Cultural Quarters: Principles and Practice

 The much-praised Cultural Quarters returns in a revised edition, offering new case studies and new chapters on the economics of cultural quarters and the importance of historical buildings. This definitive text provides a conceptual context for cultural quarters through a detailed discussion of urban design and planning. Drawing on several case studies (from Bolton, Birmingham, Ireland and Vienna), Cultural Quarters positions the emergence of specific cultural areas within a historical and social context and explores the economics of maintaining the respective districts. The book offers a concise illustration of how cultural practice is maintained and expanded within an urban environment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Release date: Sep 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781841504384

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

This book is intended to provide for the first time in a single volume a practical explanation of the principles and practice employed in considering, developing and establishing Cultural Quarters, using urban examples largely drawn from the north of England, north and southern Ireland and Austria, and focusing on a specific case of a proposed Cultural Quarter in a northern English town. The emphasis on case studies from the north of England is due to the need to regenerate the old industrial revolution primary manufacturing towns to avert decline and continuing unemployment. It is structured to assist local authority planners and economic development staff in the United Kingdom and internationally as well as public agencies responsible for supporting and developing the cultural and creative industries. In addition, academic staff will find this book useful in supporting undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in architecture, urban development, or cultural administration and management, particularly the case studies and the detailed first-hand description of how a northern England local authority is approaching the establishment of a cultural quarter. It provides a useful factual reference guide for those considering establishing a quarter or studying the subject.

Cultural Quarters have become a fashionable concept in the UK, particularly with local authorities, as an increasingly preferred solution to urban regeneration. Many of the concepts and arguments involved have been critically analyzed over the last fifteen years or so and are usefully summarised in the ‘City of Quarters, Urban Villages in the Contemporary City’ (Bell and Jayne 2004). In addition, there has been considerable interest in the creative cities concept, which has been thoroughly examined by Charles Landry Creative Cities, and Justin O’Connor the Creative City. Consequently there is no attempt here to analyze previous papers and publications on the subject but rather to focus on the how and what of Cultural Quarters, largely drawn from a cultural perspective.

A major concern in public sector cultural policy is how cultural practice is maintained and expanded without substantially increasing the public financial contribution. This has led to a deepening engagement with cultural economy arguments by governments, cultural agencies and local authorities rather than the more traditional arts for art’s sake approach, which inevitably gives rise to the question of sustainability (Roodhouse 2003). Are there ways of sustaining cultures which rely less on State intervention, and do Cultural Quarters have a role to play?

Apart from this, there continues to be a lack of clarity and some general confusion between creative quarters and Cultural Quarters. This is addressed and illustrated in the case studies; however, it should be noted this book focuses on Cultural Quarters.

Because the cultural quarter concept is directly associated with the built environment, it is inevitable that consideration is given to the purpose and principles applied to the spatial and physical design, which also shapes the characteristics of Cultural Quarters.

Examples from Sheffield, Wolverhampton, Newcastle and Bolton are employed as case studies to provide a detailed explanation of what quarters are, how they are structured, the chosen vehicle for development, and the outputs generated as a result of adopting such an approach. This is contrasted with three international examples: Dublin, Belfast and Vienna where distinct approaches are adopted, underlining the progressive internationalization of the cultural quarter concept.

The later part of this work consists of a detailed analysis of a proposal for a cultural quarter in Bolton. A Lancashire industrial revolution town in the Greater Manchester conurbation, Bolton (and the Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council) is committed to transforming itself economically and socially. The issues surrounding the Bolton cultural quarter proposal provide a practical, useful and detailed insight for those wishing to study, develop and establish such concepts.

1

THE CULTURAL QUARTER DEFINITIONAL LANDSCAPE

This chapter sets out to explore the economic and cultural arguments for Cultural Quarters and the consequent definitional and policy contortions that have influenced the development of these projects. In addition the principles, criteria for success and characteristics of Cultural Quarters are discussed from an urban planning perspective. As a result it provides a useful context for consideration of the case studies in the following chapters.

1.1 Creating Sustainable Cultures: Do We Need Them?

Creating sustainable cultures seems on the face of it to be a public-sector debate around supporting a particular cultural establishment, and how best to justify the funding required to maintain the status quo. However, it is important to start from a position that individual people create and sustain cultures, not the bureaucratic infrastructures that are busily manufactured for the purposes of supporting an established cultural heritage.

Much of this debate can be symbolised in the conception, construction and execution of the Millennium Dome in London, which is a project without roots or individuality, dominated by committees and a project-management view of the world. There was a lack of engagement with creative individuality and risk, which was symbolised by the appointment and then rapid departure of a Creative Director who was not replaced. It is then necessary if sustainability is a desirable goal, that there is a serious readjustment of the way we perceive and support cultural activity by focusing on individual creativity. If not there is a danger of continuing with what we have always done, an exclusion of critical analysis or reflection and ignoring the basis of culture: that is people, risk, change and creativity.

