Transmitting the outskirts: LoneLady's Scrub Transmissions

It's often too easy to conflate place with music, and vice versa. It's tempting to view a city through a lens of its cultural production, to hold on to a static image of past achievements and overlook the ways in which places, and their culture, continue to evolve. It's also easy to reduce an artist to their urban identity, to limit them to an artistic lineage that is geographically - and therefore to some extent always arbitrarily - defined.

There is a sense of LoneLady trying to break out of these boxes, to get away from a very particular - and often male - Mancunian identity. Yet at the same time, her music is undeniably shaped by Manchester. It's the place where she grew up, on the eastern fringes of the city. It's also where her two albums to date were written, rehearsed and recorded, in largely self-built rehearsal and studio spaces in former industrial units in isolated areas outside of the city centre. Until recent acquisitions by developers capitalising on Manchester's property boom, apparently redundant buildings such as these, surrounded by half-demolished buildings, light industrial activity or red light districts, were available and affordable to artists due to their relative geographical and cultural remoteness. Despite their uncertainty of tenure, artists became used to coexisting with damp, cold, mice and indifferent landlords, fashioning and reinventing these spaces to fit their needs and finding the space and freedom for invention and experimentation amidst physical decrepitude. These were the places where most of Manchester's real creative work was done.

LoneLady both acknowledges this geographical specificity in her work and attempts to break away from it; most recently, she's stretched her wings with a long-term residency at Somerset House in London. As a Mancunian woman, she sees herself not just as struggling for visibility within the mainstream music world, but also as an outsider to the city itself. She situates herself both physically and metaphorically on the edges of Manchester, and outside of the myths manufactured by those who wish to shape our perceptions of it.

LoneLady wants us to share and understand the mundane places and subtle experiences which influence her sensations of the city day-to-day, and her place within it, as a place that is lived in, worked in and travelled through, and as a city that - far from the promotional spiel of business, tourism, redevelopment and economic growth - continues to be uncertain, often difficult and sometimes unwelcoming for those who exist outside of its dominant uses and narratives.

Far from the shininess and spectacle of city centre redevelopment, LoneLady tries to tell us different stories and show us other cultural landmarks. In 2012, she invited us to plug our headphones in and experience her music in the context of 1960s elevated motorway the Mancunian Way, through her temporary installation The Utilitarian Poetic, which embedded a previously unreleased track beneath a flyover on the outskirts of the city centre. TUP drew our attention to a structure that is a permanent presence in the city, yet which is almost always experienced in transit, and a place where few stop to linger. Removing fast-flowing traffic from the city's roads, the Mancunian Way flyover distances motorists from the city at ground level, yet it also creates a constant background hum for those who live and work in the estates and buildings alongside it.

Six years later, LoneLady again asks us to turn our back on the city centre and to venture east to the inner-city neighbourhood of Miles Platting, an area that borders Clayton on one side and Ancoats on the other, on the banks of the Ashton Canal. East Manchester, a former industrial and mining district, where Clayton is situated, remains one of the poorest areas of Manchester, despite the new sporting facilities built for the Commonwealth Games in 2002. By contrast, Ancoats, which borders the hip Northern Quarter area of Manchester city centre, has, in just a few years, become unrecognisable. As derelict former factories and mills have been converted, alongside infill apartment blocks, a previously under-visited area of the city has been filled with bars, shops and restaurants catering to young professionals, and is regularly featured in local and national media as a 'foodie destination'. 

New-build flats are gradually encroaching further into east Manchester, following the improved access to the city brought by the building of the East Manchester tram line. However, in spite of its proximity to Ancoats and Manchester city centre, Miles Platting feels like a different world entirely. Here, we see and hear different uses for the city, which don't fit comfortably elsewhere: families gather in special dress in small sections of industrial units repurposed as places of worship; graffiti artists find ample space to exhibit their work. There's also evidence of others left behind by the city's redevelopment, including rough sleeping and heroin use, on wasteland exposed by the demolition of former industrial buildings.

There's also a atmosphere of openness and space here, lacking in a city centre that is increasingly embracing height and density - of a place that is yet to be rediscovered and rebuilt. Into this left-behind landscape, embedded in a tower of rubble, LoneLady has inserted 'Little Fugue', an unreleased track from 2014. Behind you are the skeletal outlines of abandoned gas towers. In front and to the side are patched up industrial buildings, some missing windows, and subdivided for a variety of commercial and creative uses. In the background, plodding indie rock competes across the canal with band practice emanating from a facing building. Through the headphones, LoneLady's guitar chimes gothically over a synthy, dancey track that both suggests something of her city's heritage, but shows it is possible to do something new and different with it.

Then we hear a voiceover, a story about what this area has meant to her. It concludes by urging us to: "Hear the voices of the landscape, before they're scrubbed out."

Scrub Transmissions went live on Sunday 18 February and continues until the battery runs out (duration dependent on weather conditions!). For map and further information, visit http://lonelady.co.uk/blog/scrub-transmissions-miles-platting. 

An accompanying 'zine by LoneLady is available from the Peer Hat and Piccadilly Records in the Northern Quarter.

Folkestone Triennial: a town transformed by art?

“It’s the best job in the world,” enthuses Folkestone Triennial curator Lewis Biggs, as he bounds along the Leas promenade in a straw hat and tropical shirt. The Victorian seaside splendour of the Leas, lined with grand hotels and mansion blocks, is one of the locations currently displaying new artworks for the fourth instalment of the town’s triennial. Some require the viewer to look hard to spot them – David Shrigley and Camille Biddell recreated one of the Leas’ traditional, ornate lampposts from memory and installed it on the Leas, where it differs only slightly in height and colour from those around it – whereas Richard Woods’ brightly coloured holiday chalets stand out garishly around the town. His fantasy structures float in the harbour and perch on the top of the cliffs, aiming to highlight the impact of second home ownership on the south east’s overheated property market. 

Across the town, the triennial opens up new spaces to residents and visitors alike. This includes a former Baptist burial ground, hidden among a huge redbrick railway viaduct and tall, austere rows of terraces. Accessed via a steep row of steps, it hosts sensor-activated sound compositions by Emily Peasgood. Antony Gormley invites visitors to descend into the dank, cavernous space under the Harbour Arm, where one of his characteristic figures surveys the dramatic white cliffs of Dover and the passing of cross-channel traffic. Hoycheong Wong makes the invisible visible, giving a new façade to an otherwise anonymous Islamic cultural centre, which for 28 years has served the area’s 300 Muslims from a nondescript industrial building. Other pieces blur the boundaries between the private and the public, as in Amalia Pica’s seashell sculptures, positioned in people’s front windows, which reference souvenirs, kitsch and collecting. Other work literally illuminates, in the case of a lamppost in the dingy market square, powered by an experimental mushroom battery, installed by Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas. Some of the work highlights familiar locations or landmarks. Alex Hartley’s 'Wall' appears to balance precariously at the edge of the white cliffs, constantly at risk of erosion. Other artists bring attention to aspects of the town’s history and economy, as in Jonathan Wright’s small-scale replicas of Folkestone’s fishing fleet – only ten of which remain in operation – developed in collaboration with local fishermen and suspended on posts around the town. Lubaina Himid, meanwhile, suggests an alternative history in her beachfront jelly mould pavilion, that encourages us to think about the links between leisure and pleasure, slavery and sugar.

