Bonfire of the government arts funding
- Thread starter Cloo
- Start date
Yes, I read about that.
But is there already an opera venue near there? I haven't been to Manchester for years.
Opera North use the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester and the Lowry in Salford.
RD2003
Got a really fucking shitty attitude
Interesting that you should say so, as I can't think of one either, although I've been away for quite some time.
I spent the first 35 years of my life in Manchester (1963-98), in a very cheap area. Grew up in terraced housing in Miles Platting, situated, as you probably know, less than a mile from Piccadilly. I remember a very neighbourly feel in childhood, where the 'problem neighbours,' of which there were a few, including next door to us, were kept under control by a kind of street self-policing. This all began to break down when they started demolishing the old terraces and building what we called 'the new estate,' although maisonettes and tower blocks on the part of Oldham Road immediately before the city centre (or 'town' as we called it), where my grandparents and other relatives were rehoused after resisting being shipped out to far-flung places like Hattersley or Wythenshawe, preceded it by a good few years. 'The new estate' seemed great at first, as the houses had indoor bathrooms and bigger rooms etc, but coincided with a period where anybody who could save enough to get out of the inner-city did so, if only to Failsworth, Moston or Chadderton. It was the early 1970s, when the breakdown of the post-war social democratic consensus was still not really being felt. Gradually, coinciding with the break-up of that consensus, the 'new estate' became a dumping ground for transients officially regarded as a social problem. Good people who who had no choice but to remain were gradually isolated, with only a semblance of the old community spirit remaining. People did their best, but the old MP was gone forever. I have little idea what MP is like now, although it's probably been affected by the developments around the Etihad.
RD2003
Got a really fucking shitty attitude
I've never understood this thing about moving things northwards supposedly being an improvement. The social divide you see in London exists in places like Rochdale, which, like any town, has its share of wealthy suburbs, populated by people with the same sense of entitlement. They would obviously continue to dominate, and the rest would maintain their indifference.
Tinkering with relocating, without a massive nationwide political and cultural change, is useless. Salford is the same Salford despite the BBC basing itself there, for instance.
Sure but turning it into a 'fuck londoners' thing is bullshit.
Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
Edie, you sound a bit like that Paul Mason chap talking about Wigan
I do live in Leicester, in one of the down-at-heel areas that has got shitter in the 20 or so years I've lived here... but we've got a fair bit of arts and culture here: our own and visiting orchestras, visiting operas, two large theatres and several smaller theatres, rock and pop venues, a small but vibrant jazz scene, decent museums and galleries, the Leicester Comedy Festival, the annual Pride, the annual Mela, the Caribbean Carnival, a number of bustling local festivals and the biggest Diwali party outside of India. It's hardly a cultural backwater.Thing is, an opera house doesn't run on arts council funded £3 seats alone, it also needs thousands of people who're able to pay full price, every night. London and the surrounding counties are full of rich people and tourists who make up the bulk of attendees. Rochdale... isn't.
Culture as a driver of regeneration is all well and good, but it's not as simple as plonking an opera house in the middle of a deprived area and expecting it to work - there's a whole ecosystem surrounding these things that - if it isn't there - somehow needs to be built. Is it possible to build that in Rochdale? Perhaps with - much more significant - investment over many years. The kind of money we're talking to play to half empty houses for years on end would probably be better spent elsewhere though tbh.
Some full on Tory divide and rule going on here
I'm sure there are some cheaper neighbourly areas in Manchester given how big it is, I don't know it very well, but the city was getting expensive when I lived there 20 years ago, Hume was being gentrified etc. and I can't see anywhere cheap where you'd build a cultural centre, nobody would travel out of the city to poorer suburbs.
I hadn't understood the comment about cheap and neighbourly as referring to East London and the Olympics until a later post where that was spelled out. That kind of development makes sense in the context of London with its expansion of wealth creation into all areas, but not elsewhere because there are limits on that, there just isn't that much money.
Shouldn't that be mothballed and everything in it divided up and moved to Carlisle and Skegness and a selection of villages? Just going by what people have said here.
Are you sure you don't want the House of Commons thrown in too? You can fight it out with Huddersfield and a handful of other places. It might make a handsome reality show if nothing else.Edie, you sound a bit like that Paul Mason chap talking about Wigan
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Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
That we could do well without. I don't want to see the HoC thrown in, I want it thrown out.
Bloody liberals.
