Let me start by saying I am not from Leeds or even Yorkshire. I’m a hobbit from the south west and therefore probably not qualified to even make the following reflections! Let me be clear that I’m not keen on being parochial, and if other area’s are doing stuff well then it doesn’t harm to think about and compliment them on their successes. Likewise this post isn’t about saying Leeds is rubbish. I’m intrigued about how cities such as Manchester appear to present a coherent, attractive, playful marketing message.
I’ve been watching twitter (TV rarely gets a look in these days) and feeling a little envious, envious of the way in which Manchester portrays it’s festivals, happenings, events, call them what you will. For one thing they sound playful, imaginative and connected. This weekend I’m aware of Creative Tourist’s Weekender, Cornerhouse’s Abandon Normal Devices, Soup Kitchen’s launch of Paper Girl Manchester, Un-Convention, Manchester Food and Drink Festival. All in one weekend? Is that planned. Is it grassroots led? How do the authorities get involved in this? Is there a better spirit of collaboration? Is it as great as the marketing suggests? What makes these events sound worth getting a train across the Pennines for? Or as it appears from across the UK? Is Manchester better at marketing it’s stuff, from grassroots ambassadors up? Many questions…any thoughts?
Am I disloyal? Do people look at Leeds, or Yorkshire events and feel the same sense of ‘wish I’d been there?’ Am I being a critical friend to Leeds asking this question, or displaying a sense of inferiority when in fact there is no point in comparing. Am I too close to the action in Leeds to see the value and quality everyone else is witnessing?
We had a World Curry Festival in Leeds this weekend, next weekend we have the fantastic transformative Light Night Leeds which is now in the 6th year and led the way before any other UK versions of Nuit Blanche. It’s brilliant and well attended. The week after a month of style and shopping related celebration kicks off with Leeds Loves Shopping So I’m not saying we don’t know how to put on a good event…
What am I saying? I’d be interested to know if the reality meets the marketing of the events in other cities, such as Manchester. What we could learn, if anything, about the way we articulate our cultural offer, what ways we can have the balls to shout about it more, or is that not the Leeds way…?
Ofcourse this post is another thread to the excellent conversation started by Neil from Test Space Leeds a month or so back…read that one for a much more involved dialogue
I’m trying not to go over what I wrote in my previous blog https://theculturevulture.co.uk/?p=7098 as all those points are still relevant to what is being talked about here. Manchester is far from perfect but look at the number of venues involved in the Manchester events mentioned: Soup Kitchen, NOISElab, Cornerhouse, MadLab, Chinese Art Centre, CUBE etc. They involve public, private and commercial spaces. Empty shops, galleries, cafes and restaurants. They involve reinventing these spaces for one off events, exhibitions and festivals. And a lot of it is just really good promotion of good ideas. You look at something like Slice in Leeds , who have a series of residencies at 42 New Briggate until December, it’s a great idea, great space, great location but who in Leeds knows about it? Let alone anyone coming over from Manchester.
It’s also worth looking at the Manchester Food and Drink website, it’s a commercial mainstream event with Manchester City Council support. Look at the Born and Bred images, with the Stone Roses, Oasis, Elbow and Bee Gees lyrics. Manchester has a narrative, it has it’s own culture, nostalgia and history. The city (and by this I mean council, businesses, venues, artists, promoters etc) knows how to play with it’s image, promote it and exploit it. It also takes a bit of nerve, entrepreneurship, creativity and brass neck. Note that the guys involved in designing the website also created the Manchester Egg, which is on offer at the Soup Kitchen as part of the festival. Leeds simply doesn’t do this kind of thing and I don’t know if it ever can or will.
Could you ever see “a community space for people who want to do and make interesting stuff – a place for geeks, artists, designers, illustrators, hackers, tinkerers, innovators and idle dreamers; an autonomous R&D laboratory and a release valve for Manchester’s creative communities.” http://madlab.org.uk/about/ taking over “A 1000 sq. ft. former shop”in Leeds city centre? And this isn’t the only venue doing this in Manchester city centre, and these spaces manage to exist, even just for six months, a year, alongside Harvey Nicolas, Selfridges, Gap etc.