This is Biggs’ second triennial – he took over from Andrea Schlieker for the 2014 edition – and it’s clear that he considers it a job for life. His enthusiasm stems partly from the opportunities offered by Folkestone’s architecture and geography – “I’m obsessed with art and place,” he explains. “They are constructed in the same way – through material and stories.” The process of choosing work for the triennial starts, Biggs explains, “with a list of places I want to illuminate”.

In large part, too, Biggs is driven by working “in a town small enough to see a difference”. As much as the excitement of opening up places and bringing artists to work in the town, Biggs is interested in urbanism, civic life, democracy and the long-term effect of the triennial. “It’s really important that art is seen as part of life,” says Biggs. “It’s the glue between people in society.” He explains: “I believe that if we get better at constructing art then we get better at constructing place.”

Biggs’ concern with place-making and transformation is shared by Alastair Upton, Chief Executive of the Creative Foundation. The Creative Foundation was formed in 2002 by the philanthropist Roger De Haan, founder of Saga, a major local employer based in nearby Sandgate (De Haan is still chair of the Creative Foundation). The Creative Foundation set out to explore the potential for creative-led regeneration in a town that had “lost its economic purpose” following the decline of tourism in the second half of the twentieth century and the loss of its channel crossing in 2000. For Upton, the raison d'être of the Creative Foundation, which he joined in 2011, is to ask: “How can creative activities make Folkestone a better place to live, work, study and visit?” The answer, for Upton, is by creating a place that has “interesting architecture, buildings and things going on – a cultural life”. 

Both Upton and Biggs previously worked in Liverpool, Biggs as curator of Liverpool Biennial from 2000-2011, before which he led Tate Liverpool, and Upton as Director of the Bluecoat in Liverpool. Upton explains that “historically all the stories about Liverpool were negative”. Liverpool’s designation as the Capital of Culture in 2008 was an opportunity to change the way the city was perceived, both by residents and by outsiders. “The defensive pride that people felt has became positive,” says Upton. 

Biggs, too, explains that he learnt a lot in Liverpool: “I found that I needed to relearn and think again, because art and audiences behave differently in and outside of the institution. In the gallery, the primary reference is always to other art – you are always working in the parameters of art history and it is circular, as it appeals to people who are already interested in art.”

Having seen how art can change places in Liverpool, Upton and Biggs share a sense that there is potential to “make more of a difference” in Folkestone, a medium-sized town of around 50,000 people. In the nine years since the first Folkestone Triennial took place in 2008 the town has undeniably undergone something of a transformation. When the work of the Foundation started, the town had been subject to decades of decline. Like town centres across the country, the high street has been in a sorry state for years: one of the largest retailers, M&S, abandoned the town in 2006, leaving empty shops in its wake. Although community arts company Strange Cargo was long-established in the town, there was little in the way of contemporary art of national or international quality in Kent. For many years the Metropole Gallery, founded in 1961 with the support of the critic and broadcaster Sir Kenneth Clark – a resident of Saltwood Castle in nearby Hythe – brought a varied programme of changing exhibitions by emerging and established artists to the town. However, constrained by its base in an old-fashioned Victorian building dominated by parquet floors, large windows and wooden panelling, it finally wound down in 2008.

One catalyst for the revival of the Folkestone’s fortunes has been the opening of the high-speed train route from London. In 2007, the Kent coast was connected to St Pancras by high-speed train: the journey from Folkestone to London, which previously took around an hour and fifty minutes, can now be done in under an hour. This has had the effect of bringing the Kent coast closer to London; it has also prompted an influx of incomers, including artists, attracted by cheaper property and a better quality of life, still within commuting distance of the capital.

The cultural offering in the county, too, has improved dramatically in the past five to ten years, with the opening of the Turner Contemporary in Margate in 2011 and the Beaney in Canterbury in 2012 (as well as the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings, East Sussex in 2012), as well as new music venues along the coast, from Ramsgate Music Hall to Dover’s new Booking Hall venue.

However, Upton sees the Creative Foundation as offering an alternative to the “concept or consumption-led” gallery model, which relies on a landmark building to create a trickle-down effect in the town’s economy. Instead, Upton sees a need to “make a place for people to make”, believing that it offers a “firmer base for development” and a “change that brings the whole economy with it”. The Creative Foundation started this process by “making a place for artists to live and work, a production base”. It bought, did up and hired out ninety buildings in a derelict and unloved area of town; these spaces are now at full capacity.

Today, the old town is almost unrecognisable. In the picturesque old high street, derelict shops have been smartened up and painted bright colours. The cobbled streets are now lined with coffee shops, small galleries and boutiques. The triennial is just one aspect of this transformation. Alongside the triennial is an established fringe festival, and independent galleries and artist spaces proliferate in the old town. These include the Brewery Tap, which showcases work by artists and academics from the University of the Creative Arts. Folkestone Museum has recently reopened in a new space in the former town hall, telling the stories from the town’s natural and archaeological history, as well as hosting changing exhibitions.

One of the biggest transformations of all has been the reopening of the Harbour Arm, in a run-down part of town that few had any reason to venture into following the demolition of the Rotunda amusement park and the closure of the ferry crossing. Until recently, the Harbour Arm station connected Folkestone to the continent via the Orient Express; although trains no longer run there, it’s been reinvented as a leisure destination, with pop-up bars and food stalls in the former station buildings. Snaking dramatically out into the sea, it offers views out to France and the white cliffs of Dover in one direction, and around the bay to Dungeness power station in the other.

For Upton, another of the big success stories is the Quarterhouse, which hosts gigs, film screenings, comedy and spoken word and other events. Unlike many arts venues, whose subsidised programme is patronised mainly by those in the upper socioeconomic groups, he says its audience represents a very similar demographic to that of the town. Upton also emphasises the Foundation’s work with young people. For example, “every single child” from the town’s schools visits Folkestone Book Festival, there is a drop-in arts club, and there are opportunities for work experience.

There’s still work to be done, for example in promoting and developing jobs and livelihoods for local people in the creative industries. There are opportunities for further connections to be made with projects exploring digital futures. There’s also a need for the art scene to be more visible in between triennials, and for Folkestone to be linked up more with other cultural initiatives across the South East: neighbouring East Sussex, separated from Folkestone by Romney Marsh, now has a Coastal Cultural Trail connecting up the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne, the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea and the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings.

The main challenge now, though, says Upton, is “How do you make it inclusive? How do you make sure it remains for everyone?” Upton regards the changes that have taken place so far as “rebalancing” as much as “gentrification”, but the town will change considerably again over the next ten years, as a large area surrounding the harbour area is redeveloped with a much-discussed and long-stalled residential and commercial development. The challenge, says Upton, is that, “as Folkestone changes we’ve got to make sure artists are involved in the very fabric of the town and how it sees itself”. As Biggs puts it: “Folkestone is changing at such a rate. We need feedback between development and the arts. People are now in conversation.”

