Budgets and finance are important for renewal. But don’t forget culture

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/17/manchester-cultural-revival-key-to-city-future

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There was plenty of chatter last week about the northern powerhouse and it’s great to see – with Jim O’Neill’s appointment as commercial secretary at the Treasury – that this commonsense idea is gaining some traction. We firmly believe that with it will come enormous benefits for Manchester and the whole of the north.

But in shouting loud for the need to control our own budgets for infrastructure including transport, health and social care and apprenticeships – all hugely important – let’s not lose sight either of another fundamental that doesn’t just make cities function better, but makes them indisputably better places to be. That fundamental is culture. The importance of culture and the arts to Manchester’s growing reputation cannot be overstated. Cultural regeneration is as much a part of the city’s future as the many groundbreaking developments including graphene (famously isolated by researchers Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov at Manchester University) and the like that are at the same time reshaping and advancing the city’s global standing within the knowledge and skills economy.

A walk through Manchester’s streets shows a city not just awash with evidence of the Victorian pride of our ancestors, but embracing the new, future-proofing itself. Despite a backdrop of funding pressures that means prioritisation is king in the land of less than plenty, our experience proves that the need for cities to constantly reinvent themselves has never been more important. Hence the opening last week of Home – the city’s new centre for international contemporary art, theatre and film, a £25m cultural offering that includes £19m of council cash. This reinvention – regeneration by another name – must look not just at the staples of business, economic, transport, education and community infrastructures, but also at cultural infrastructure. Ensuring a city has a “cultural offer” that makes it a place where people and businesses want to live, work and invest is not just desirable – we believe it is essential. From the 1980s and the early forays of Factory Records, bringing students and visitors to the city in their droves, to last autumn’s announcement of government’s £78m investment in The Factory Manchester – a new, large-scale arts space for the city – Manchester’s cultural regeneration has continued to gather pace. Then there was last year’s reopening of the magnificent Central Library – using the very best of the past to ensure it meets the needs of the future – while the newly expanded Whitworth Art Gallery has seen visitors queuing around the block.

We are also very proud of Manchester International festival. A festival of firsts celebrating new and original works, it has been called by the New Yorker “probably the most radical and important arts festival today”.

That the festival has been a positive driver for change in the city is indisputable. With 250,000 visitors to MIF 2013, and an estimated economic impact of £38m, the figures alone show its value to the city. While underwriting the first festival in 2007 raised eyebrows in some quarters, our belief in the benefits MIF would bring to the city – financial and otherwise – has seen our investment repaid many times over. Like the rest of Manchester’s substantial cultural provision, it draws in tourism and attracts wider inward investment by positioning the city as an international centre for culture and the arts. This clustering of cultural landmarks and events is not, of course, a coincidence. Nor is it simply a celebration of the creativity that runs through the history of the city. It’s a direct acknowledgment of the catalyst that culture can be for economic growth, as well as firing imaginations and creative skills.

The funding pot might be smaller, and the age of austerity upon us, but Manchester’s investment in and commitment to culture is not the stuff of fancy. It’s the product of hard-headed economic decisions. What’s more, when the day job is done, we get to go out…