I’d obviously like to change this and this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot this past week as me and Steve try and sort out the next set of Test Space events. What venues are there in Leeds? How do we promote events? What kind of events do we put on? What is Leeds good at? Who do we work with? How do we work with people in Leeds? Leeds seemingly has potential as it doesn’t have the same set of established people and venues, there’s an opportunity to do things differently and promote ourselves differently. I don’t believe in copying other cities, it should be about creating our own narrative in the city, finding talent, promoting it and showcasing it through the kind of events mentioned in the original post. But the reality is it’s actually incredibly tough to do this in Leeds at the moment. I have had more than one conversation this week, with people running events in Leeds, where the discussion comes round to “well maybe we should be looking for opportunities in Sheffield, Bradford or Huddersfield as well” And it shouldn’t be like that, Leeds should be able to support it’s creative talent.
Enough talking, if anybody wants to see how things could be done differently buy a ticket for Test Space: Kitchen, a cold, wet, out of season, adult, end of the pier showcase of local chefs, markets, businesses and creative talent at temple.works.leeds http://testspaceseaside.eventbrite.com/ or have a look at testspaceleeds.com to see what we’ve done over the past six months involving pop up kitchens, takeovers, showcase gigs, talks, rapid exhibitions, a giant Eton mess and a de-constructed whole hog, which to my knowledge Manchester has never done.
MadLab was part-inspired by the coworking community at Old Broadcasting House in Leeds…
I don’t doubt that there are precedents of creative endeavour from other locations, ie PaperGirl comes from Berlin, UnConvention goes on tour etc
That’s not what I’m questioning really! We don’t even know when great stuff is initiated in the place we live. I had no idea that MadLab was part inspired by the co-working community at OBH, should I have done?
Is it time for me to accept that Leeds does things in a modest way that appeals to ‘those in the know’ or is it time to be a little more connected, collborative, less silo and a bit prouder of our achievements?
Can our communities rise to the challenge of seeing Leeds become bigger than the sum of it’s parts and really pull something off?
Are we already doing it, little by little?
You run great events Imran, but even I struggle to find out about them until close to the date, the sense of momentum never has the chance to build.
We are trying to play our part too, and increase visibility of the stuff which is not necessary ‘big ticket’ corporate focused events, and are deluged by the quantity of events on a small scale. What we seem to lack is that ‘in concert’ type approach which feels like different bits of the City are animated not just once of year, but throughout the year.
Perhaps by spending too much time on Twitter etc I am guilty of just seeing the very adept self marketing from a mature grassroots community who have been blogging about culture for some time?
Who knows maybe my new baby and a bit of time to reflect will help me to see that Leeds is getting there, in it’s own way!
I didn’t know MadLab was inspired by Old Broadcasting House. My point wasn’t really about the work as I know there are the creative people in Leeds to fill a space like that. It was more I can’t see Leeds ever having a space like that say in the middle of the Calls, or a NOISElab equivalent in Leeds taking over the Evans shop on Briggate, or a Nexus Arts Cafe on New Briggate. All three are very different flexible, community, creative spaces in the centre of the city.
What is clear to me is that we have a very mixed bag of ‘event organisers’ in the city.
Some consistently deliver interesting and challenging events, grounded in, and responding to, local people.
Others prefer to bring in the travelling shows (World Curry Festival, Enterprise Show, German Market for example) that come to town, set up for a time and then move on, where the only role for the city appears to be to sign the contract provide the audience and sort out the stewarding.
Others are still cutting their teeth and learning how to run events that could showcase Leeds talent in art, music, design, crafts, technology, sports, you name it, but are still learning how to put on really engaging events that get beyond clichéd mediocrity to make a real impact on the regional, national and international stage.
Still more seem to be content to provide formulaic events often put on in response to public funding that lack real dynamism and energy.
And sometimes the events are primarily marketing initiatives for the large brands in the city. Which may make good economic and political sense, but hardly puts an interesting Leeds brand ‘out there’.
Now my take is that we are making good progress in Leeds and may be catching up fast, but we still have several challenges to face.
The first is to learn how to develop a much more consistently interesting offer. We must learn to get the product ‘right’ more often in terms of quality and, arguably, delivering the implicit ‘brand values’ of the city. And that means engineering a much tighter fit between product and audience.
The second is much more about developing and delivering a range of audiences. Yes, we need mainstream audiences who will turn out to see Abba tribute acts in Millennium Square. Yes, we need independent and edgy audiences who will take a risk on culture, arts, sports and just about anything that tried and trusted promoters lay before them (anyone for de-constructed hog?) Yes, we need to develop youth audiences and grey audiences, and audiences that embrace the entire city as well as specific neighbourhoods.