Upton highlights that “lots of artists in the triennial describe themselves as socially engaged”, and some of the most interesting work at the triennial is that which encourages interaction, or provides spaces for people to come together to talk, think and play. This ranges from Sol Calero’s brightly-painted and participatory 'Casa Anacaona' beach pavilion, which is filled with movable furniture and acts as a social space for young people, to Bob and Roberta Smith’s ‘Folkestone is an art school’, which is working with ten local young people as well as celebrating the artistic activity that already goes on in the area: as Biggs explains, “Folkestone is an art school already – you need to change your attitude so you can see it”. A new ‘Urban Room’ in the recently restored former Customs House at the Harbour Arm houses a library of books about the history of the town, alongside texts on urbanism, art and citizenship, as well as maps and drawings showing the ways the town’s landscape and its uses have changed over time. It’s a place not just to learn about the past, but to add to, to imagine and to discuss the future.

Folkestone Triennial: Double Edge takes place at various venues in Folkestone from Saturday 2 September until Sunday 5 November. For more information, including locations, opening times and the accompanying programme of events visit www.folkestonetriennial.org.uk.

The Turnpike, Leigh: A New(/Old) Contemporary Art Gallery for Greater Manchester

In 1971, the mill and mining town of Leigh, Lancashire, located astride the Leeds-Liverpool canal between the two great metropolises of Manchester and Liverpool, hosted an exhibition of modern sculptures by Henry Moore. The likes of Moore’s abstract forms, in materials such as bronze and marble, had never been seen in the town before. Moore’s was the inaugural show at the Turnpike Gallery, in a striking and architecturally innovative modernist building that combined an open-plan library space on ground level with a purpose-built gallery on the upper floor. Like many civic buildings of the time, it incorporated a specially commissioned mural: a large, abstract concrete relief by the industrial designer William Mitchell, in his signature style, mounted on the front of the building. “You can see aspiration in it, bravery and forward-thinking at a hard time for the town,” explains Arts Manager Helen Stalker. “People are astonished when they find out there is a mural on the front by the same artist who designed the doors for Liverpool Catholic Cathedral."

The Turnpike encapsulates the ethos of the post-war period. The two and a half decades that followed the end of the Second World War have been characterised in popular discourse as an era of optimism, when initiatives were put in place to develop the welfare state, expand and modernise the education system, rebuild British towns and cities, and bring art and culture to a wider section of the population. Despite continuing hardships and financial difficulties faced by local and national government after the war, new cultural venues were developed regionally and nationally, and the arts were foregrounded in plans for a better, more democratic and more equal Britain. Many large-scale sculptures were placed in public spaces such as parks, schools and housing estates – including work by Henry Moore, celebrated as perhaps the most important sculptor of the twentieth century. Yorkshire born and bred, Moore was the son of a coal miner and shared these post-war aspirations not just to beautify everyday environments, but to bring art of an exceptional quality to ‘the people’.

The Turnpike caught the tail end of this wave of optimism and renewal. In Leigh and the surrounding area at that time, the last of the pits were closing down – leading Arts Manager Helen Stalker to wonder how such a bold cultural gesture was received. Nonetheless, from Moore’s opening exhibition in 1971 the Turnpike sustained that calibre right up until its last exhibition, by abstract painter Gillian Ayres, in 2013.

In 2013, as part of nationwide programmes of cuts, Wigan Borough Council pulled all funding for the Turnpike and made all staff redundant, moving away from local authority control towards relying on local art groups. This story is not unique to Wigan, but continues to be repeated all over the country. Many of the institutions of the welfare state, established in the post-war years, have been dismantled in the succeeding decades, and replaced by either profit-making private sector bodies or volunteers, a process that has accelerated in recent years. Culture, it seems, is a particularly easy target.

Faced with a lack of money, the Turnpike gallery was run on “tea and coffee sales”. Helen Stalker, then Fine Art Curator at Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, who lives down the road in Lowton, had been a regular visitor to exhibitions at the Turnpike and observed what happened to it over the next couple of years. “It went through lots of manifestations about what it would become”, explains Helen. “It became full of pictures of Johnny Depp and numerous African sunsets!”

After thinking “I’d love to get my hands on it,” Helen got her chance early in 2016, when she applied for a two-year post as Arts Manager, funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. Helen joined the Turnpike in March 2016 after ten years at the Whitworth and five years at Tate Liverpool. Before that, she worked at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. “It’s an incredible learning curve,” admits Helen. “I’ve come from a well-funded bubble of a fantastic, feminist, forward-thinking organisation but I’m getting a better understanding of the real world climate of arts venues. It’s been a missed opportunity for a fly-on-the-wall documentary!”

The scale of the challenge became apparent within days of Helen starting her new job. The problems were partly financial, partly physical and partly infrastructural – but also to do with attitudes. “The gallery is as it was in 1971,” explains Helen. “It’s a very precious space but it’s been neglected, misunderstood and not considered so we have to fight for it. Lots of people are sniffy and snigger about it – it’s a lump of concrete in the middle of the beautiful town hall and parish church. It needs a wash. It is full of moths and smells funny when you walk in – it’s not been looked after in the ways it should have been. It’s not moved with the times – for example the ceiling cracks when there are gigs.” Nonetheless, she sees great potential: “The bare bones are there and it’s gorgeous when you look up at the concrete ceilings. We need to refocus people’s eyes on it. The Turnpike is a great space and a great venue and I want to bring that level of quality back.”

Currently, the Turnpike is in transition. The gallery itself is closed to the public, but walk up the stairs and you’re greeted by 1970s screenprints by Ron Kitaj and Patrick Caulfield. Helen has got these prints out of storage from the Wigan and Leigh art collection, formerly based at Drumcroon in Wigan, an art education centre which closed due to cuts in 2011 and has now been demolished.

In January a new independent organisation takes over the Turnpike, with a new board of trustees from across the arts, business and marketing. “We are aiming to be more ambitious, to have more outreach and to bring a creative environment back in,” explains Helen. “It needs real impact and serious change. I’d like a creative hub with the community at the heart, which is both shaped by the town and shapes the town, a coming together and connection point which is cross-collaborative, where people can be inspired by each other.”

Initially Helen is developing a three-year exploratory programme. Operating in such straitened circumstances it will, of necessity, be enabled by strategic alliances – including partnerships with the Jerwood Foundation, Liverpool Biennial and Impressions Gallery in Bradford – as well as by nurturing friendships with local organisations and institutions.

In January (14 January-12 March), the Turnpike will be the only northern venue for the Jerwood Drawing Prize, an annual touring show that challenges and expands expectations and understandings of what it means to draw. Helen sees it as an opportunity to hold a celebration, talk to audiences, engage schools and host drawing workshops. Instead of a holding a private view for dignitaries, Helen is keen that schools will be the first to see the exhibition, and children will take part in a “Jerwood within a Jerwood”, making their own decisions about the winners.

In June, the Turnpike will be one of several North West galleries (others include Touchstones, Rochdale and Bury Art Museum) to select work and build a programme from the 2016 Liverpool Biennial as part of its “really exciting” strategic touring fund, which has been established to develop audiences. The idea is that rather than being “parachuted in”, the selected artist comes and engages with the town, for example by working with local teens.

Helen has chosen to show the video work Dream English Kid by Mark Leckey, who grew up in Ellesmere Port, Merseyside “peering into the city”. Incorporating footage of a Joy Division gig he attended as a young man, the film – like his rave and Northern Soul tribute, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore – explores individual and collective experiences and memory. For the Turnpike incarnation of the work, Helen hopes to draw on the Leigh Rock Festival of 1979, which was organised by Tony Wilson and Bill Drummond due to its location in between Manchester and Liverpool, and played host to bands including Joy Division, OMD and the Teardrop Explodes. “Bus strikes meant only about 200 people went, but it’s achieved mythical status,” explains Helen.

