where to ask even these questions would be to understate massively the alienation from mainstream understandings of culture and creativity. There is a palpable disinclination amongst too many of our young people beyond a certain age to lose their ‘cool’, to allow themselves to become engaged, let alone excited, by positive, imaginative and exciting ideas and activities. There is a fear by those in some parts of our communities that any bending towards the mainstream will result in cultural engulfment, that others do not respect or understand their particular traditions and beliefs. Above all, there is sometimes still apathy and an unwillingness to trust in a more accepting and better future.
This then is the true challenge which now faces the Great City of Liverpool.
Our civic leaders of the future will need as an urgent priority to deliver a cultural and creative concordat, a bringing together of traditions and modes of understanding which allow the many rather than just the few to translate hope into action – and this I believe can be achieved only through the pursuit of excellence, the engagement of the very best of what is creative in all the fields of endeavour we have considered.
We need architects and sculptors who regain the public sphere for community and performance; actors, artists and musicians who draw on their many cultural traditions to bring people together and enhance their lives; teachers who capture the imagination and ambition of their charges; community workers and volunteers whose enthusiasms, local knowledge and skills are welcomed and engaged by the civic authorities; research workers and academics who build on, and see the local economic benefits which may accrue from, the distinguished record of our institutions of higher learning.
It will be a task of breathtaking proportion to sustain in their own right, and simultaneously to bring together, the historically disempowered communities of our city and the hitherto so-called ‘elitist’ cultural institutions which history has endowed to us.
It cannot be said too clearly there are many already on all ‘sides’ who seek excellence without compromise or fear, who want and will for the city a common understanding alongside outstanding achievement across the spectrum of artistic and intellectual endeavour. But individuals of goodwill can reach only so far on their own. Cultural nostalgia, lack of resources (human, material and civic), entrenched, sometimes limited bureaucracies, the inertia of years of low expectations, cannot be overcome by individual goodwill alone. All these factors are real and enormous barriers to progress.
The challenge for Liverpool’s first Elected Mayor will be to achieve a very fine balance in pursuing world-class excellence for our city across the artistic / generically intellectual board, whilst also seeking to achieve maximum creative community synergy and engagement and maintaining personal political credibility – a tall order indeed, but one which I believe those in our amazing, deeply culturally blessed, Great City will support and embrace.
(Chapter in) Manifesto for a New Liverpool, 2000 (published by Aurora, The University of Liverpool and Space)
by
Hilary Burrage
Chair, HOPES: The Hope Street Association
Hope Street Quarter Developments And Public Realm Works
At last the public realm works in Hope Street, Liverpool, are underway. This will make a huge difference to the Hope Street Quarter; but where do we go from here?
The Hope Street Quarter is at a critical stage in its development. With luck we shall soon see delivery of the Public Realm works which HOPES and, latterly, Liverpool Vision have sought for so long; and alongside that we can already perceive the evidence that the Quarter is at last becoming the vibrant destination it should always have been.
All this is excellent news, both for those directly involved, and for those whose future livelihoods may depend on such vibrancy and public visibility for the Quarter; but another aspect of these developments is the risks which, unless we are vigilant, they may bring.
The evidence that physical improvements, and even economic growth, may not be an unmixed blessing for everyone is now well-documented: we have only to look at areas such as London’s Hoxton, Newcastle, or indeed some parts of Glasgow and Edinburgh for instance, to see that ‘gentrification’ brings with it a challenge in terms of community and social sustainability. These issues were well recognised, as we know, at the recent ODPM conference, and must be core to how we see the future in taking HSQ forward.
It is a mistake (I would suggest) to suppose that inner-city areas do or should not change over time, or that somehow we should try to keep things as they are. We have, however, the advantage of hindsight in respect of other places, as we attempt to move forward in the Hope Street Quarter – like other parts of the inner city, a location with many people doing many things in many ways , but also a truly unique and very special place of itself.