Does anyone know if we have done any serious work in segmenting audiences in the city and taking seriously the idea of audience development at the city level?
I think that the council and its partners have a powerful role to play here. Perhaps currently they choose to support too much, putting the ‘city brand’ on almost anything that fits, without the resources to really ensure effective project management and quality control, or to make a real difference in terms of the quality of the product; leading to a situation where quality maybe compromised on the alter of ‘quantity’.
Perhaps they could be doing more to partner with promoters to help them learn their trade and give them what they most need to be successful, which in most cases will be access to ‘audiences’ and know-how. To provide more of a facilitation role, but with a fastidious eye for ‘quality’.
It is the building of audiences that perhaps matters most. Large groups of people who know that they will get what they are looking for from a particular event or promoter, and who will help to spread the word.
Personally I never EVER considered inviting any of my friends up to Leeds for the ‘World Curry Festival’, in part because I know it will be turning up in a town near them soon, and partly because for me the whole ‘tented corporate extravaganza in Millenium Square’ seldom really excites.
And that is our challenge; to learn how to nurture more events in the city that we would want to invite our friends ‘from out of, or across, town’ to, because we know that they will have a great time, and that we will be proud of our city.
Perhaps it is time to shift the emphasis a little from ‘marketing’ the city to ‘curating’ it a little more. And providing the support, feedback and development opportunities that promoters need to consistently meet and surpass the expectations of their audiences.
Perhaps what we need is a mechanism for sharing and exchanging best practice in event management. A kind of Leeds Events Academy?
The notion of curating a city is powerful one…and kinda what Emma does 🙂
In essence, local media isn’t doing a great job at surfacing these things right now, so we’re all starting to create the media we want…over time, I’m optimistic we’ll develop the mechanisms and structures to get the message out.
Incidentally, Leeds Met is home to The UK Centre for Events Management (http://www.leedsmet.ac.uk/international/events/index.htm) some of us have started to mentor students and work with them on delivering stuff; they’re a natural fit around which to to construct an “events academy”; well resourced and enthusiastic, but missing great projects to work on.
(Incidentally, most of my events do draw out people from Liverpool, Manchester, and Sheffield, as well as the NE) 🙂
Excuse the little dig! Just I do think that despite ‘our’ best intentions we still talk to the converted! You are very well respected and known in your community, and much as you may think tech is culture, culture is tech, I think you’ll still find that this message isn’t yet adopted in a wider sense.
We still manage to make assumptions about the reach of our marketing efforts, or whatever you want to call it. Do we ever try to do anything really daring, strategic that broadens the appeal beyond our own areas of comfort?
Cross pollination is key, as is the desire to do this, and an understanding that the assumptions we make and the language we use are problematic.
Experience changes that, people who dip their toes in the water become eager converts, but we’ve got to be a bit more collaborative and open minded first to see the world from each other’s perspectives
I sometimes write off an event on the basis of it’s name, or who is hosting it, or how worthy it seems. Part of me feels that I should go precisely because of those reasons, as I may learn something new, and see reinvention of the wheel happening, or a new connection to be made.
I also think we want the approbation of our peers, and that’s who we put our efforts into getting along to our events. That’s what we know. We should be asking ‘who doesn’t come, get invited, and why?’
Anyway I think big kudos to you and the guys at OBH, you do put on great events, networking opportunities etc that have provided confidence and a foundation for other ventures to develop elsewhere.
I do agree to a lot of what you are saying here Mike. Less so about an event management collaboration more ACTION RESEARCH…
An example of this could be something akin to The Cutting Room Project from Ancoats last year, which crowdsourced ideas from the general public, generated a great buzz, for the industrial heart of Manchester and had the support of the RDA along with Ear to the Ground production (events management company) and local web company Cahoona http://carolynhughescomms.co.uk/cutting-room-experiment/
http://www.getambition.com/tag/cutting-room-experiment/
A good example of a mixed private/public sector collaboration, which resulted in some weird, wonderful and thoughtful events over a day. All sorts of people with little experience of events management got to see their ideas realised…
Not sure if there is any intention to do this again, and whether something like this could act as a catalyst to further collaborations, and without insider knowledge of the project
What would be great was is if the ability to do some transformative events, where fun, play, sheer daftness was seen as worthy of celebration as the obvious corporate stuff. If that means access to expertise, savvy marketing, pr, doors and spaces being opened then it would be great to involve the agencies. They must stop branding stuff as a city brand, and allow the cacophony to spill over and contribute to an organic self narrative
It does also occur to me that we are very self critical! Do other Cities do their navel gazing in public?