In November the Turnpike will show new and existing work by Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson, including their 2014 installation Song for Coal, originally shown at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and drawing on the material fabric of Leigh by using coal taken from the area in new works. Manchester artist Mary Griffiths will also reference the heritage of the town, from mining and industry to engineering, at an exhibition in 2018.

Another plan for 2017 is for an open call photography competition responding to, reinventing and offering a new vision of George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier, corresponding with its eightieth anniversary “People are still quite bitter about it around here,” explains Helen. “They want to shake off the book’s legacy.”

The changing exhibitions will be complemented by a multi-purpose studio space, and the Turnpike’s flat roof will be put to use as a Shrangi-La-themed terrace, in reference to Leigh-born James Hilton, who coined the term in his 1933 novel Lost Horizon. Eventually the roof could even be extended upwards into a theatre, as originally planned when the building was designed.

The Turnpike’s new programme is part of a bigger ambition to develop a cultural strategy and voice for Wigan. “There is an uneven playing field in the area; access to culture is really low down on the priority list,” explains Helen. “Wigan is a huge borough but it’s not got the riches of Manchester. It’s got next to nothing for its size. The local authority in Manchester understands that the arts play a vital role in the city, but Wigan has a wobbly infrastructure for the arts with nothing underneath it.”

Helen is mindful of challenges in Leigh, such as underinvestment, above-average rates of drug addiction, alcoholism, self-harm and mental health problems, and low numbers of school-ready five-year-olds. Another issue is isolation and disengagement that goes far beyond the arts. “There are pockets where people of all ages don’t leave their estate,” Helen explains. “They shop there, they go to school there, all their family are there – it’s about coaxing them out.” The reinvention of the Turnpike, therefore, is “not just about having a nice art gallery in town”, but about systematic changes.

One core part of the gallery’s target audience will be schools; there are three schools in walking distance of the Turnpike. “Regional and local artists have told me that the place made them artists when they were children; we need to develop a culturally aware generation with a voice and raise aspirations for young people,” explains Helen. “We need to bring art and culture of an exceptional standard to them so they understand what it is and that they’re entitled to it – why shouldn’t they have it on their doorstep? People been infantilised and not empowered enough. I want to get people to demand better quality, to open up opportunities.”

To support this, Helen is taking part in the Cultural Educational Leadership programme, a new scheme from Curious Minds with support from the Arts Council. She is being trained as a school governor in order to establish how schools work and what they need to address, from understanding how to reduce the attainment gap, to seeking solutions to the awkward transition between primary and secondary school. As well as running enrichment days and advocating for the arts and education, Helens hopes to extend the school day by offering access to the arts after school.

Despite some scepticism about the demand for contemporary art in the town – Leigh and Wigan are “flashing bright red on the Arts Council map of lack of engagement,” says Helen – she sees the sell-out success of the Z-arts production Sponge at the Turnpike, where 70 per cent of families who attended had never been to the theatre before, as proof “that there is a huge hunger for it, and not just for watercolour landscapes!”

Helen hopes the Turnpike will be a catalyst for taking art out into the town, into its empty buildings and shops. Meanwhile, the town hall has received money from the Heritage Lottery Fund to develop a heritage centre and another cultural venue will be opening nearby. Castlefield’s Gallery's New Art Spaces supports local artists and this year’s Wigan Arts Festival, founded in 2015 as “a provocation and a way of taking control”, will be expanded into the Wigan and Leigh Arts Festival. “There’s some agitation about the town, and art and culture are the catalyst,” says Helen. “Once we’ve got over the barriers at the Turnpike we can really have some fun with it!”

With the reopening of the Turnpike Gallery in 2017, the people of Wigan, Leigh and Greater Manchester will gain a new place to encounter challenging and exciting contemporary art, in one of the region’s architectural hidden gems: here’s to the building’s next 46 years.

To keep up-to-date with news and exhibitions, visit www.theturnpike.org.uk, and follow the Turnpike on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TurnpikeGallery and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/turnpikeleigh.

Sugarloaf Hill sloe gin

The hills of the Folkestone downs – Sugarloaf Hill, Castle Hill, Hoywell, Cheriton Hill and Round Hill – rise out of the gently undulating Kent countryside like green bowling balls, left by some giant en route to the channel. If they were to crouch down, survey their target, flex their arm and roll them across the flat landscape they’d hit the cliff-top town of Folkestone, which diffuses out from the sea in dense avenues of former redbrick mansion blocks and neat semis, rarely letting up to allow in parks or open spaces.

From a distance, the blueness of English Channel intensifies. The steps of an ancient earthwork ripple like the sea below; a more contemporary artwork, the white horse of Invicta, spreads out across the downs. It’s Folkestone’s answer to the Hollywood sign, a bit of modern-day branding for a town which has for many years seemed relegated to a comfort break on the side of a motorway, a stop on the train line between the coast and the capital. Folkestone was hit hard by the twentieth century decline of domestic tourism and the closure of its ferry and hovercraft links.

From up on Sugarloaf Hill the town’s former grandeur as a tourist destination is apparent in a way it might not be at street level. The Grand and the Metropole hotels are lumbering redbrick footprints teetering at the edge of the cliff like non-identical twins. The high-rise offices of the town’s newspaper, the Herald, rise above the empty shops of the town centre. The premises of an insurer that’s long since left town – now a curry house – offer a rare bit of streamlined modernist glamour. A tall Victorian railway viaduct tiptoes across terraced houses, bringing daytrippers in and connecting commuters with better-paid, higher status employment outside. Up high are wartime ditches built to defend the south coast. Below, two Martello towers represent an earlier era of threatened invasion, one pristine, one overgrown. Close up, the town becomes more anonymous, a familiar scene of grey out-of-town retail sheds and the teen haunts of drive-thru fast food joints. Then, the landscape begins to empty out, towards the eerie remoteness of Romney Marsh and Dungeness in the distance.

Straight ahead, the French coastline hides behind a hanging mist or smog, but it’s only a train ride away: Eurostar speeds past, trains and wires sloping across the countryside. Trains no longer stop at the Folkestone Harbour train station, stretching out into the sea like a tentacle feeling its way to the continent, but visitors are now greeted by a text work by Ian Hamilton Finlay at the end of the harbour arm, a legacy of the Folkestone Triennial’s attempts to reinvent and inject some poetry back into the town.

Sugarloaf Hill and its neighbouring rotundas feel like the countryside, but it’s an illusion. Highway cattle roam woods and scrubland, fields of wheat, hay and wild marjoram, and thick passageways of blackthorn bushes, but the motorway's hum is hard to ignore. We pass through these hills in polluting metal boxes – an A-road on stilts goes in at Folkestone and comes out at Dover – and drink its water, from hidden reservoirs. In summer, runners puff up and down and young lovers picnic in relative privacy. Sugarloaf Hill is both of the town and a place to escape from it, to watch it from a distance, to bring a bit back with us, as sloes to mix with sugar for winter sloe gin.