This is not the time for a full analysis of all aspects of Hope Street Quarter’s past and future. But it may be helpful to list a few of the opportunities and issues which we face:
SUSTAINABILITY
There are several ways in which an area such as HSQ needs to be sustained:
· it must be managed in a way which is environmentally sound;
· it needs to have a micro-economy which resonates with the larger context, but which also enables significantly accelerated growth in terms of the particular advantages of the Quarter – its creative and high-skills base, its historic attractions, and its hugely significant arts and cultural attributes, for instance; and
· it needs to have resonance with the majority, if not all, the people who live and work in HSQ and closeby.
Hilary Burrage
Hon. Chair, HOPES: The Hope Street Association
Meeting with Liverpool Vision and other partners, 24 June 2005
Cultural Tourism as a Catalyst for Renaissance (Arts-Based Community Development)
Arts-Based Community Development (ABCD) is the approach adopted by HOPES: The Hope Street Association, Liverpool, in working with partners to enhance the renaissance of this important cultural quarter. But how does this link with the more established approach of ‘cultural tourism’?
The Mersey Partnership Cultural Impact Conference
Wednesday 31 July 2002, Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts
Cultural Tourism as a Catalyst for Renaissance
This brief presentation will look at some of the things which I hope perhaps represent best practice in local Arts-Based Community Action & Development (ABCA /D) and then examine a number of threads which may lead us to consider the challenges and opportunities of such activity.
Examples of HOPES’ community-based work¨
HOPES has organised midsummer events every year since 1996, including an annual concert at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall which includes adult amateur performers, young people / students, and schoolchildren, all working alongside professional musicians engaged from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
¨ In 2000 the year-long Hope Street Millennium Festival included almost 20 different events – concerts, exhibitions, drama, debates, a civic dinner, children’s banners and street activities – and was selected by the Millennium Commission from thousands of festivals across the country to be featured nationally.
¨ HOPES was invited to help initiate, and then provided behind-the-scenes administrative support for, the 1998 Liverpool BBC Windrush events which involved many groups from the communities of the inner-city. This was an extremely valuable opportunity to work with others to a common end, and has enabled the development of many enduring partnerships.
¨ HOPES has a Composer-in-Residence, Richard Gordon-Smith, whose large-scale orchestral work has been recorded by RLPO-Live for a commercial CD, with sponsorship, support and, in one instance, commissioning from HOPES.
¨ HOPES has organised and led a number of ‘expert’ conferences, to which local people were also invited, on subjects such as Art at the Heart: The Role of Cultural Quarters in City Renaissance and Nurturing the Best (on high-level graduate retention).
¨ HOPES sees ‘culture’ as being a broad concept, including all aspects of understandings and intellectual capital; we are very active in supporting the University of Liverpool and others in seeking to have a number of Big Science projects (eg: CASIM) located in the sub-region.
¨ HOPES has for some years supported the professional chamber ensemble Live-A-Music in its very accessible early evening concerts, and concurrent kids’ (free) workshops run by trained professional musicians, usually held in local churches and similar venues. (NB: Live-A-Music players also seek to locate, edit and perform ‘classical’ music by women and black composers as well as that by the renown ‘greats’ of the chamber music world.)
¨ HOPES seeks to involve young graduate trainees in all activities and we were able to support one such young person through a year at the School for Social Entrepreneurs in London, of which she is now a Fellow. Other past trainees now have very high-flying jobs.
¨ HOPES has gained formal recognition for Hope Street Quarter as a unique strategic area for engagement in Liverpool’s renaissance. We have held a large number of community meetings and consultations – eg: exhibiting models of possible ways forward at informal social events – and have been responsible for both the formal designation by the City Council of the Hope Street Quarter, and for the identification by the city centre partnership development company, Liverpool Vision, of Hope Street Quarter as a key development area.
¨ HOPES was central in supporting a group of Indian classical musicians who came together with RLPO musicians to form the Saurang Orchestra for a series of new-genre concerts in the Philharmonic Hall and other local venues.