Yes you all do!
It’s really not as bad as you all seem to believe.
Neil and I were talking on Friday about other large Northern cities and places like Glasgow having experienced deep economic, civil and social trauma in the post-industrial era.
To my knowledge, Leeds has not…even after the recent GLOBAL implosion of the banking industry, the city’s financial industry is doing fine.
Boohoo Leeds doesn’t have a city park :'(
Maybe cool needs calamity and chaos – just take a peek at the ongoing reboot of post-Motown Detroit… http://www.palladiumboots.com/exploration/detroit
I think it is important that this ‘navel gazing’ should be as open, inclusive, transparent and easy to contribute to as possible.
Leeds has long had a culture of an anointed few doing strategy in secret. The more of the debate we can get in the public domain the better.
It is not about navel gazing for me, but ‘meaning making’. And the more we make our meanings in public the more powerful they are likely to become as they are shaped by many more voices.
I have grown up in Leeds and spent most of my youth mystified that Leeds was such a cultural black hole. Why did all the good bands come from Manchester?
Of course Leeds in the 80s wasn’t just a cultural black hole. But the story Leeds tells itself is that the city was saved by money. And the city still clearly believes that it is in spending that money in shops that our salvation lies. Clubbing in the 90s – the only other national story we had to tell – happened by accident. You can see in the news over the last few weeks that shopping is still our main offer.
I think one thing that we haven’t yet grasped hold of is Leeds’ role as a regional city. If you live in Bolton or Preston or Oldham etc you know that you live in the orbit of Manchester. You will happily go to events there. Leeds needs to step up.
Hyde Park should be a nationally renowned cultural hub, like Camden, but the city barely seems to know it’s there.
What I don’t understand about Manchester is the extent to which public bodies encouraged the creation of a cultural identity, or was it all just a wonderful synegistic coincidence?
Responding to Simon Hall – the good bands didn’t ALL come from Manchester! And nor do they NOW!
The 90’s story about Leeds clubbing scene was no accident. It was dreamed up and pushed by Leeds City Council’s Tourism Service and a very imaginative and narrowly focussed campaign it was – it linked up with Brit Rail and Leeds hotels and pushed a 24 hour Leeds nightclubbing experience -it was fabulously successful and was done on a budget of about 2p by some creative people in Leeds City Council!!!
Look out this week for Quarry Hill Creates – a new partnership of the 14 or more creative organisations located in and around Quarry Hill to showcase QH as one of the most vibrant cultural areas in the region…. Finally, Leeds is full of people working in their first or second job who came to Leeds from different parts of the north and north east as undergrads and who have not left for Manchester or London because they like Leeds- its friendly, its compact , its safe theres lots to do and it has a good quality of life.
Hi Dinah
Good to see your comments, and understanding some of the great initiatives does stop people moaning a bit too.
Please don’t see my blog post as levelled at any of the council employees or even specific agencies…it must be hard when you are working on your remit and don’t see much appreciation for all that you are working on.
Can I resurrect my idea that every city should have a Festival season with low-key events on week days and big themed weekends like the Caribbean Carnival, Asian Mela, Food & Drink Festival, etc.?
I visit cities most often because of what they have to offer arts & culture wise. So Manchester often draws me near because of top quality festivals like FutureEverything and the Manchester International Festival, plays at the Royal Exchange, the sheer volume of gigs that the scale of the city means that it is able to attract.
Ambition, innovation, quality and courage need to be our watchwords, combined with but not driven by marketing prowess. What do we want to see/participate in? How can we make it happen? Who else cares about this and can help? How can we tell people about it? The Action Research proposal sounds like a good place to start- its about sparking off the ideas that make amazing things happen!
Great points Emma, and all.