The Star and Garter: secret history of a nightclub

I can vividly remember the first time I went to a nightclub. I was 18, had recently moved to Manchester and followed the flow of freshers to 'indie' club 5th Avenue, where I had my bum pinched and objected to a lanky youth 'playfully' stealing the hat off my head: not the greatest introduction to going out at night. I can also remember the second time I went to a nightclub, because I went alone, unable to convince fellow students to walk five minutes down the road to the Star and Garter, in the bleak and unprepossessing red light district behind Piccadilly Station. I spent the rest of the evening talking to strangers, engaging in what I probably thought at the time were deep conversations about things like the influence of Albert Camus' The Outsider on 'Killing an Arab' by the Cure.

At the Star and Garter's flagship night Smile, billed as the longest-running indie night in Manchester, I realised for the first time that other people of my age liked the same kind of music as me – and what's more, that it was actually possible to dance to this kind of music (or in my case, shuffle awkwardly whilst staring at the floor and/or jump clumsily up and down to more energetic songs). As a club for people like me, who might not otherwise go out, it's been sad to see the venue gradually wind down Smile after the night celebrated its twentieth birthday last year, with the long-term future of the building looking uncertain. Proposals to add a platform to the east of Piccadilly Station as part of the Northern Hub scheme – construction is due to start in 2016 – would see trains pass window-rattlingly close to the already ramshackle Victorian building, leaving its future as a club unviable. Although several different proposals have been put forward for the distinctive triangular building's place in the development, from relocation (urban legend has it that the building was already moved once, in the mid-nineteenth century, although the council disputes this), to rebuilding, to extending the station around it, none seem feasible in the long-term. As current licensee and upstairs resident Andy Martin says: “You can't hide us behind a station and expect to have passing trade. It will either fall down or be out of business within a year of the platform opening – and if it closes Wetherspoon or another chain will take it over (although no big business in their right mind would).”

Andy, a former computer game reviewer, grew up under the influence of bands like the Smiths in Blackley, on the northern fringes of the city, surrounded by his siblings' record collections. Like mine, his first memories of Smile conjure the joy that comes from realising that there are other people who feel the same way as you about the songs that have soundtracked your life. “There was a circle of us all jumping up and down to 'Teenage Kicks',” he reminisces. “I'd never had that in a club before – a load of people who didn't know each other just loving a song. We all shook hands at the end. It was very polite.” However, he also admits that, like any other club, its basic function is the same: “It's a meat market. You go out and notice people and the guys wear cheap aftershave.” He observes that the traditional pub layout of the Star and Garter, with seating downstairs and a function room upstairs, helps facilitate this: “A massive USP is the club being on two floors. You can go upstairs in a darkened room and dance around and come downstairs with whoever you've pulled and realise you've made a massive mistake and go upstairs again.” The only difference to other clubs is the clientele. “We attract intelligent people here,” says Andy. “People who are now GPs, archaeologists, psychologists and who work for the CPS. I've helped every single one of them into a taxi. Thick people stick out here like a sore thumb.”

Andy's involvement with the Star and Garter initially came about through another cult band, Nigel Blackwell's Half Man Half Biscuit, following a gig at long-departed Manchester venue the Boardwalk in 1996, where he got talking to the band's manager, a “cantankerous old Scouser” selling t-shirts. To cut a long story short, Andy “fluked it with Half Man Half Biscuit” and ended up putting the band on the following year. A friend had heard good things about the Star and Garter, which could be hired out for £50, and the gig attracted a gaggle of “forty-something-year-old men forming mosh pits”.

Andy later started working behind the bar and, when the Star and Garter's owner started looking for someone else to run the pub, Andy and sound engineer Dermot O'Dea took it over. Andy made a few changes such as extending the opening hours of Smile, replacing skittering vinyl with CDs, employing long-running DJ Andy Woods and hosting one-offs such as album launches; previously, says Andy, “every night was like a Manic Street Preachers fan night – City Life said it was like gatecrashing a house party, just playing songs to mates”. Then followed the “halcyon days” of Smile, when the NME made it club of the week, there were queues around the block by 9.30pm and the club got so crowded that Andy had to operate a one-in-one-out policy. “Our USP has always been that we're off the beaten track,” says Andy. “There's no passing trade so it's an effort to make it. You have to know what you are going for and what night is on. You don't go for the massive selection of craft ales at the bar or the cocktail list – you go because you like the Smiths or the band playing.”

However, the Star and Garter has always been far more than just Smile. It's had its own line in nights dedicated solely to one artist – from the Belle and Sebastian disco started by Roxanne, who later moved to Glasgow and now plays in Veronica Falls, to evenings dedicated to Depeche Mode and Pixies. Most famous is the Smiths night, which has now been going for twenty years and attracts everyone from teens to hardcore fans in their sixties.

The Star and Garter has also been a place for unsigned bands to get onto lineups with more established punk and metal bands. It's been a stepping stone, too, for several bands who now sell out far bigger venues, from hosting Low twice in the 1990s – where everyone sat down – to Jeffrey Lewis. Even Status Quo played there in 1999, after the venue was shortlisted for their Under the Influence tour. “It was the most surreal experience of my life,” recalls Andy. “150 people dancing to the Quo – it was like something out of a Michael Jackson video. And I had to record United versus Juventus for Parfitt and Rossi while they played.” A similarly surreal experience was heavy rock band ArnoCorps' 2012 gig, where 150 fans arrived dressed as Arnold Schwarzenegger. “It was like really good Smile party – everyone happy,” remembers Andy.

The Star and Garter has also acted as a showcase for local musicians and comedians, including at an open mic run by Akoustik Anarkhy which was attended by Manchester luminaries such as Badly Drawn Boy, the Longcut and Nine Black Alps. Andy remembers it as “glorified karaoke without the words on the screen and just mates doing cover versions on guitar” – including Andy's own renditions of Half Man Half Biscuit songs. Another night, Anti-Hoot, played host to unknown comics as well as fondly-remembered Bolton poet Hovis Presley. A poster paying tribute to Presley, who died prematurely in 2005, now hangs on the wall, featuring excepts from his wryly romantic poem 'I Rely On You', which pops up as a reading in local wedding services.


Pre-social media, the Star and Garter also functioned as a meeting place for unlikely special interest groups, from holding Anti-Nazi League meetings in the 1980s, to accommodating the 30-strong West Bromwich Albion supporters' club of Manchester, to hosting a PSV and HGV drivers' club which “used to show slides of 1950s buses to a ripple of applause”. With its haunted house looks, the Star and Garter must have provided a particularly fitting venue for the Vampire Society, whose members sat and read excerpts of Dracula. Most recently, the venue hosted Smiler, a spin-off group from the Rod Stewart fan club, with special guest Don Stewart (brother of Rod) making an appearance. And he's not the only person with a claim to fame to have visited. Andy has a special Smile poster signed by Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks as well as members of Half Man Half Biscuit, TV stars and, most obscurely, people who made music for vintage computer games.

The Star and Garter has also itself been a screen star. Although it's purported, probably incorrectly, to have featured in Manchester film noir classic Hell is A City, it has definitely appeared in Cracker and the Body Farm as well providing as the locale for a John Simm fight scene in Prey and a murder in Prime Suspect. Unfortunately, though, its seedy location could well be the Star and Garter's downfall. Big plans have been proposed for decades for this area, hemmed in by a train station, a taxi rank, a major bus route into the city and a collection of forbidding, slime-ridden railway viaducts, from the Whitehall of the North to an inter-city hub at derelict Mayfield station to an urban park. None have yet materialised, although Andy says, “there's nothing wrong with the area other than that it's never been invested in”. The Grade II listed status of the building, too, doesn't help, with the building suffering from damp and work needed on the roof yet no grants for like-for-like building work forthcoming. But it's part of the fabric of the area, and Andy's picked up snippets of information about its history and former inhabitants over the years, from its first licensee, a Miss Wetherspoon, to being a hotel with its own living quarters and dumb waiter, to housing a brewery and, later, a “trainee MASH type place for the home guard during the war”.