¨ HOPES is very involved with others in the city in looking at ways to promote enterprise, conventional, cultural and social, as an aim for Liverpool’s 800th anniversary, in 2007.
¨ HOPES and Live-A-Music have just completed KOOL STREET, a six-month project supported by the National Foundation for Youth Music with Richard Gordon-Smith, resulting in a performance at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall by children from local secondary, special and primary schools of a five-part musical composition about their lives in Liverpool.
¨ HOPES has been at the forefront of local ventures such as the ‘reclaiming’ for the community and visitors of St James’ Garden and Cemetery alongside the Anglican Cathedral, in partnership with the Conservation Foundation, the City and others.
¨ Live-A-Music (with support from HOPES) also recently gave a free Midsummer Morning concert in aid of the Sefton Park Palm House appeal – to which 1,200 people turned up!.
¨ HOPES is a registered charity with a board of Trustees elected from an open membership, and much of our work is carried out as volunteers or as employment training opportunities for young graduates and others in the community.
Why mostly ARTS-based?
Liverpool is blessed with a large number of highly accomplished and significant arts organisations and artists. HOPES: The Hope Street Association (please see the HOPES Membership form attached for details) arose in the mid-1990s from CAMPAM, the Campaign to Promote the Arts in Merseyside (of which I was also Chair), a vocal lobby which worked hard to ensure that Liverpool’s outstanding performing arts organisations survived a very lean time. Our slogan then was ‘Once lost we will not get it back’.
The aim of HOPES is, however, more forward looking and pro-active now that our civic cultural assets have begun to be recognised for the ‘jewels in the crown’ which they are. HOPES acknowledges that cultural assets of all sorts – from architecture to world-class science and all things between – are critical for the successful renaissance of our city; and many of these rich assets lie and / or operate within the Hope Street Quarter.
We also believe that one way in which those who ‘have’ and those who perhaps have less can come together is through the arts, and especially the performing arts. Much of HOPES’ community-based activity is therefore predicated on bringing together members of the local community and artists of the highest calibre who have also come to live and work in the area.
Everyone can bring something to the arts
The parallels here with sport are evident, but should nonetheless be articulated: The arts and sport are visible and accessible to all. It may be difficult for a child in the inner-city to perceive what, say, lawyers or research scientists actually do; but everyone, given the opportunity, can observe and understand what musicians, gymnasts, painters, footballers or actors do. Indeed, Liverpool has many examples of arts and sports performers at the highest levels who came to their skills through being given opportunities to see (and / or hear) for themselves what is possible.
Likewise, in these activities everyone can become equal. HOPES seeks to involve its artist colleagues (especially musicians from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, through Live-A-Music) in activities such as ‘community’ orchestras or small-scale concerts and children’s workshops in which everyone, adults and children, skilled and less skilled, is made welcome. For instance, all HOPES Festival Orchestra members wear special T-shirts (this year sponsored by The Mersey Partnership); and after both formal and community concerts everyone, performers, audience and children alike, is invited to stay for free light refreshments. We also host free celebratory events and entertainments to which everyone who has indicated an interest (people who work, study, live in or visit Hope Street Quarter) is invited, such as our post-New Year parties at the Everyman Bistro.
We aim to use the arts to involve and bring together people from across all the communities in and around our Quarter, and to benefit from the synergies which thereby arise.
Challenges and opportunities in Arts Based Community Action / Development
No-one has ‘all the answers’ to issues of this sort, but perhaps we can at least attempt to identify some of them and offer possible initial answers:
Question: How does ABCA/D link with conventional culture and tourism?
Possible Answer: It is the ‘continuity factor’ which allows large-scale and spectacular programmes to embed (and / or develop) over time in the local community. It also facilitates genuine and new local capacity building which will enhance any more formal programmes, offering a sort of ‘social glue’. It is essential to encourage the synergies between these two aspects of cultural innovation.
Q: What are the relative priorities for ABCD between excellence and accessibility?