Let’s not beat ourselves up just yet though eh? Have you seen the size of Manchester? By that I mean the urban sprawl of it… Yeah we’ve got people, but you can walk around Leeds’ town centre on a night out and cover it ALL. There’s so much space in Manchester, so much space to be used.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/huxhombre/5050018045/
That’s not to say however that we shoudn’t be doing things better. On the contrary, that’s the point of art in life isn’t it? Try. Fail. Try again. Fail better. We are different though as cities. I spent some time in Salford this weekend (yep, I know that’s not Manchester, but they enjoy a shared heritage in many senses. You don’t see Leeds and Bradford cozying up together) but Manchester has this pride in it’s history that we seem to forget in Leeds. We were at Salford Boys Club http://www.flickr.com/photos/huxhombre/5047169440/ for part of Unconvention http://unconventionhub.org/ this weekend and there’s this pride in heritage, similarly for the Trade Hall.
Manchester reminds me of Liverpool in that sense (for the sake of disclosure, I come from Liverpool originally). Liverpool has this pride in it’s heritage (sometimes rightly, sometimes romantically and wrongly) and there’s a culture of trying to bring people together to do great things, or at least to do Good. Leeds has tinges of Liverpool too. Where Liverpool pulled the Cavern down and built a car park on it, Leeds turned the vibrant and eclectic Corn-Exchamge into a homogenised food-court.
Leeds planners, please stop ripping the heart and the interesting and the heritage out of the city. Stop ripping down the beautiful, old and the brick and granting planning to the bland, the soon to be dated and the OXO cube cladding of imaginationless buildings.
I’ll fight for Leeds, and for integration of events, and for creativity. Give us a hand though eh?
(Sorry, went a bit off topic there – not intentionally mind)
😉
xR
I live in a small City in the South West, and for the first time in a long time have been working here on my own doorstep, to help promote ideas and projects, gigs, bands etc for young people. Our project ‘The Unit’ was born out of local music promoters asking why young people dont support local gigs? and local young people moaning about the fact they dont get to go to local gigs and lots of negative articles in the one local paper.
I think Action Research is a great idea. You have to offer what people want but you also have to inspire (and yes *engage*) them to want things that they previously didn’t know existed or have no concept/experience of and it has to be grown and supported, face to face conversations have to happen and most importantly action/progress be seen to be made and you have to shout about it. Social media has been at the core of our success and growing support so far. Once my city had a reputation as a no.1 stop on the band circuit, now we have been eclipsed by nearby bigger cities.
We had similar questions on a smaller scale. What we thought might happen and what is actually happening since getting started on this journey are three very different things!
Good post Emma. I think we are certainly sometimes guilty of ‘glass half empty’ in the city, but sometimes that can be a good thing as we always want more. It seems strange to say it, but it still feels like we are currently finding our identity as a city. I can only speak for the projects I am involved with and people I speak to but it seems lots is now going on and I am sure in 12-24 months time we will be in a different (perhaps more nationally and internationally interesting) place.
I agree with what Mike says about some of the events. I am at the moment sitting back and watching developments with a number of events and projects. I know everyone seems to hate the word ‘marketing’ but it is really important to get messages out there pointing people towards interesting things. I do think that certain events are lacking imagination and are not as interesting to an outside audience as they think they are.
Places like Manchester do have really interesting things going on, and we should look to what they do in some areas, but also be mindful to be ourselves and try new things. There is no point being the second and third place to do things, in my opinion.
Thanks Lee for chiming in. I agree re the glass half empty thing, it’s boring! We do have lots going on, in fact so much that it’s hard to ‘curate’ via this website. Luckily new ventures such as http://www.independentfullstop.com/ The Juice Magazine, and more can let us know about the grass roots stuff.
My major issues are one that we both agree on: Ambition and Vision.
We don’t lack for talent, in any of the fields, digital, events management, festivals, marketing, social media, pr etc.
What we need to do is stop being so precious about our own turf, find ways of bringing people together who can create MAGIC and the kind of magic we want to shout from the roof tops.
Light Night Leeds is one of those examples, it’s got a tiny budget and a huge heart, yet there are still people I speak to who don’t know it’s happening! It’s got council support, it’s very grass roots, and involves most of the arts sector in Leeds
We should be proud and loud about it…
We should have events that enthral more than once a year, events which create velocity, make you think ‘I’ll pop into Leeds, there’s bound to be something on’
We should think about events that bring people in from the outskirts, from across the region, but events that people come to because they sound ace, not like a marketing exercise.