The Star and Garter's recent decline has coincided with the ascendancy of other areas of the city such as the Northern Quarter. Part of the problem, says Andy, is that Smile's audience has grown up – and “the new generation suddenly got hit by a massive choice of places to go, so Smile became a fallback”. Andy explains: “When we first started there was the Night & Day, us and the Roadhouse – we were the small venues. Then the council threw a load of money at the Northern Quarter and every Tom, Dick and Harry started opening a bar. It was even mentioned on the news.”

In the meantime, as both the Northern Hub and, further down the line, HS2 loom over its future, the Star and Garter soldiers on, continuing to host regular "cheap and cheerful" punk gigs. Alternative karaoke night Guts for Garters is proving popular, along with new music showcase and indie-pop disco Light it Up (Saturday May 10), '90s nights A Different Class and This is Uncool, queer party Bollox (Friday April 18) and guilty pleasures rock night Party Hard (Saturday May 3). Other upcoming events include a fundraiser by online Morrissey fanclub the Mozarmy (Saturday April 26), with special guests including Hayley from Coronation Street. It's also hoped that Smile can be resurrected for doorman Ian's 70th birthday in June.

As Andy says, the Star and Garter might not be renowned for its cocktail list or craft beer, but as the city gains in sophistication it's all too easy to lose out on opportunities for genuinely life-affirming communal music experiences. What we lose if we lose the Star and Garter is the bread and butter of Manchester's night life, the type of place where you can go just for the sheer joy of the music and any pretensions to post-industrial glamour or the array of drinks behind the bar are only a secondary concern.

“The beauty is in the possibility”: Jen Wu's 'The Wall'

Halfway up Chapel Street, a busy car, bus and pedestrian route which links the city of Salford with Manchester city centre, a motley assortment of old buildings punctuate empty stretches of rubble and high fencing, a familiar sight in many post-industrial cities. The bricked-up pubs, burnt-out office buildings and an old theatre covered with 'danger' signs are suggestive of a time when the street was a busy shopping hub, before abandonment was forced by the area's subsequent decline. With details like bell towers, faded signs and curved frontages these buildings capture the imagination, standing out in a landscape dominated by vacant sites and new-build apartment blocks (so much so that it is possible to buy postcards featuring unconventional landmarks such as the derelict Old Nelson pub from Salford Museum and Art Gallery up the road, hoardings and all). Appreciating these buildings aesthetically, though, is ignoring the inevitable: Chapel Street is due to be transformed with extensive residential and commercial development over the next few years, aimed at attracting new residents into the area. Many of the existing buildings will be demolished.

As the demolition crews finally move in this summer, it is hoped that one wall from the Old Bank building, which was used as a community theatre in the 1950s and 1960s, will remain standing as a readymade sculptural artwork, a 'barometer' which will remain constant as the area changes around it. Working with bricklayers and structural engineers, artist Jen Wu will stabilise the wall before inviting the local community, which ranges from tower block tenants and artists to 'young professionals' resident in newer flats, to take part in dismantling and then moving and rebuilding the wall in an act of 'creative DIY', soundtracked by free and open 'demolition' and 'reconstruction' rave parties. For Jen, who has a background curating projects in London such as transforming major art gallery the ICA into a nightclub, the focus of the project is not just on demolition, but on action, creating a cycle of activity that will help bring people together to celebrate the past at the same time as looking to the future and channelling the DIY spirit which drives places such as nearby arts venue Islington Mill.

At least that's the idea. Jen conceived the work in collaboration with Islington Mill directors Bill Campbell and Maurice Carlin in early 2012, and in December started discussions with English Cities Fund and Urban Vision, which is responsible for overseeing the regeneration of the area. She says the regeneration firms “took a leap of faith” in supporting her ideas, seeing the project as a positive way of empowering and involving local people in the changes taking place their immediate environment. The buildings were due to come down in February 2013, but demolition was delayed – and then around May time the council started to get cold feet due to health and safety concerns and the changes it would entail to the original demolition contract. Now the fences have gone up and demolition is imminent, meaning Jen faces a race against time. She has been meeting with Salford City Council and Bagnall, the demolition contractor, to find a solution so that the events can take place in September rather than July as originally planned, but the future of The Wall is still uncertain; the latest news is that it looks like Bagnall will have to take down the wall and save Jen the bricks, meaning the community action will be just the reconstruction. Jen says:“A compromise, but at least it can still happen!”

Jen's interest in the process of demolition initially grew out of a three-month residency at the Chinese Arts Centre in Manchester which started late in 2011, where she researched the history of Manchester's former musical landmarks which have been demolished, such as the Hacienda nightclub (now rebuilt as apartments – Jen “kept wondering why I couldn't recognise it – it's depressing”) and the notorious Hulme Crescents, which were once the venue for famous parties. She also went out on Manchester's club scene and met those suffused with DIY energy in Manchester today, from Unity Radio and Islington Mill to Kraak space and the Volkov Commanders, finding that “there is something real about it. It's not like it's just setting itself up as an alternative”. Jen became interested in the ways in which spaces where people used to come together, such as nightclubs, have been destroyed and started to explore narratives of regeneration, demolition and starting over again. She documented the demolition of buildings such as the former seaman's mission and Salvation Army centre Stella Maris, which stood just behind Chapel Street next to Islington Mill, becoming interested in both the material process of demolition and the communal psyche of what the building meant to its former users. Despite both Islington Mill and Manchester Modernist Society proposing future uses for the building, which once boasted facilities such as a sprung dance floor, the council was insistent on its demolition, and it is now used as a storage space for building work in the area. Jen made a film about the demolition which was shown at suitably avant-noise band Gnod's Gesamtkunstwerk night at Islington Mill, and Gnod will reciprocate by playing at the parties accompanying The Wall events, closing the circle of Jen's convergent interests in rave and regeneration.

By holding rave parties, Jen hopes to resurrect the spirit of rave in a positive way, bringing together some of the protagonists of the 1980s rave scene in Manchester with musicians who are influenced by their music today and connecting them with the creativity and energy flourishing in Salford now. The Wall is also an opportunity for people to reconnect with the materiality of what's around them, and appreciate the solid sturdiness of brick in a city which is, after all, built predominantly of the material. Jen explains: “Everything is so virtual now, but if you help to take down a wall and rebuild a wall you are contributing to something longer-lasting. People will be able to walk past and say 'I built that'. It doesn't take specialist skills or support any ideology.” Jen has met with representatives from community newspaper M3, and the local residents' association, to gauge interest in the project, and it is hoped that the wall, rebuilt nearby, may then become the starting point of something new, such as a community centre (in an interesting parallel, one local resident was involved in a similar project to save a wall in an old aircraft hangar, which contained a half-finished wartime mural, interrupted by its artist being called up to fight, and succeeded in moving the wall to a museum).