1.2 Conceptual Confusion: Arts Industry, Heritage Industry, Creative Industries or Cultural Industries?

Successive United Kingdom (UK) national governments and their agencies have defined and redrawn boundaries, resulting in continuous public cultural policy and practice turbulence since 1945, commencing with the establishment of the Arts Council of Great Britain (Pick, J., & Anderton, M., 1999). The pragmatic determination of these boundaries which are definitions with no obvious rationale for inclusion or exclusion lends itself to an interpretation of a public sector domain engaged in restrictive practice. This ensures the boundaries are constrained enough to match the level of available resources at any given time.

It is, perhaps, more to do with the government administrative machinery responding to national policy by providing a manageable and controllable framework for the allocation of public funds rather than a rational empirically informed inclusive system, hence measurable, thus conforming to the requirements of evidence-based policy (Solesbury,W., 2001). Urban regeneration (Roodhouse, S., and Roodhouse, M., 1997) and the introduction of creative industries (Roodhouse, S., 2003) by the New Labour administration are examples of this practice.

This intrinsic public structural framework works against interaction and connectivity. It encourages isolationism between national, regional and local government and agencies by relying on departmentalisation and compartmentalisation as the organisational means of delivery.

As an illustration, culture resides within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and is also found in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who fund the British Council (British Council, 1998, 2004); the Ministry of Defence which resources a substantial number of museums, galleries and musical bands the Department of Trade and Industry which supports creative industries through the Small Business Service including the export effort of these businesses; the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (Allen, K., Shaw, P., 2001); and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) which provides entry to work and workforce development in the cultural field (North West Universities Association, 2004). This excludes the devolved arrangements for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

This complexity and fractured nature of cultural practice combined with definitional fluidity, found at national level, is a major contributor to the lack of policy cohesion in the field.

It is equally confusing, at regional level, with DCMS sponsored Cultural Consortia, the Arts Council, the Museum, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), the Sports Council, the Tourist Boards, Sector Skills Councils (SSCs), and local authorities along with the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs), Small Business Service, including Business Link, not to mention the plethora of sub-regional intermediaries funded from the public purse, all pursuing differing cultural agendas (Hamilton, C., Scullion, A., 2002).

In practice, there is little cohesion between these organisations or initiatives such as cultural and museum hubs with the development of Cultural Quarters, sometimes resulting in duplicated effort, which leads to additional public resource allocated to coordination. This may be more effectively utilized in direct intervention to assist the growth of cultural businesses by establishing Cultural Quarters (Roodhouse, S., 2004).

Although attempts are made at overarching regional strategies, there is not as yet a shared understanding of and agreement to a definitional framework to operate and evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies.

A useful point of departure is the conventional view of culture succinctly encapsulated in the Raymond Williams definition (Williams R., 1981):

a description of a particular way of life which expresses certain meanings and values not only in art and learning, but also in institutions and ordinary behaviour.

He interprets culture in the widest definitional sense; an inclusive attitude consisting of structured and patterned ways of learning, and explains the artistic component of culture as:

Individuals in groups – characteristically respond to and make meaningful the circumstances in which they are placed by virtue of their positions in society and in history.

This definitional framework leads us into a wider understanding of our society, so for example Williams would recognise Britain’s most popular tourist attraction, Blackpool Pleasure Beach, visited by over 7 million people in 1998, and with more hotel beds than in all of Greece and its islands combined, as a cultural centre (North West Development Agency Tourism Strategy 2003). However this cultural centre would not be welcomed into the approved cultural family of the Arts Council of England, or Re:source (now the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council), although it would be seen as a significant component of the tourism industry.

Similarly, popular programmes on television such as EastEnders and Coronation Street are instantly recognised by social scientists, media academics and others as a significant component of the cultural life of the United Kingdom. Notably the Arts Council and the Film Council do not fund these activities or formally recognise them as a cultural component of equal status to the Royal Opera, not least because they are largely private sector activities and inartistic.

Manchester United Football Club with its fan culture is a United Kingdom and international cultural phenomenon which comfortably falls within the Williams definition. Manchester United is also a business quoted on the stock exchange which does not receive public subsidy, and is able to attract capacity audiences – a successful private sector cultural organisation.

In addition, Williams refers to values as an integral component of culture, and in this particular case he is referring to the values of society such as equality, individuality and religious freedom. However, little is said, for example, about the role of religion in cultural life, except when policy makers and administrators give consideration to equal opportunities and ethnicity.The arts, religion, and culture have been inextricably linked over centuries, with the Renaissance being an obvious example, and similarly Muslim art and design traditions. The arts and heritage form an important component of this cultural definition.

