Why culture has vital role to play in regeneration game
There’s no room for hesitation, says Simon Wallis, director of the Hepworth Wakefield – the Leeds City Region must bid to become European Capital of Culture.
CULTURAL prowess and economic success are increasingly interlinked. Ambitious cities and regions see culture as a vital part of their economic strength and future growth. Just look at how successful Manchester and Liverpool have been with culture-led regeneration.
The recent news about investing in a Northern powerhouse should inspire the Leeds City Region to create and develop its own bold vision for the role of culture driving growth, ambition, profile and talent retention. The process of bidding for European Capital of Culture in 2023 would be a major part of kick-starting a muchneeded initiative and it – surely – has to be a City Region bid.
As a Leeds resident, culture, for me, means where I choose to eat, drink, watch and play sport, see a film, play or concert, the independent shops and markets I use, the multicultural mix, the influence of landscape, architecture, design, or the quality of education here. The list goes on.
But let’s not get distracted by arguing over definitions. The Leeds City Region has culture and creativity in abundance, but we need to be more than the sum of our parts. Again, let’s look at how Manchester, Dundee, Liverpool or Bilbao are making ongoing major investments in culture. We need to take notice, and inspiration, and then do what suits the particularity of life here by talking to one another, forming a clear strategy and taking action.
We’ve an upcoming opportunity to think very pragmatically about these issues. British Art Show 8 is being launched in Leeds in October next year and will be a superb moment for developing our ambition and infrastructure as a Capital of Culture bid gradually forms.
Staged every five years, it will be one of the UK’s most significant cultural events in 2015 and always receives widespread national and international coverage. We have to be ready to grasp and use this event to sell ourselves, no matter what our business or interests.
British Art Show 8 will be hosted by Leeds Art Gallery, which could, and should, be a major tourist attraction if it gets a sorely needed major capital investment and is led by a director who is known and respected in the art world. There is no significant gallery in the country without a director, as is Leeds, and woodchip wallpaper just doesn’t suit world-class art!
Estimated visitor figures for this exhibition are expected to be in excess of 100,000 with a significant economic impact. At the same time the other Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle (YST) galleries: The Hepworth, Henry Moore Institute and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park will work, as they always do, to support Leeds’s hosting of this prestigious exhibition. But there is opportunity for the whole of the City Region’s creative community to use the national spotlight of British Art Show 8.
A recent independent report commissioned by the Arts Council and conducted by the Centre for Economics and Business Research was the first comprehensive analysis to determine the value of arts and culture to the modern economy on a national scale. It concluded that arts and culture generate more per pound invested than the health, wholesale and retail, and professional and business services sectors. It also found that at least £856m per annum of spending by tourists visiting the UK can be attributed directly to arts and culture.
Culture helps create a unique powerful brand for a city and region, making it the kind of place that can compete in a global marketplace; it attracts and keeps talent here. The value of culture is, however, not only about economics. It’s about quality of life, wellbeing, feeding our imaginations, nurturing and educating our children and improving access to culture for all so we thrive and don’t just survive.