The parameters of The Wall are constantly shifting, and the development of the area is gathering pace. As Jen says, “It's extraordinary what's been happening. Every day something new is there or something is no longer there.” Sometimes The Wall seems impossible to realise, but Jen sees Manchester as an ideal space to try things out and doesn't think The Wall could take place anywhere else. She has now been in Manchester far beyond her original residency period, doggedly trying to see the project through. She explains: “I just want to do something truthful and that I can stand behind as an artist. I didn't give up, because it could happen. Because I got a glimpse of it happening I had to carry it through. So many people said yes and got excited that I couldn't go back.” Jen has convinced those around her of the beauty to be found in a brick wall, and The Wall still exists as a possibility, just in reach of being realised. As she says: “The beauty is in the possibility. I'm always optimistic. If I'm not then who's going to be?”

For the latest news on The Wall keep an eye on www.islingtonmill.com/visual-arts-events.php.

Jen is hosting a 'supper' at Islington Mill on Saturday 13 July from 6-9pm. She will be talking about The Wall for around 45 minutes, then use the rest of the time to get feedback from people about how to re-think the work. For more information visit www.facebook.com/events/467844653307944.

How many quarters make a city? Clue: it's not four

Birmingham has seven designated city quarters¹, Sheffield eleven². In Manchester, the well-known Northern Quarter (and slightly less well-known Green, Civic and Millennium Quarters) will soon be joined by a co-operative quarter (although the Co-op Group hopes the public will take to its official name, NOMA, speculated to be a reference to its geographical position just north of the city centre³) and another, a Medieval Quarter, is proposed. Add to that other well-defined areas of the city which are not officially designated quarters, but could be seen as such – Canal Street and surrounding Gay Village as a gay quarter, Chinatown as a Chinese quarter, a university quarter around Oxford Road – and there are a lot of slices that make up Manchester.

There is a bewildering away of terms for dividing up the city into convenient chunks: corridors (the area around the universities and university hospitals is packaged as the corridor, Manchester's “economic and knowledge powerhouse”⁴), gateways (Southern Gateway, a new residential and business district in an area which had suffered from "a lack of identity and economic purpose"⁵), an urban village (Ancoats), the UK's first Urban Heritage Park⁶ (Castlefield) and even a curry mile. The language and concepts used to describe quarters is similar to that applied to these other corridors, gateways and urban villages, and they share many of the same attributes and aims – rejuvenating an area through mixed-use developments that will attract business and investment to the city and help raise its profile beyond the city boundaries.

Quarters often reflect the aspirations of a place, and are used as a way of conveniently packaging and marketing the different types of activities that make up the diverse life of a town or city. If a town or city has a well-defined creative quarter, for example, a hub of cultural industries, it will not just attract creative people but will also catch the eye of tourists and shoppers eager for an alternative retail or leisure experience. This provides customers for other facilities such as hotels and transport, and therefore acts as an incentive for business investment. Likewise, a heritage or tourist quarter puts a city's attractions conveniently into one place for visitors – and attracts the sort of retail or dining experiences that go with it.

The use of quarters to define areas of a city is nothing new. Think of Paris's quartiers – meaning living quarters. Cities have long had designated areas based on ethnicity – Jewish Quarters being a widespread example – and Birmingham, to name just one city, still has Irish and Chinese Quarters. Other quarters grew up around shared characteristics uniting the people who lived or worked in an area, such as speaking a common language (Latin around the universities in Paris' famous Latin Quarter, during the Middle Ages, a name which struck). Other quarters were named after the industry that was prevalent in an area, for example Birmingham's renowned Jewellery Quarter, catchily marketed as 'Birmingham's Gem'⁷. Or they may simply be descriptive of what's there, like Altrincham's Market Quarter, or what goes on there, such as Leicester's Business Quarter. Others are defined in geographical terms, including Manchester's Northern Quarter, which also goes by the postcode N4, or based on obvious physical attributes, such as Stoke-on-Trent's Canal Quarter. Others reflect the type of people the area has come to attract, or wishes to attract, or tells members of a certain demographic they will find likeminded people there – for example Liverpool's Gay Quarter. They can also be a tool in conservation, if a number of noteworthy buildings are clustered in one area.

Manchester's Civic Quarter, outlined in 2009's Civic Quarter – Manchester Central Regeneration Framework, aims to use Manchester's heritage, including some of its key buildings – the town hall, central library, Manchester central and St Peter's Square – as well as its transport links and infrastructure, to attract business and institutions to Manchester in “a new meeting place in the city centre”. Its goal is to extend both the city centre and business district and: “Bring together the values of civic pride and civic leadership, with international trade and commerce, world class innovation and research, at the heart of an entrepreneurial community.”⁸It also acts as a link between the various other districts that comprise the city centre: Spinningfields, the corridor etc.

The proliferation of quarters all over the country today, some based on a logical connection with an area and some more tenuous, often coincides with redevelopment and regeneration. Manchester's Millennium Quarter (there are also Millennium Quarters/Villages in London) refers to the redevelopment that took place around Manchester Cathedral after the area was destroyed by an IRA bomb in 1996. Its name reflects that rebuilding took place in the lead-up to the Millennium as well as the fact it incorporated one of a number of national projects funded by the National Lottery through the Millennium Commission⁹.

Typically, quarters incorporate new or improved public space (Cathedral Gardens, check), retail (Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, the Triangle, check), leisure (the Printworks, check) and residential opportunities. Often, refurbishments of traditional buildings sit alongside eye-catching new builds. The Millennium Quarter acknowledges Manchester's past, containing some of its most historic buildings (the cathedral, Chetham's Library), but it also contains new flagship development such as Ian Simpson's Urbis building, which was conceived as a museum for the city.

Soon, the area could have another quarter, currently dubbed the Medieval Quarter¹⁰ by local media, that will straddle two city centres, linking to the Greengate development in Salford. Plans include a new cathedral square, as well as a redesign of Cathedral Gardens, new memorials to the anti-slavery movement, the suffragette movement and firefighters. A statue of Oliver Cromwell, currently in exile in the suburbs, could also be moved there.

Just down the road is NOMA – colloquially dubbed the Co-op Quarter to reflect the fact that the Manchester-based Co-operative Group is redeveloping a huge, 20 acre site¹¹ near its new headquarters. The £1 billion plan, funded by the Co-operative Group with some investment from the Council, will see the makeup of the area fundamentally changed to attract new up-market shops, offices and cafes, potentially generating thousands of jobs. New public spaces will be created and the inner ring road will be moved. The Co-operative Group will be hoping that the quarter can be seen as a physical manifestation of its values, which include commitment to community and environment.

Quarters can create a sense of place. Put a name on it and people can feel an affinity with a place and identify with the characteristics associated with it. As people are increasingly encouraged to live in city centres as opposed to the suburbs, residing within a distinct quarter makes it a lot easier to see yourself as part of a neighbourhood. When asked where you're from you might no longer have an area such as 'Chorlton' or 'Withington' on the tip of your tongue, but being able to say you live in 'the Northern Quarter' or 'the Green Quarter' helps whoever you are talking to identify a more specific locale than the more general term 'city centre', which encompasses a wider geographical area.

