Case for Culture: North East England

Why Bother?

• ANEC: A Culture Partnership• ‘the importance of… a varied cultural offering. (Oecd) studies

have shown that innovators and entrepreneurs are attracted to work in creative and cultural areas, which offer a high quality of life’. Para 1.187, Autumn Statement, HMT, December 2014

• North East England is renown for sense of identity and ability to work together

Concise History of Arts and Heritage in North East England

• Northern Arts Association formed in 1960’s to subscribe to Northern Sinfonia, critical local authority support, until 2003, merger with Arts Council

• Case for Capital produced in 1995, a blueprint for £170m capital arts infrastructure investment; 1996 - Year of Visual Arts; Culture 10 programme – a positive outcome after missing out on European Capital of Culture 2008

• Heritage - centuries not decades. Communities, individuals and businesses valuing specific places – transforming and reinventing – e.g. Clayton saving Hadrian’s Wall (1800s); Grainger Town regeneration (1990s); community-driven acquisition of Seaton Delaval Hall (2000s)

• Sometimes triggered by loss – 1970s onwards communities after disappearance of the coal and shipbuilding industries

Where Are We Today?

• Admired across Europe and further afield for our cultural infrastructure• BBC regard Sage Gateshead as Northern hub for music and ‘free-thinking’• Our distinctiveness is critical strength, potential for growth in creative

industries-centres in Middlesbrough, Sunderland, Gateshead and Newcastle• Durham and Northumberland are world centres of Christian heritage• Collaboration can be our strength, British Library recently agreed to lend

Lindisfarne Gospels back on strength of regional offer, Festival of North East• But, patchy engagement, reliance on (declining) public expenditure, difficult

to replace with business support

What Next?

• North East Culture Partnership would like to prepare a manifesto for culture to 2030, to be presented to the new Government in June 2015• Create a positive and constructive vision for arts and heritage that

everyone can get behind• Not about culture for culture’s sake, what can culture contribute to

the economy, health and well being, and sense of place and community?• What do you think culture can offer the North East over the next

fifteen years?

Conclusions