I don't think 'people' have argued for anything very consistently, not even that ENO should move from London.
Oh well, just a thought. I suppose Leicester will have to make do with the Natural History Museum, Selfridges, and Heathrow Airport.
Once the rest of London has been dished out, and industries and expertise and centres* of excellence have been destroyed, everyone will realise too late that they may have their own crumb but nobody has a full slice, let alone an actual cake - and never will. All countries dislike their capital and/or primate city. Historically, culturally, it's a constant.
I thought levelling up meant (apart from bullshit Tory election sloganeering) building up areas that were currently lacking, not tearing down and moving out. Nobody suggests Broadway be broken up and moved to Ohio. France wouldn't dream of using Paris as a shopping catalogue for the rest of the country to pick what it wanted from.
Is there some threshold at which a future place will be judged to have too much and levelling up round two will have to begin? Perhaps Manchester or Edinburgh or Birmingham or Cardiff are next to be told that what's there is moving on out because there's an election to be won, or there are smug seeming local liberals to be annoyed for the fun of it.
As someone already said, Manchester already has an established company of this type, of international renown, as well as a multiplicity of venues of its own, old and new. Someone in Leicester proudly listed a few of what they've got in the face of being cast as some tumbleweed strewn hellhole where grey people only struggle through life if they have to.
This is a really depressing conversation. People suggesting things they'd never dream of going to anyway should be moved to every vaguely deprived place they've vaguely heard of, or even to already thriving cultural hubs that they aren't aware of, for some vague notion that it would improve Britain if people had to go to Rochdale to see the ballet.
*Edited late due to 'centres of excellence' being autocorrected to 'dentures of excellence'. Just as important for the dentally unfortunate, but not what I meant.
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Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Where are these dentures of excellence atm?
lazythursday
Well-Known Member
The ENO thing is a bit of a red herring in this though isn't it? Moving it to Manchester may well be a stupid idea. But the bulk of this decision hasn't been about moving venues or organisations, it's just been about reallocating money - giving a bit more of it to existing arts organisations outside London. Which is just the fair thing to do within the current budget limits.
Keep the EMO in London by all means, but that should mean some alternative London based arts organisations losing funding instead.
Keep the EMO in London by all means, but that should mean some alternative London based arts organisations losing funding instead.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Alternative arts organisations always lose out
No, it's not clear.
All I see is roughly four groups of people, as follows...
1) Those saying 'of course we are in favour of other places having more things - perhaps in many cases that's simply even just great things they've already got getting more attention, expertise, better networking or integration, or whatever they need and might like'.
2) Those saying 'of course, that's reasonable, yes there must be exciting ways to do this without destruction of existing facilities and networks'.
3) Those saying 'the streets of London are paved with gold and everyone there dances along them, while I have to skid through human shit on my way to the night shift in hell'.
3) Those saying 'I don't care about any of this because it's all just London elitism and metropolitan snobbery and I wouldn't even want to see it for free anyway, but I strongly feel it should definitely all be moved to Rochdale and whatever other random names are drawn out of the lucky dip'.
That was a beautiful, if bittersweet, insight into an area that obviously means a lot to you. Rich with character and characters.
It's said (who said that?) that you can never go home again, and that's true. Even if it all looks the same, the people who made it what it was to you aren't there anymore. Maybe one or two old dears still kicking about if you're lucky, but it's not home and you're the stranger who's just visiting, looking in from the outside, thinking of a younger you that no longer exists, and all the lives no longer being lived there alongside you. Sad stuff.
Raheem
Well-Known Member
Yes, there must be. It's not about money. It's about exciting ways. So let's keep the money down in London.
AnnO'Neemus
Is so vanilla
Arts Council England funds music, including popular music as well as other kinds of music, (film is the remit of BFI funding), creative writing and other forms of literature and poetry, (but not non-fiction, iirc), (TV doesn't fall under their remit, arguably a lot is state-funded via BBC and C4), large areas of visual arts, photography, (fashion's probably the remit of the British Fashion Council or whatever it's called), wide-ranging dance forms, video games might come under video arts depending on the project, some artists do work in video and get funding for their projects, musicals would come under theatre.
Pretty much all of those art forms, with the exceptions I highlighted, get funded through eg small or large grant project funding programmes.
- Ex-Arts Council England employee
friendofdorothy
Solidarity against neoliberalism!