PA: ‘Excellence’ and ‘elitism’ are sometimes confused in this debate. There is no evidence (is there?) that offering the best will somehow damage the mediocre. Which leads us to…
Q: How do high-level and formal artistic / formal skill translate into assets for a local community?
PA: There are always people, wherever they are, who can respond to the best on offer; what often helps here is to make the actual setting for events accessible, rather than compromising excellence. For instance, don’t assume that everyone is comfortable with normal box office arrangements (send them invitations!), make sure marketing, programmes etc explain what is happening (and for how long), be sure to avoid any hint of ‘them and us’ scenarios between artists and audience.
Q: How can such apparently free-flowing programmes engage in the formal bureaucratic set-up?
PA: With difficulty! But it has to be done… One way might be to move from the principle of local authority etc funding and official engagement for community-led action in specific projects, to that of core funding (which requires a degree of trust, but can still be entirely transparent), so that the base-line for committed community organisations is secure. This would allow them to put their energies into attracting external funding for ambitious / imaginative projects, rather than simply struggling to survive from one crisis to the next. Intellectual, structural and intuitive approaches are all required. The ‘trust solution’, of course, requires a degree of civic courage and serious leadership….
Q: How can ABCD be benchmarked / evaluated?
PA: Qualitative benchmarking is often more important for these activities than artificial quantification. The real challenge is to find appropriate indicators, including social audit factors, and to acknowledge fully their validity alongside the usual criteria or benchmarks (if and where even such exist).
Q: ABCD requires innovators. How can their work be sustained?
PA: There are innovators with commitment, and innovators who prefer to move on. Maybe one way to resolve the ‘sustainability problem’ is to have challenges in reserve for the committed innovators, and on the other hand to ensure that people who prefer routinisation are consistently drawn in – which is a good place anyway to start for many community involvement programmes.
Q: What is the ‘X-factor’ which gives any ABCD programme ‘charisma’?PA: You will only discover this by trial and error in a given situation! The important thing is to allow and positively support artists of all sorts who genuinely want to engage in their communities to do so. It is essential to have formal objectives and to track progress; but equally it is essential not to prescribe, and to encourage organic growth of community involvement. How can we know ‘what people want’ until they have had a real opportunity to try things for themselves? – Often artists are more intuitive about these things than their directors and managers! (This idea has the corollary that it is important that funded programmes have genuine artistic commitment and input from the start.)
If you don’t try, you will never know….
Hilary Burrage
Hon Chair, HOPES: The Hope Street Association
HOPES And The Two Hope Street Cathedrals
Hope Street, Liverpool, has an extraordinary range of special organisations and institutions along its kilometre length – including both of Liverpool’s great Cathedrals. This brief paper, presented at the Northern European Cathedrals Conference in Liverpool on 26 January 2005, explores some of the work which HOPES and the Cathedrals undertake.
Northern European Cathedrals Conference, 26 January 2005
Talk given in Liverpool Cathedral
The Hope Street Quarter, Liverpool
(Cultural Tourism as a Catalyst for Renaissance)
HOPES: The Hope Street Association was formed in the early 1990s as a result of widening the work of the voluntary group CAMPAM, the Campaign to Promote the Arts on Merseyside. HOPES is a registered ‘arts, education and regeneration’ charity with about 150 paying members (almost 50 of them local institutions etc). We also have a large number of ‘associate’ partners who do not actually subscribe to HOPES; no-one is ignored and all are welcome. HOPES has no formal funding except for grant-aid to support some artistic activities, and the organisation is run by an elected honorary Executive Committee – on which representatives of both Cathedrals are ex-officio the two Vice-Chairs – and by young graduate and local community volunteers.
