Zoë Thompson - Urban Constellations

URBAN CONSTELLATIONS

Series Editor: Ross Abbinnett, University of Birmingham, UK

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With particular interest in questions of gender relations, the body, virtuality, penality, work, aesthetics, urban space, surveillance, governance and the environment, the series encourages work that seeks to determine the nature of the social consequences that have followed the deployment of new technologies, investigate the increasingly complex relationship between the human and the technological, or addresses the ethical and political questions arising from the constant transformation and manipulation of humanity.

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Spaces of Cultural Regeneration in Post-Industrial Britain

ZO THOMPSON
Leeds Beckett University, UK

First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Copyright 2015 Zo Thompson.

Zo Thompson has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Thompson, Zo (Sociologist)
Urban constellations: spaces of cultural regeneration in post-industrial Britain / by Zo
Thompson.
pages cm. -- (Theory, technology and society)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4724-2722-9 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-4724-2723-6 (ebook) -- ISBN
978-1-4724-2724-3 (epub) 1. Urban renewal--Great Britain. 2. Historic districts-
Conservation and restoration--Great Britain. 3. Great Britain--Buildings, structures, etc.-
Conservation and restoration. 4. City planning--Great Britain. I. Title.
HT178.G72T46 2015
307.3'4160941--dc23

2014029568

ISBN 978-1-472-42722-9 (hbk)

The material I set out in this book is the result of research carried out between 2005 and 2010. In many ways the time since then has radically altered notions of culture and the arts as a mode of regenerating locations ravaged by post-industrial decline. Whilst the fashion for large-scale cultural projects such as those explored here was already on the wane prior to the global financial crisis of 2008, its death was assured in a British context by the election in 2010 of a coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats committed to a politics of austerity. Such events have drastically transformed the nature of public debates around culture, as well as radically reducing funding to the arts generally, with the Arts Council budget depleted and most of its remaining funds concentrated in the capital. The idea that in the very recent past projects costing 53m, 70m and 103m respectively, could proliferate in the regions, seems like a dream from a very distant past.

The locations in which the buildings are situated have also shifted since I initially began my research: Salford is now home to not only The Lowry and the Imperial War Museum but as of 2011 to the BBCs Media City situated close to The Lowry on the Manchester Ship Canal; The Sage will celebrate its tenth anniversary in 2014 with a swathe of events to mark the occasion; that Hull will be capital of culture in 2017 was announced in November 2013, just as the campaign to save The Public from closure (and its intended fate as a sixth form college) failed. In some ways these events evidence the success of the projects, as catalysts to longer-term transformations of their locales, in another they evidence the continued fragility of their existence, the contingent nature of their survival.

The media landscape has also shifted and continues to do so. All of the aforementioned venues now make substantial use of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to publicise their events, engage with their audiences and, in the case of The Public, to mobilise support against plans for closure. Social media has swiftly become central to the life of cultural venues and their marketing strategies. So this book, which seeks to capture the minor moments of experience within these buildings, also captures another moment in the contemporary cultural history of the early twenty-first century. A moment when cultural regeneration was an established policy for revitalising the post-industrial regions, and when flagship projects were the form such strategies took. A moment, then, already over; at least for the foreseeable future.

In writing this book I have been indebted to many. I cannot hope to thank everyone who deserves it, but I will try my best to do them justice. This book is based upon original research first undertaken as part of a doctorate at the University of Birmingham and supported by grants from both the Universitys Kirkcaldy Scholarship and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). I would like to express my gratitude, then, in particular to Ross Abbinnett and Graeme Gilloch for their encouragement, guidance and sheer generosity as supervisors as well as their continued support. I would also like to thank Howard Caygill and Mairtin Mac-An-Ghaill for helpful suggestions. I would like to thank the staff and fellow students at Birmingham, in particular, Dan Whisker, Sarah Hislam, Yvonne Jacobs and the late Marie Walsh.

Thanks are due to the various organisations that helped me source images for the book and who granted permission for their use, including the staff of Gateshead Libraries and the Centre for Canadian Architecture in Montreal. Im also grateful to the various publishers who allowed me to reproduce the material used as epigraphs. Thanks also to my editor Neil Jordan and his colleagues at Ashgate for guidance and assistance in preparing the manuscript.