Every Cultural Conversation we host, we discover more talent, some people are suggesting more action! I suggest our next one looks at playfulness, animating our city, and by the end of it we have action research to realise some bold, dreaming madness! We need to get enablers and visionaries into that event. Door openers, key holders, event managers, cheerleaders etc people who can help find ways of realising something exhilarating.
This isn’t about comparing Leeds with elsewhere but doing something we all feel blessed to have been part of!
This is what comes out of my gob when Twitter is having a wibble!
There is such a lot to be said for just getting talented people in a room together. Sometimes the most planned events are the worst. I love how cultural conversations puts people in a room to talk and then things happen. There are now real tangible projects that have either been born at cultural conversations or got the encouragement / help needed to make them happen. For me it is one of the most important events to emerge in the city for ages.
I agree, there seems to be some people who are precious about their ‘turf’ and I am sure we all have a bit of that in us somewhere, but the way things happen in a big way is through collaboration and working together to create something even better (as Light Night proves)
I love all the independent stuff coming out of the city at the moment and the guys at Indie Leeds have put together something in a relatively short space of time that has huge potential and practical use.
There is some awesome talent in this city and i have spent the past 6 months trying to speak to as many of it as possible for a new project. All that it needs sometimes is for people to be connected and aware of what each other is doing and then things happen.
*blush*
I have not read all of the comments, my brain froze with all of the jargon you all speak. 😉
What I see are popular, well organised events like BettaKultcha, TestSpace and culture conversations, but the general public are never, ever, going to find out about these events because so much emphasis is put into promoting them within social media networks like Twitter.
Light Night Leeds was mentioned, it’s the talk of Twitter, but do my family and friends know about it? No. Do my friends and family know about Temple Works and 42 New Briggate? No.
There needs to be collaboration where promoting events is concerned. I have some ideas how this could be done, but it would not be successful without the business community.
Time for some action?
We had a long, long Test Space meeting on Monday involving a lot of discussion the benefits and problems of promoting our events via Twitter, Facebook, local blogs, forums etc. And were asking a lot of the same questions Darren. How do you attract new people? How do you reach a new audience? And how do you do that innovatively?
Part of the problem with Test Space events are they are low budget, so the cost of traditional marketing is something we can’t always afford. Twitter and Facebook have given us a base of people who know what we do, how we attract new people to events is a challenge. Be good to discuss this on Thursday.
Actually it’s probably wasn’t the general public knowing about the events, it was targeting a niche audience. There’s a whole other discussion about underground, niche events and how they’re promoted.
Neil, good point – you don’t want every member of the general public to know about your event, but, it’s how you bring in people who do not use social networks, but would love to attend.
A growing number of my 50-60 word event posts have received hundreds of visitors simply because people were searching for a specific event, but, I’ve gone a step further, and started to optimise pages for specific niche events, and this seems to be working.
Search ‘art events Leeds’.
Not blowing my trumpet, but, there’s using the search engines to attract people who are interested in your events is vital, along with using social networks.
Neil, I95% of the readers come from natural search results, very little traffic comes from Twitter. I use social networks for word of mouth marketing, by making locals aware of the guide and brand.
For the event I organise in London, I’ll talk to you about it in more detail on Thursday, but, it was built around a need for this type of event, and that is important if you want to make money from your events.
See you Thursday! 🙂
Sorry, that’s 95% of traffic not 195%!
Cheeky but true, all sectors do this and alienate a whole host of people along the way!
It’s a two way street, some creative/cultural events rely solely on word of mouth for want of a budget for print etc, or you could argue they are building the audience of repeat ambassadors who really love what they do. Those you have mentioned are young ventures, testing, risking, doing stuff that may seem a bit odd or different initially. Maybe in their own ways they are involved in Action, without the financial risk.
Actually I know a fair few that don’t want to consider widening the interest in their events, and wont mention them here, because that’s their bag.
Light Night is interesting because it is pretty successful by measures of people participating, with over 15,000 in one night. Yes it could engage more people, and I’m sure it gets bigger each year, despite the budget staying the same or less, and the post not being permanent.
Our next Cultural Conversation will be in January, and I’d love it if you came along, it’ll be about big ideas, play, animation of the city, daring to dream and make it happen! Believe me, we all need to be creative in making these idealistic aspirations reach our friends, neighbours and families, if it’s worth doing in the first place. It’s definitely involving talking to businesses too, they are full of people just like us!