Since we began our work has been divided into a number of different themes ~
Community and Cultural involvement:
We provided the secretariat for the 1998 Liverpool Windrush celebrations; we arrange small-scale (often musical) events in community settings, as well as open-invitation (free) social gatherings such as the HOPES Not-New-Year Party; we hold occasional debates on arts and regeneration topics; and, every year, we bring together a wide range of people to share the HOTFOOT Midsummer Concert at Philharmonic Hall to which many people in our various communities are invited. HOPES was chosen in 2,000 by the Millennium Commission from events across the nation as its exemplar Community Festival, and we gave a presentation in London on our activities to the Commissioners and the Secretary of State.
An example of close liaison and involvement with faith communities would be the ‘Faith in One City’ concerts of music by composers of given religious affiliation which our partner organisation Ensemble Liverpool (a group of fully professional recital musicians from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra) gave in both Cathedrals in 2004.
Renewal and Regeneration:
In the year 2,000 we published the Hope Street Papers, a dialogue on ‘Art at the Heart’ of inner-city regeneration. We have over the past ten years consistently lobbied, and indeed produced quite detailed plans, for the improvement of the public realm in our Quarter. The support of the Cathedrals in this process has been invaluable, and over time the City authorities have come to understand why such improvement is so important. We have now been told that work on these improvements will actually start in Spring 2005. HOPES is also leading the development of a public art route representing many interests in Hope Street.
Profile and Advocacy:
We have close links with many national organisations, such as the British Urban Regeneration Association, the Conservation Foundation, the National Campaign for the Arts and the St. William’s Foundation, as well as connections with government bodies such as the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, and regional and sub-regional groups like the North-West Business Leadership Forum, Liverpool Vision, ‘Stop the Rot’ and many others. We also work to nurture the knowledge economy in and around our Quarter, whether this be Big Science, large arts organisations, or smaller-scale bodies. This work is central to local economic growth and benefit.
Everything we do is focussed on building a genuinely inclusive and forward-looking sense of Community Spirit shared by all partners in the area between our two great Cathedrals!
Hilary Burrage,
Hon Chair, HOPES: The Hope Street Association
The Comfort Zone
Everyone has Comfort Zones. But when do they help us and when do they hold us back?
We all live in Comfort Zones; and we all need them. But do we create them in ways which help or hinder? And, come to that, how do we create them? Who decides where our comfort zone boundaries lie? And can they profitably be expanded?
Regionalism And The Very High Skills Knowledge Economy
The very high skills Knowledge Economy is an international and expensive enterprise. Are high-level scientific skills enough to deliver complex science programmes? How do considerations of the knowledge economy fit into regional and sub-regional strategic planning? And who, on what basis, decides how and where to invest the very large funds required to deliver large-scale science and technology projects?
These notes are intended to invite discussion of current issues / praxis.
In a possibly reckless move, I have therefore summarised each point as a ‘Maxim’ – debate about these six Maxims will be welcome.
Which is the more challenging?
Is it to install, say, a number of large-scale commercial manufacturing units for similar but complex products in several sites across Europe? Or to bring to functionality, as other possible example, a particle accelerator (synchrotron) involving resources from many separate locations, but on one site?
And who, in each case, should lead the development of the programme?
Project management or scientific know-how?
Answers to these questions will depend on one’s previous experience and general perspective, but it might be supposed that generic project managers would be assigned to the first task, whilst there is a chance that senior scientists might be assigned to the second.
For some observers the first project has a mystique which is less pronounced than the second.
Almost certainly the first scenario will be led by straight business considerations, the bottom line, whilst the second might well be predicated upon general perceptions around the quality of the knowledge and skills which it is anticipated will result from, as well as contribute to, the development of the programme.
Complex risks and opportunities
But a sense of mystique around science will not always be appertain. A person taking the contrary view might argue that in both instances there are opportunities and risks which overall give these projects similar complexity.
This person might, for instance, be an experienced programme manager who recognises that even the most highly academically able people are essentially a resource which requires extremely skilled direction (for example, the hi-tech A380 airliner is designed and partially constructed across Europe and then assembled in Toulouse on a commercial basis)
New thinking and new funding?
Our experienced programme manager will also know that bringing together even an ambitious ‘normal business’ project is inevitably also a proposition which requires new thinking at some points.
