Popular culture and urban regeneration

Popular culture and urban
regeneration: Manchester’s
Northern Quarter
Dr Katie Milestone, Department of
Sociology, Manchester Metropolitan
University,
UK
The Northern Quarter
• ‘Creative’ district in
central Manchester, UK
• Bohemian, quirky, noncorporate, hip (?)
• Hub for fledgling
creative industries and
pop culture
Location
Manchester, UK
500,000 (2.5 million)
Cottonopolis, Shock city,
History
• 19th and 20th C (up to 1960s) thriving commercial and retail
area
• Close to (slum) accommodation –
Ancoats
• Animated 24 hours due to market
Ancoats
Decline
Rebirth
Post-war Britain and the rise of the
working class
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Explosion of popular culture
Rise of consumer society
Dynamic new forms of cultural
production
Established cultural hierarchies
dismantled
Rise of working class access to Higher
Education = w/c involved in cultural
production
Cultural producers (writers, film
makers, musicians and artists) from
working class backgrounds
Changing demographic of cultural
producers
Increased representation of working
class culture – especially of the north
Late 1970s - 1980s
 The 1980s saw the success of
Manchester music impact on
the physical and symbolic
transformation of the city…
 Punk had shown the
possibilities for independent
action in the provinces…
 In 1982, the Hacienda marks a
transition from the old city to
the new city – the city of
industrial production to the
city of the consumption of the
industrial.
“From 1976 onwards alternative
or resistant spaces emerged in
which punk and post punk
were to play a crucial role.
The habitus of pop bohemians
became imposed on spaces of
the city centre and abandoned
sites became captured and
reinterpreted. The pop scene
had a physical and symbolic
impact on the environment
yet, at the same time, it was
inspired and impressed upon
by the landscape, architecture
and mood of the city” Milestone,K
1996: 104 in Wynne and O’Connor (eds) From
the Margins to the Centre:Production and
Consumption in the PostIndustrial City, Ashgate
Late 1980s success…
• ‘Madchester’
The ‘Madchester’ scene
..and the base for UK acid house
Northern Quarter becomes a hub for
pop cultural entrepreneurialism
abundance of cheap, central city centre space
available for new uses.
Enterprise Allowance Scheme in 1983
• bottom up
• Local government –
delayed reaction
• industrial heritage valued and reused
• Networking, working,
living and leisure spaces
• Business and
technology support for
creative businesses
Manchester: context
• De-industrial –search for new employment
possibilities
• ‘Northern’, working class city
• Importance of post-punk music in re-imaging
Manchester (Madchester)
• Music culture/Enterprise Allowance
new
micro businesses and SMEs
• Ex industrial spaces – cheap rents
• Clustering of creative businesses
UK Cultural Policy 1990s
• Away from state subsidized
provision of ‘the high arts’…
• to a focus on enterprise and
economic value of the
culture….
• Led by the DCMS –
(Department of Culture, Media
and Sport)
• importance of ‘culture, media and sport to
Manchester’s economy ; these occupations are
the fastest growing in Manchester and
increased from 3,300 to 7,000 between 2009
and 2010.’ (Source: Manchester economic
factsheet, February 2012).
Evaluation : factors of successes
2011 The Northern
Quarter is named
‘Britain’s best
neighbourhood’ by
the Academy of
Urbanism
http://www.academyofurbanism.org
.uk/northern-quarter/
Evaluation : lessons-learnt