I think Light Night sounds like a fantastic event and it is good to see so many people getting involved. I wasn’t aware of this event until this year, while writing the guide, so, there is a huge gap of people who are not finding out about these events, so, it’s how you bring all the events in to once place, with the total collaboration of local businesses, the likes of Yorkshire Post and Leeds Guide etc.
Give me a kick when you have a date for the next Cultural Conversation, because I’d love to come. The problem with me is I am juggling a few balls at the moment, until I am a multi-millionaire running My Life in Leeds 😉
As a Yorkshireman I find Mancuanians almost physically incapable of being hospitable. Especially as I poesess a penis and have a general following for Leeds United. This means I am expected to hate all Mancunains by default. But the main problem is that whilst Mancunians believe they’re the best, Lancashire itself is awash with civil conflict. Mancuanians themselves are torn apart. City hate United, United Hate City, Bury hate Bolton,Blackburn hate Preston,Liverpool hate United,Burnley hate Blackburn,Scousers hate Mancs,Mancs hate Scousers…..its all too much to take, especially on the wekend.
Manchester is also so terribly claustrophobic in terms of architecture and weather and the City Centre sprawls in a manner inconvienient to the walker.
When arriving in Manchester one also has to deal with the rose tinted glasses of a City living on its past glories. Many Mancuanians wish that it was the 80’s or early 90’s so they could be part of a euphoric wave of music and chomp on pills like Pacman.
This wobbly shimmering dream of an age gone by still floats from speakers,bars and attitudes on the Citizens of Manchester – I for one find it all rather nauseating. Its like been in a continual reptitive disco – where nostalgia prevents criticism from occuring. These sacred awesome bands haunt modern Mancunanin Muscians like them blokes from the Muppet Show.
Leeds is place of Unity, oneness, there is no one binding identity to the City, which creates an atmosphere of openess and relaxation. We take quality over quantity. We do not broadcast our greatness because it is simply inherent. It is woven subtley and humbly into the fabric of the Citizens of the City, its as if the joy of the people of the City resonates from the walls themselves.
I am happy to believe that the greatness of Leeds is woven into the fabric of the city, and we all know that Lancashire, as in many other parts of the UK, is riven with conflict (most of it football-related, and most of it not a million miles from what you might find at Leeds Utd v. Sheff Utd match). However, this description bears no resemblance to the Manchester I live and work in.
Would this be the Dave Haslam that makes a big show in his books of supporting working class culture from the streets while slamming high cultural pursuits like classical musical concerts for being the preserve of people “with all the privelege and nothing to say”? And yet this would be the same Dave Haslam who went to King Edwards School in Birmingham which is one of the highest achieving private schools in the country full of priveleged people who eveidently have quite a lot to say. Do your working class DJ mates know this is your true identity?
btw, your description of Leeds in ‘Young Hearts Run Free’ was absolutely riddled with factual inaccuracies – Manningham Lane in Leeds? West Yorkshire Playhouse in Bradford?. Also the line referring to – “Leeds: Where pissed up racists attack students in bars” isn’t really a representative snapshot of the city in the ’70s, unless you lived in downtown Seacroft. My parents moved to Leeds in the 1970s and don’t find your descriptions at all accurate. You were tapping in to an externally generated anti-Leeds mythology, rather like the mythology about the Abbafied 1970s which you set out to challenge.
I might post this again just in case you didn’t get it the 1st time.
I don’t think you need to re-post. I don’t remember “slamming” high cultural pursuits although I do think that definitions of “culture” (including those followed by the likes of the arts council) have tended to marginalise activity which don’t fit “high culture” definitions. In fact I once had a director of one of Manchester’s most established theatres tell me that the world I inhabit is “entertainment” whereas his is “art”. Personally I’m not sure I have ever made much of a distinction between “high” and “low” culture. It’s not the height of the culture but the quality, high, low or wherever. I have seen a lot of derivative, uninspiring, second-rate theatre and art over the years, and piss poor music too.
Thank you for correcting those errors for me in ‘Young Hearts Run Free’. The quote about students wasn’t dreamt up by mel it is an echo of what one of the Gang of Four said about being in Leeds at that time and being in a studenty/Anti Nazi League community that was regularly attacked in pubs.
I know that Wikipedia has information about my education in Birmingham, so it’s certainly in the public domain. I moved to Manchester and attended the University of Manchester, where I remember in the first year fluking the award of the George Gissing prize. Gissing; moved from Yorkshire to Manchester to get an education. I’m saying nowt!