However it seems that debates over the last decade regarding expenditure of public funds in support of cultural activity and development have lacked coherence and ignored convergence, preferring departmentalisation, with each discipline fighting for its particular corner, often based on a self-defining view of the cultural world. For example the Museums Association in the UK (Museums Association, Bulletin, 1996) has defined a museum as:

An institution that collects, documents, preserves exhibits and interprets material evidence and associated information for the public benefit.

This definition includes galleries; however it excludes environmental heritage activity, botanical gardens and aquaria.

What is interesting about these debates is the focused attention on particular arts and heritage constituencies at the expense of others, with little demonstrable interest in responding to, and encouraging emerging and different traditions. Furthermore, increasingly over this period these arguments have not been concerned with the intrinsic nature of the arts and whom they benefit, so much as how they relate to the contemporary government policy of the time. So we find for example that in the UK during the 1940s and 1950s arts development (Roodhouse, S., and Roodhouse, M., 1997) was entirely devoted to the creation of arts centres in new towns, with the assumption that every town should have one. It was also associated with the representation of Britain after the war and a celebration of the future.

Since the 1970s there has been little or no debate by administrators and policy makers about the purpose, value and nature of the arts, but rather a focus of attention on how the arts and heritage can meet national and local government policy in the areas of the economy, urban regeneration, regionalism, social cohesion, and community development, to name a few.

Whilst this is laudable, we should be considering the importance of culture as a defining mechanism for communities such as Wolverhampton, Sheffield, and Bolton. In other words, arguing for coherence and convergence; the arts and heritage in culture; and culture as a manifestation of society: the richness in diversity concept. By taking this stance it is possible to incorporate the wider issues that concern society, such as the environment, employment, urban regeneration, social cohesion, safety, and community development, all of which directly influence a Cultural Quarter concept.

The other issue that complicates these debates, and again is rarely discussed in public, is how society decides what art is, including a shared view of aesthetics. In other words many of the public agencies such as the Arts Councils are charged with promoting the arts as excellence, making excellent art accessible and educating society in the excellence of the arts. While this may be admirable it poses problems such as what is excellence in the arts and heritage fields, determined by whom and using whose criteria? In other words we have established a number of national and regional agencies that have implicitly been given by their remit the task of determining our corporate sense of aesthetic.

It is within this context that the questions of sustainability, the environment, and finance should be investigated; however, we need to commence by being clear what it is we are sustaining and why.

The approach adopted here is to focus on the concept of the inherent creativity of the individual and cultural activity as business, leaving the determination of any corporate aesthetic to market interactions, and public cultural agencies.

This leads us to consider the emerging global interest in the creative and cultural industries as a particularly significant economic development phenomenon. It enables us not only to recognise the creative individual but also to view cultural activity without the constraints of traditional frameworks, notions of excellence, and long-standing, largely Victorian ideas of aesthetics (Florida, 2002). The concept was derived from an interest in the knowledge economy, and the definition employed largely pragmatic:

Those activities which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent, and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property.

(Creative Industries Task Force 1998)

The sectors, which have been identified within this definitional framework, are:

advertising, architecture, the art and antiques market, crafts, design, designer fashion, film, interactive leisure software, music, the performing arts, publishing, software, television and radio.

(Creative Industries Task Force 1998)

It was the Labour controlled Greater London Council (GLC) who instigated a significant challenge to the definitional status quo in the early 1980s at a time of high unemployment, significant industrial decline, and diminishing public funds for the arts. These circumstances gave rise to a re-appraisal of the role and function of the ‘traditional’ arts, in economic terms, and in relation to the introduction of new technologies such as instant printing, cassette recording and video making (O’Connor, J., 1999).

For the first time, the concept of culture as an industry in a public policy context was introduced. The arts, described by the GLC as the ‘traditional arts’, were subsumed into a broader definitional framework which included ‘the electronic forms of cultural production and distribution – radio, television, records and video – and the diverse range of popular cultures which exist in London’ (London Industrial Strategy 1985). The eventual successor body, the London Assembly, and the executive Mayor of London have picked up the theme again (London Development Agency, 2003) with a focus on intervention in the creative industries networks and linkages.

If consideration is then given to activities including the arts and heritage as businesses, (the cultural industries) with products, services and markets, then, for example access questions are immediately answered. The judgment of excellence is simple (fitness for purpose), and funding becomes conventionally based on business planning models. So the issue for public sector policy and funding agencies responsible for implementation is more to do with how to support the establishment and growth of cultural businesses as opposed to making aesthetic peer