I love the ENO. Never saw anything like that till I was in my 30s. I knew a whole lot of designers who convinced me I would enjoy it. So I went to a production of Handel's Ariodante and it was moving, fascinating, entertaining - gobsmackingly breathtaking. Not just the music and the singing - no I couldn't understand most of the words even though it was English, but it didn't matter, it sounded gorgeous. The lighting, the costumes, the soprano in armour(yes!) the inventive scenery, and special effects it was all beautiful. Saw lots after that, it was a lot cheaper than going to west end musicals (which I don't really like)
Got to remember that somewhere like the ENO relies on the work of hundreds of people, and not just the dozens of performers on the stage and those playing the music, there's the designers, wig makers, costume makers, shoemakers, choreographers, prop designers and scenery painters etc etc etc. Many of those creative workers are freelance and can only make a living by working for lots of theatres, tv companies and cinema productions. Any new location will need have a pool of talented people to draw on to create these lavish productions. Could a relocation up north take all those people there too and sustain a living for them?
There has to be a big enough an audience to watch them too. I imagine a huge chunk of all the capitals theatres audiences are tourists.
Opera North doesn't even have a permanent home (well it never use to, not sure about now) Could it attract enough of an audience in just one location?
Got to remember that somewhere like the ENO relies on the work of hundreds of people, and not just the dozens of performers on the stage and those playing the music, there's the designers, wig makers, costume makers, shoemakers, choreographers, prop designers and scenery painters etc etc etc. Many of those creative workers are freelance and can only make a living by working for lots of theatres, tv companies and cinema productions. Any new location will need have a pool of talented people to draw on to create these lavish productions. Could a relocation up north take all those people there too and sustain a living for them?
There has to be a big enough an audience to watch them too. I imagine a huge chunk of all the capitals theatres audiences are tourists.
Opera North doesn't even have a permanent home (well it never use to, not sure about now) Could it attract enough of an audience in just one location?
friendofdorothy
Solidarity against neoliberalism!
There has long been a discussion about "the arts" as if it's just froth and nonsense. It's not just about opera and ballet. It it music, painting, writing, TV, poetry, craft, graphics, theatre, cinema, computer games, architecture, fashion etc etc. It is the very stuff of life, the stuff that makes life worth living for most of us.
And the industries that are built on those things and depend on all those arty people are worth billions, and are vital to the British economy.
And the industries that are built on those things and depend on all those arty people are worth billions, and are vital to the British economy.
AnnO'Neemus
Is so vanilla
Shit acoustics. Supposedly been addressed. But whether it's been properly fixed or just bodged and made slightly less shit, who knows? Whether they can have redesigned/re-engineered the acoustics as if they had been designed and installed well in the first place, who knows?
"Manchester's new flagship arts centre was designed with poor acoustics and an orchestra pit that was too small - and it'll cost us £1.6m to fix it
Designers have gone back to the drawing board after spotting a number of major flaws with the building"
Plans for £110m arts centre flawed - and it'll cost £1.6m to fix
Designers have gone back to the drawing board after spotting a number of major flaws with the building
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AnnO'Neemus
Is so vanilla
Opera North is based in Leeds but does tour the region and eg brings its productions to eg The Lowry in Salford (which often gets referred to as being in Manchester).From the government that brought you 'Wokeness is a threat to Are Kultcha', massive defuding of theatres, performing arts etc, including orchestras, Donmar Warehouse theatre and English National Opera. Under the guise of 'Oooh it's levelling up', which would be fine if it were sincere, but it's mostly sounding like an empty excuse not to fund the arts.
I know many of you will not be getting out your little violins (no pun intended) but groups like ENO really were doing a lot to widen access and there is a current option on the table to move to Manchester, but that does already have Opera North, a top-class national institution in itself there.
English National Opera to leave London as arts funding gets levelled up
The Arts Council England financial announcement is the biggest shake-up of culture funding in years.www.bbc.co.uk
Btw, the Manchester Mill, local independent media has been reporting on this story, ie relocation of ENO, possible relocation to Manchester.
AnnO'Neemus
Is so vanilla
Actually, Arts Council England, local authorities, etc, have been funding these kinds of things through 'place-making' strategies, eg Margate, Blackpool, etc, trying to rejuvenate coastal towns/cities.
Also the European cities of culture bids, etc, pre-Brexit, so Hull, Derry/Londonderry, etc.
AnnO'Neemus
Is so vanilla
They should arguably get professional bid-writers on the job.
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