Ok, I’m very sorry I was aggressive, I’m not really a nasty person and I was out of order. I actually really liked your books about the 1970s and Manchester, which were brilliantly researched and wonderfully written. Your article ’88 Barton Street’ in the London Review was also excellent. I really respect your intelligence and what you’ve achieved in your life and career, and i respect you even more after putting me in my place.
To answer 2 of your questions Emma – no, it wasn’t an accident that it all happened together; and yes it takes everyone from grass roots doers to top level councillors, and the regional tourism agencies to make it work. Also mcr has a history of catalyst moments that led it into this co-ordinated and co-operative way of working including commonwealth games and two british art shows, so its actually taken more than 10 years to get to this stage. The combination of passionate population, very strong council support and a consciousness of tourism can’t be underestimated.
oh, and top quality innovative arts programming too of course!
Interesting, yet difficult to unpick which came first in some ways. Did the top level respond to a pressure from below, or initiate? Did they seek to control or facilitate?
Passion we lack not! Nor talent, nor ideas. Tourism, interesting, yes the big flagship organisations, maybe less so the smaller, indie, and DIY. Perhaps that is a communication challenge?
What part does business play in this too? Do they get actively involved, just sponsor, or feel part of the city play?
So many questions, not expecting you to know the answers.
I’m also confident that we are making great strides here too, it certainly isn’t gloomy, in the past year there has been so much to celebrate, perhaps we are at a tipping point?
What do you see from your side of the Pennines?
I grew up in Manchester lived their for 12 years and ive spent the other 12 years in Leeds, I can safety say Manchester gets on and does things. Instead of talking/blogging/tweeting just make something and make it happen! Its like my Grandma said “I Want Doesn’t Get”
I know this is off topic but I felt compelled to write it as Light Night always seems to be used as an example of a great event that ‘isn’t publicised enough’.
In 2007, the event did not have any dedicated marketing capacity yet still managed to get an impressive number of visitors for what was then quite a small event. In 2008, the marketing objective relating to audience numbers was to increase them on the 2007 figures, and in 2008 the audience numbers were actually doubled. However, due to this, many people complained that some of the events were too full and they had to queue for ages. So in 2009 the objective was not to increase, but to maintain audience numbers, to ensure that the experience of those going was not compromised in the busy venues, and instead to focus on developing the brand in order to expand the publicity and increase awareness on a national level over the next couple of years. I think the branding was spot on last year and was ready to be developed, and the event promoted on a much bigger scale this and next year. However, this could only done with the full support of the council and it just wasn’t there.
The point is, the infrastructure and identity of the event had first to be unified and developed, before shouting about it to all and sundry and making promises it couldn’t keep. As any marketer will know, the worst thing you can do is raise expectations and then disappoint.
I want to finish again by reiterating that Light Night is an amazing event that is run on a shoestring by an extremely dedicated and tiny team of amazing people who do everything they possibly can with the small resources they have.
I hope everyone who has discussed Light Night in this and previous topics in relation to what I have said will be out in force this Friday night to support the event, and will be doing everything they can to help spread the word through whatever channel they have access to.
In relation to research into cultural audiences and segmentation, some people might find this ACE research useful: http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/about-us/research/arts-based-segmentation-research/
Also, as a point of interest to consider:
Towns and cities (specifically, their councils) are currently graded and rated on a range of national indicators (NIs). The one that relates to engagement in the arts is NI11. This is what central government (currently) uses to decide how well councils score on ‘the arts’ and ultimately affects funding decisions.
http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/research_and_statistics/6230.aspx
NI11 is a woefully inadequate indicator of true participation for so many reasons (it only takes into account adults over 16, the research methods are biased and results are confounded, the margin of error is too large to make meaningful comparisions (but still, cities are compared in league tables), the percentage of people deemed ‘engaged’ are simply those that have ‘been to’ 3 or more ‘arts’ events in a year, takes no account of quality of engagement or participation, just that they have turned up + many more). Also, bizarrely, going to the cinema is counted as one ‘engagement’ event, but a visit to a museum isn’t, as museums are accounted for in a different indicator.
However flawed an indicator, it is worth knowing about and interesting (or worrying) that this is the thing that politicians will look at when they want to know how ‘good’ a city is at getting people ‘engaged’ in ‘the arts’.