But what may be less likely is that a person with this perspective is, at least historically, also one who decides how to invest very large amounts of public funding in taking forward Big Science projects.
Input or output?
Of course, these scenarios are parodies; but do they have a modicum of truth, alongside the stereotyping? Is managing science different?
Is there, or has there historically been, a largely unexamined general notion that the management where very high-level knowledge and skills is anticipated output should somehow be approached differently from that where these attributes are used mainly as input, usually for business / commercially-led objectives?
A look at the differential senior management of a range of public and private Very High Level Knowledge and Skills (henceforth VHLK&S) organisations suggests this assumption may indeed be the case; and history is littered with projects led by outstanding scientists, artists and academics which ended in disaster.
Maxim No. 1 is therefore:
VHLS&K project leadership and direction is not a badge of honour or a reward for diligence; it is a task and competence in its own right.
Appoint top people because of their proven project management training and skills, not because they are eminent in their own specialist field.
Contexts and frameworks
But we also need to ask how these possibly stereotyped (mis-)understandings about project leadership impinge when, to look at another scenario again, they relate to, say, public sector interests such as the nation’s health economy (i.e. to ‘health economies’ as under the aegis of strategic, regional and national formal Health Authorities).
What are the major frameworking elements when we consider delivery of VHLK&S in the overtly public and not-for-profit sectors? How can and should public funding be allocated?
Decisions with high impact
Such questions are not just of academic interest. Real decisions are constantly made about when, where and how to invest enormous amounts of money in widely varying projects which are recognised as involving visible VHLK&S.
Examples which come to mind of relatively recent practical decisions about U.K. investment in high skills and knowledge include:
· in the private sector, the funding of biotech, IT and major retail developments;
· in the higher education / business sectors, funding for physics, nanotechnologies, etc;
· in the public sector, funding for cancer research, the arts, tax and legal services – as well as, for instance, infrastructural developments in transport and other utilities.
Vacuum or special case?
In my experience these decisions have frequently been made in a vacuum from the contexts and impact they may have on local, regional and national economies; or, if a ‘special case’ for VHLK&S investment is made, it is predicated on ideas of less expenditure resulting in greater benefit in those locations (regions) where economies are most vulnerable.
Whilst it must be emphasised that VHLK&S is far more than ‘just’ science – it embraces, as we have seen, the whole gamut of economic and social activity, including business, the professions and the arts and culture, as well as more technological enterprises – a look at one important recent example of how decisions may have been made on very high Big Science funding illustrates this complexity.
Complex decisions: the Daresbury case
It is common knowledge that the campaign by the Daresbury Laboratory in the North West region of England to gain the DIAMOND synchrotron was not successful (it eventually went to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories in Oxford, despite agitated pleas from a number of quarters).
As one who was involved in the political campaigning, my own view is that:
· the significance of regional issues was ultimately grasped too late, especially by regeneration and national governmental agencies;
· most politicians (but certainly not all) at every level did not understand the potential regional impact of this ‘academic’ bid (which they saw as distant from their core interests and sphere of influence), nor did some lead scientists see that they would need to work with politicians;
· there was too little timely collaboration between different academic institutions and, especially, with those other agencies which are differently funded (such as those which are hospital / health-based, as opposed to research embedded in higher education institutions – there is very little collaboration between science research commissioners in respectively the Departments of Trade and Industry, and of Health; indeed, their respective criteria and processes for the evaluation of research proposals present very different emphases);
· there was an understanding that perhaps some aspects of the ‘world-class’ basis of the bid would be challenging – but no clear plan for how demonstrate that required improvements could and would be made to guarantee bid viability (nor, indeed, much understanding that this might be a valid, if unusual, position from which to make a case at least politically, if not elsewhere); and
· there was certainly little public acknowledgement of how difficult it is for particular university departments in science outside the ‘Golden Triangle’ of Oxbridge and London to maintain their hard-won recognition of excellence – which of itself has huge impact on the regional economy.