The advantages of this for developers are clear: from 2004 onwards, the Green Quarter was created just outside of Manchester City Centre, referring to the largest ever housing development in the city. Developers Crosby Homes promised a “self-contained urban oasis, combining 10 cutting-edge apartment blocks, business accommodation, hotel, leisure and retail facilities set against the precious commodity of lush landscaped open green space”. Sold on its close proximity to Victoria Station, the MEN Arena, the Printworks and leisure and retail opportunities, the developers highlight “the convenience factor of a lifestyle on their doorstep”. They tempt: “Are you addicted to city living, yet yearn for more than a splash of greenery? Do you enjoy the buzz of the urban social whirl and the spark of metropolitan business, but would relish having a haven to escape to?”¹²The green part? It was envisaged that more than half of the area would be public open space with lawns, tree-lined walkways, water features and landscaping.

A common example of the adoption of quarters as a regeneration strategy can be seen in cathedral quarters, which are found in towns and cities around the country, including Sheffield. Blackburn's town centre strategy¹³ works with “the inherent and distinct uses of existing areas”, including the cathedral quarter, which has “one of the most established identities in the town centre”, to “encourage a unique sense of place”. Heritage quarters are being established in towns and cities including Gravesend and around the harbour in Sunderland. University quarters include Stoke-on-Trent's catchily-named UniQ, a partnership between local education providers that aims to raise aspiration and increase skills in the town.

One of the most prominent types of quarters is the creative, or cultural quarter, which can be found in towns and cities around the country including: Southampton, Brighton, Folkestone, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leicester, Oldham, Liverpool, Stoke-on-Trent, Doncaster, Boston, Colchester, Leamington Spa, Wolverhampton, Bedford, Bury and Warrington¹⁴. The Local Government (LG) Improvement and Development Group put together a guide to cultural quarters, which it defines as “an existing cluster of creative and cultural industries, or the desire to create a cluster of creative and cultural industries”¹⁵. Quarters give creative people the opportunity to “work, live and socialise in one environment”, and the LG foresees the associated networks and facilities growing up around them. In Folkestone, Kent, the Creative Quarter was initiated by a charitable Trust buying and refurbishing, then letting, empty properties to creative businesses and artists, supplemented by events such as a book festival and art triennial¹⁶.

Whilst there is debate over how desirable it is to set out to create a creative area, as opposed to letting it evolve naturally over time (and there are also concerns about the knock-on effects of 'gentrifying' an area, including pricing out its previous occupants), Manchester's Northern Quarter, which was one of the first cultural quarters in the country along with Sheffield's Creative Industries Quarter, is seen as a successful example of what a cultural quarter should be and do. As the LG site observes, “the most successful examples of cultural quarters usually had some longstanding cultural activity or venues”. The Northern Quarter became established as an alternative to mainstream shops such as the Arndale Centre, its lower rents attracting a mix of cafes, bars, vintage clothes shops, independent book shops, record shops and galleries. It also has a distinctive nightlife, with a reputation for alternative gigs and club nights. Its proximity to the city centre shops, as well as transport interchanges such as Shudehill and Piccadilly, means the Northern Quarter is described in the Northern Quarter Development Framework Report of 2003 as: “A key piece in the city centre jigsaw, an area different in character and function to any other part of the city centre and of great strategic importance to Manchester as a city of distinctive quarters.”¹⁷

Increased investment in and focus on the Northern Quarter as an area came about after Manchester City Council commissioned a Northern Quarter Regeneration Strategy in the mid-nineties. This set out a vision for a mixed-use area, including increased residential space, as the Northern Quarter's role shifted from housing traditional industries such as textile manufacture to incubating new creative industries. The Northern Quarter Association was formed, a voluntary body comprising residents, representatives of trade and users of the area, and various environmental changes were made such as commissioning public art to make clear the area's identity as a cultural hot-spot. Around a decade later, the Northern Quarter Development Framework Report observed: “The individuality of the N4 remains – it is not currently a ‘corporate’ location, a place for large firms or for retail or leisure chains. It is the place for the independent sector, where residents of Manchester and visitors can buy high quality, unusual products and soak up the atmosphere of a truly ‘working quarter’.”¹

Councils are honing in on quarters and creating visions and plans for areas at postcode level, but quarters are part of a bigger strategy to put cities like Manchester on the world-map. Ensuring certain quarters cover specific functions ensures that Manchester is seen to possess everything you would expect to find in a world city. The Northern Quarter Development Framework Report explicitly states of the Northern Quarter: “This non mainstream offer is important for any ‘global’ city.”¹⁹

Cities change and evolve up over time. The name 'Northern Quarter' entered popular use because it referred to an area which already had a distinct identity and role in the city. Few people outside those who live in the Green Quarter refer to it as such (or would even have reason to think about it as a 'place'), and it remains to be seen whether the other quarters, or even the name NOMA, will enter popular conversation as place-markers.

Quarters have been at the back of my mind for a while as something I would like to know more about. Above is merely a collection of things I found interesting about them. If I had had more time and space I would have liked to have also thought about the creation of Spinningfields as a 'luxury shopping quarter', and thought more about other concepts such as urban villages and had a closer look at the overlap with quarters and the language that is used to define and sell them.

1 For a list of the seven city quarters outlined in Birmingham's Big City Plan see http://bigcityplan.birmingham.gov.uk/tag/seven-quarters/

2 For a list of Sheffield's eleven quarters see http://sccplugins.sheffield.gov.uk/urban_design/quarters_city_centre.htm

3 See http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/News/NOMAehwhere

4 For more on Corridor Manchester visit http://www.corridormanchester.com/

5 See http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/business/s/1008378_business_district_goahead

6 See http://www.manchester.gov.uk/info/511/conservation_areas/972/castlefield_conservation_area/2

7 See http://www.jewelleryquarter.net/

8 Download the Civic Quarter – Manchester Central Regeneration Framework from http://www.corridormanchester.com/_filestore/corridormanchester/civicquarter-manchester-central-regeneration-framework-1-pdf/original/CivicQuarter_Manchester_Central_Regeneration_Framework[1].pdf

9 For more on Millennium Projects, including Urbis, see http://www.millennium.gov.uk/cgi-site/awards.cgi?action=detail&id=87&t=2

10 See http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1435585_cromwells-new-stand-plan-for-statue-to-move-to-manchesters-new-medieval-quarter

11 See http://www.noma53.com/ for more information on what's proposed.

12 Visit the Green Quarter's web page at http://crosbylendlease.co.uk/?u=48_Welcome%2Bto%2Bgreenquarter

13 See http://www.blackburn.gov.uk/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.2472 for more information on the town centre strategy.

14 I came across this map of the UK's cultural quarters via a blog post on taCity (http://tacity.co.uk/2011/03/01/the-uks-cultural-quarters/): http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=206639182478297374758.00049c3bf7eb53f1c8a72&z=7

15 See http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=11224715

16 See http://www.creativequarterfolkestone.com/

17 Northern Quarter Development Framework Report, 2003

18 Northern Quarter Development Framework Report, 2003

19 Northern Quarter Development Framework Report, 2003

There are some great videos on Glasgow School of Art's Vimeo channel, including a lecture on culture-led regeneration, which looks at creative or cultural quarters in Manchester/Salford, Sheffield, Newcastle/Gateshead and Glasgow:

Ann Markusen, 'Arts & Culture as Regeneration: Four UK Cities Experiences' from GSA on Vimeo.

There is also a good lecture on the idea of creative cities and creative classes, and the differing experiences of big cities and small/medium size cities:

Graeme Evans, Creative Cities, Creative Spaces? Form and Function from GSA on Vimeo.