Two Cultures, One City

When we talk about culture we generally mean one of two things. Mostly we are talking about stuff that goes on in theatres and galleries and museums. If we’re radical and progressive we might go so far as to include social clubs and fields and even car parks (Ghost Peloton, anyone? … though that’s happening in Carlsberg’s cultural carpark outside The Tetley, so strictly speaking not your average stretch of NCP crumbling tarmac.) Some of this is funded, much of it is done for the sheer joy of doing. Either way this sort of culture is something that’s done to us and for us.

The other version of culture is how we live the rest of the time. When we aren’t in theatres and galleries and museums. When we are just waiting for a bus or watching the world go by from a Wetherspoon’s window (independent boozers are obviously plentiful in Leeds too.) The “culture” in Culture Vultures is as much about that sort of thing as it is the more Arts Council stuff, which is why we have contributions about pavements and car parking alongside reviews of plays and performance events.

I’ve been thinking about both meanings all week after going to the Cultural Network event at the West Yorkshire Playhouse – a major cultural institution – last Monday. This event was set up to talk about what next after the really successful meeting in January in the Town Hall about the potential for Leeds to bid for European Capital of Culture in 2023. It seemed to attract mainly people who provide the stuff that goes on in theatres and galleries and museums.

The meeting revolved around two questions; did we need a new network in Leeds to bring all the cultural providers together to support the Leeds bid? and if so what would it look like? There was a lively discussion about who the “we” included – with an impassioned contribution from Trent Rampage who wanted to know who wasn’t in the room, why was so much Leeds less official culture not represented, ending with a rousing plea that the network should “mix shit up”. And there was an interesting debate about how the members of a network of cultural doers and makers should relate to each other when they weren’t busy doing all their making stuff for theatres, galleries and museums. They should all “collaborate”, obviously – but how, and on what, and what for exactly? How do we even know what other cultural workers are producing? We are generally only aware of what people are up to once the work has been done, and it’s hard to collaborate after the fact.

The meeting didn’t resolve any of the questions it posed. Which was fine, it’s an ongoing conversation. But it made me think, and I left the Playhouse feeling cheerful and happy that there were so many good people doing some seriously good cultural stuff in Leeds. Why the hell wouldn’t we have a chance of winning the 2023 European Capital of Culture!

I had to go back to the Playhouse the following morning (I lost my office keys somewhere between Munro House and the theatre and was retracing my steps) and had an odd encounter in the bar. I used to run mental health services and worked a lot with people who had quite chaotic lives, and sometimes were on the street. I still bump into ex-clients, in the market, in certain pubs, and regularly in the Pound Shops. I never thought I’d come across anyone from my previous life at a cultural venue. She wasn’t that surprised to see me though. And at that precise moment she seemed a heck of a lot more at home and comfortable than I was. We shared a couple of passing pleasantries and then she disappeared away to whatever it was she was doing there – I never did find out. But it got me wondering about my own preconceptions of cultural institutions, who they were for and how they engaged with the rest of the city.

The morning after, still having no office keys, I decided to spend the day visiting my mum before attending an exhibition opening early that evening. Mum lives in supported housing on a council estate on the edge of Leeds and the closest she gets to culture is bingo and the occasional bottle of Baileys (that George Osborne sure knows what the masses want!) as she watches her favourite Canadian cop show. The TV programme is called “Murdoch” and it’s really rather fabulous, with strong characters, cracking dialogue and a very witty narrative, so I happily sit with her through several episodes, occasionally interrupted by the odd neighbour (she has some very odd neighbours) with offers of random baked goods and builders tea. There’s a food bank not far away.

The exhibition in the evening was at the Henry Moore Institute. And it couldn’t have been more of a contrast to how I spent the morning. The hospitality is always extraordinary at a HMI opening and they are always brilliant, well attended events. But this is “culture” in the strictest sense – it revels in it’s exclusivity. The work is inaccessible to all but a knowing few who are in on the conversation. You have to work to make any sense of it, and without help from the exhibition brochure you wouldn’t really know what you were looking at … and even then, the exhibition brochure is couched in a code that few can decypher. It says the artist “repurposes debris to create props and proposals for perceiving objects in space, asking questions of value and form.” This sentence loses me after “repurposes debris”, which I suspect means “makes things out of rubbish”, but that’s far too blunt. The rest of the blurb is “repurposed” prose, with writing as flat and featureless as the black plastic sheet hanging on the wall. “Each project is a tentative procedure, executed through a series of connections and encounters”; words like this are emptied of reference, the language doesn’t convey any specific conceptual content. The alien dialect is just a token that this is an invite to a very exclusive club.

There’s nothing especially wrong with this – it’s all part of the make-believe of culture, just as there’s nothing guaranteed right about the Playhouse’s embracing of a more inclusive audience – culture doesn’t always have to be on the side of the socially-minded angels.

If Leeds bids to be European Capital of Culture 2023 then we have to do it as a city. A city of culture, not just a city with a cultural sector jammed in a cultural quarter where all the cultural investment is focused and all the cultural events are quarantined. And we shouldn’t pretend that the culture in the centre of the city always has much interest or meaning to the people on the edges – if I took my mum to the latest Henry Moore exhibition she’d probably start tidying it up. That’s not an insult to the HMI (or my mum!) just a recognition that when we talk about culture it’s not the same for all of us. And doesn’t need to be.

So yes, let’s go for European Capital of Culture as a city, a city where we are proud of our incomprehensibly exclusive but brilliant exhibitions, our amazingly inclusive theatres, our fantastic independent festivals (such as NoGloss – you owe me a T-shirt Mr Rampage!) and even our bingo in a Belle Isle Community centre. It’s all culture, and it’s how we do it as a city that counts.

Only one thing. Let’s get rid of the need for food banks. Any city that has a food bank, let alone one with a sign so heart-breakingly artlessly piteous, really should be looking at that first, and not at entering a competition to be a capital of anything.

Come on now, we are Leeds.