And, in part because these issues were not adequately addressed, a great opportunity for the North West of England was lost at that time. (Happily, however, lessons have also subsequently and fruitfully been learned.)
Science across the private to public spectrum
It is also however interesting to see more generally how various VHLK&S projects and programmes are originated, funded and developed. As we move through the spectrum outlined above we see that the bottom line and stakeholder profile also moves.
For the private sector the imperative is shareholder interests, but by the time we reach the public sector the major interest is generally far more political and location-embedded.
Locational costs and benefits
One aspect of this shift is that the additional benefit of developments in particular locations (e.g. regions of the U.K.) to the localities themselves does indeed become more critical when the project is public sector funded, but such beneficial positioning is not without cost.
For instance, it may be claimed it is ‘cheaper’ to take a science project away from the Golden Triangle of Oxbridge and London. Such notions need to be examined very carefully, and it is perhaps more realistic when evaluating proposals to look at longer-term benefit, rather than at how much less the project might cost initially.
Maxim No. 2 is:
Add-on local or regional benefit from VHLK&S development does not come cheap; to achieve optimal results requires appropriate additional investment.
If you expect to gain special benefit on the basis of a ‘cut-price’ bid against others more attractively positioned, you will probably ultimately be disappointed – something some funders need also to appreciate.
Sector distribution and services
Beyond this lies also the issue of sector distribution. Is it enough simply to buy in one or a few sectors of the VHLK&S economy, and hope that these will attract the rest?
Will a sub-region with, say, a decent university (or two), orchestra and museum be able to make best advantage from the addition of just a bio-tech development or science park? Even if we blithely assume that somehow these other given, essential (and, importantly, also VHLK&S) cultural amenities can exist whether or not they have adequate support, the answer is probably that it will not.
The critical role of other specialist professional services must also be recognised. (Who will advise on intellectual property rights, compulsory purchase orders or start-up funding arrangements?)
Maxim No. 3 is thus:
Optimal synergy at local and regional levels results from VHLS&K in critical mass; it does not occur in dilution.
Single sector development alone probably will not work.
Politics and perceptions of (dis)advantage
There is however a quasi-political problem in terms of delivery of critical mass VHLK&S in some regional locations. Several of the U.K.’s regions are areas where educational and vocational levels are relatively low, and where local people may have little truck with any development not addressing direct issues around ‘deprivation’ and / or basic community, work and educational requirements.
For people in areas of disadvantage ideas of excellence and elitism may have similar (and distant) irrelevance or non-resonance. Yet the same decision-makers who must choose whether to attract VHLK&S to their region have to answer to (and perhaps seek re-election by) the very people who hold no candle for such esoteric activities.
Perceived priorities in areas of deprivation
The most challenged local and regional areas therefore suffer the double disadvantage both of particular economic vulnerabilities, and of populations who may not see attracting VHLK&S as a priority.
In such a position local / regional politicians and leaders need to be especially deft and persuasive, for instance, by nurturing a sense of pride of place which encourages local people really to value and use their VHLK&S cultural amenities.
This is a challenging task – a venture, e.g., in which I have been much involved in Liverpool’s Hope Street Cultural Quarter – helping disadvantaged communities to understand that less overtly visible VHLK&S developments such as I.T. and bio-tech are also critical to their local economies and the future wealth of the area.
Maxim No. 4 must be:
Effective decisions about local and regional investment in, and development of, VHLK&S requires wide experience, energy, vision and leadership; it must be a team effort between the community and their decision-makers.
Making progress with VHLK&S requires re-location from one’s comfort zone – in taking things forward decision-makers must also take forward through transparency, example and dialogue the vision of the community at large.
Local talent and skills
These community contexts take us also, of course, to a special consideration – that of communities indigenous to a given location who have, or are acquiring, VHLS&K. Many of these will groups will include graduates from regional universities, or people who have migrated to the area because of particular employment opportunities.
