Northern Powerhouse & Cultural Policy

Dr Ben WalmsleySchool of Performance and Cultural

Industries (University of Leeds)

Edge Hill University, 11th November 2015

The Northern Powerhouse cut

Dr Ben WalmsleySchool of Performance and Cultural Industries

What is the “Northern Powerhouse”?

The Northern Powerhouse was first introduced in June 2014 by George Osborne, in a speech in Manchester, where he argued that the lack of economic and physical connections between the cities/city regions of the North of England was holding back their growth:

“the whole is less than the sum of its parts…so the powerhouse of London dominates more and more.”

Osborne describes the Northern Powerhouse as “not one city, but a collection of northern cities – sufficiently close to each other that combined they can take on the world.” (Centre for Cities,

2014)

It’s Manchester, stupid!

Osborne’s pet plan is designed to support a call from five core northern cities (Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Sheffield & Liverpool) for a £15bn investment over five years in science, transport and infrastructure. Hull came late to the party.

Osborne recently pledged £78M for The Factory, a brand new cultural centre on the old Granada Studios site that will provide a permanent home for the biannual Manchester International Festival. The budget for the 2,200-seater theatre has now ballooned to £110M

ACE Executive Director of Arts & CultureSimon Mellor is project director …

And now Liverpool wants in on the act!

Devo Manc

Building the creative Northern Powerhouse

Written by Dr Abigail Gilmore, Senior Lecturer in Arts Management and Cultural

Policy, Institute for Cultural Practices, University of Manchester.

(cities@manchester, 2015)

Cultural bullshit

Maria Balshaw’s 10 mins. with George

Nisbett & Walmsley (forthcoming): – “What shall we do for Neil?”

The Northern Powerhouse is a good example of what Belfiore (2009, p.343) refers to as “the prevalence of bullshitting in the contemporary public sphere”.

Belfiore goes on to argue that many of the key actors in the cultural policy debate are “indifferent to how things really are” and cultivate vested interests.

The national funding picture

Regional funding

The facts and figures:

In 2012/13 taxpayers and Lottery players provided a benefit of £86.41 php in London, compared to £8.48 php in the rest of England – under 10% of London levels (Stark et al., 2013).

The controversy surrounding historical imbalances in regional arts funding in England recently led to a parliamentary inquiry, which determined that:

London receives a share of arts funding which is “out of all proportion to its population” and this “clear funding imbalance […] must be urgently rectified”.

Local governments

ACE reports that in 2009/10, local authorities invested £102m in their regularly funded arts organisations.

Central government funding to local authorities was cut by 28% between 2011-15. In the past few years, some councils have imposed 100% cuts on their arts budgets, which means that 13 local authorities, including Selby and Wigan, now allocate no funding whatsoever to culture and heritage.

Shadow Minister for Culture Helen Goodman MP pointed out last May that the most deprived of England’s local authority areas have cut the arts, libraries and heritage by 22%.

A future of cuts …

Problems with the Powerhouse

It’s a bribe

It’s all about buildings

It’s all about cities

It’s all about George

…and Neil … and Maria

It’s not sustainable

It encourages vanity projects

It’s policy-making on the hoof

It’s policy bullshit!

An alterative model?

Edge Hill University’s practice-led and theoretically grounded interdisciplinary research forum which connects us with the digital and

creative economy and with cultural institutions.

www.edgehill.ac.uk/ice/

The Institute for Creative Enterprise (ICE)