This inward migration is especially likely to apply to people with skills of relevance to the public or not-for-profit sectors, such as health or the arts, where most professional salaries are relatively low.
Perceiving potential – or not?
Yet the significance of this pool of talent is frequently not appreciated by others in the locality; examples are often seen of parochial politicians who see students as a ‘nuisance’.
Then there are policy makers who believe that it is necessary only to track the entry point employment (‘destination’) for all graduates together, as if first degrees and Ph.D.’s were the same and can equally be retained by small-scale hothouses for ‘entrepreneurs’.
This is surely a vain hope in a context where the best way for the most highly trained and talented young people in the regions to double their incomes and gain high level experiences is simply to get a job in London…. and here we need to remember there is very little ‘balancing’ contra-flow of talent from the South East and M4/40 Corridors.
Maxim No. 5 is therefore:
Haemorrhage of VHLS&K from regional locations is a significant problem which must be adequately monitored and addressed; there is a likelihood that a ‘converse example’ may be set if serious and sustained efforts are not made to retain this talent across the board.
It is a serious mistake to imagine that a general regional policy of ‘keeping wages down’ to attract inward investment will not also result in the loss of many of the most talented to more lucrative and interesting employment elsewhere – with all the ‘messages’ this gives out to local people, whatever their levels of skill.
Sharing benefits
And this leads us to the final point in looking at the pay-off for regional investment in VHLK&S. The benefits of such investment must be shared by those who come with the required skills / knowledge, and those who are already indigenous to the location.
The responsibility for ensuring that this is so lies at every level of the local, regional and national body politic. Decent local amenities are a matter of local provision; sensible business and economic support services are often a (sub-)regional responsibility; and in the end serious infrastructural investment can only be made with the consent and facilitation of national government.
Aligning initiation and delivery
When all these elements (or planned future elements) are aligned everyone benefits. The evidence is that programmes of all sorts are more likely to succeed when initiation and delivery are seamless; and presumably this applies as much to regional renaissance through ac
Can ‘Culture’ Lead Regeneration?
Trying to disentangle ‘Culture’ and Regeneration is difficult, but the DCMS has published a Report which may help us to consider the issues more clearly.
Which comes first? Regeneration or ‘culture’?
The debate has now been going for some time, but a study by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) gives examples of how regeneration and culture interact from across the country – including several references to Liverpool as forthcoming European Capital of Culture, and to the experience of Glasgow, a previous Capital of Culture in 1990.
The study also tries to develop ways to measure the ‘real’ impact of culture on regeneration, and ‘to ensure that culture’s contribution to regeneration is maximised’.
Importantly, contributions to the debate have been invited not only from the experts, but also from others who are directly involved, whether they be arts practitioners or audiences, businesses big and small, or those living in communities in need of regeneration. Initial results of the consultation were published in early 2005.
The evidence currently available does not make it easy to demonstrate how far there are measurable direct effects on communities where cultural development and regeneration have occurred.
How can we measure the impact, positive or negative, of a development which raises expectations but in the end does not materialise? Does this promote interest in development anyway, or does it rather produce a cynical perception that everything is ‘hot air’? Is there a difference between Liverpool’s ill-fated Cloud, which will now not materialise, and the equally contentious Millennium Dome in London, which did? And how would we measure this?
Or how do we assess the long-term impact of an ‘artists’ quarter’, originally low-cost and ‘bohemian’, but now expensive to live in – and almost deserted because of this by the artists themselves, still surviving on low wages? Can we compare the experience of Islington-Hoxton in London, where this has already occurred, and, say, London Road in Liverpool, where it may yet happen?
And what about the impact of the arts on communities where there is little experience of formal culture as yet? Can visits by professional artists and performers – again as has happened alongside physical development such as the St Lukes Centre in London, and is now happening in for instance Liverpool’s Kensington area – help to raise the expectations of local children, and maybe also their elders? How would we tell?
Quality of life is not easily measured and answers to these questions are also not easy. But some pointers do exist.
Dreaming Realist 