Beyond the Creative City
An international interdisciplinary network examining policy models and practices for creative placemaking ‘beyond the creative city’.
Key people: Professor of Cultural Policy Abigail Gilmore, Dr Claire Burnill-Maier, Institute for Cultural Practices
Duration: 01/09/22 - 01/03/24
Funder:
- Manchester-Melbourne-Toronto Research Fund and Arts and Humanities Research Council
- Follow-on projects supported by ESRC Festival of Social Science 2024, UKRI/AHRC DCMS Cultural Placemaking Fellowship and the SEED Research & Scholarship Fund
For more information, visit the Beyond the Creative City project page.
About the project
The ‘Beyond the Creative City’ network involved international academics from across disciplines including economics, urban planning, geography, sociology, cultural policy and creative practice to develop a shared research and knowledge exchange agenda.
Bringing together interdisciplinary research with policy and practitioner experiences, the research team identified challenges for places and creative communities that have been previously ‘left behind’ by national policy and investment, specifically in the area of urban regeneration and creative place-making in left behind ‘satellite towns’ and places that are outside of core cities.
The research team asked what happens ‘beyond the creative city’ in endemic and post-Covid urban spaces including rural areas, small cities, satellite towns, peri-urban settlements, peripheral suburbs, and diffuse networks brought together through digital technologies. In policy and practice, creative placemaking often assumes wholly positive relationships between creative economies and local development.
This followed the highly influential paradigm of the ‘Creative City’ as a strategic factor in urban planning, reproduced and transferred world-wide, but criticised for lack of place-sensitivity and for masking (and sometimes exacerbating) inequalities.
The Covid-19 pandemic has generated further challenges to the Creative City model, by disrupting business models of creative industries and creating new cultural geographies, hollowing out city centres, and increasing precarity, inequity, hybrid-working and a return to the hyper-local.
The research team consisted of Prof Abigail Gilmore and Dr Claire Burnhill-Maier at the University of Manchester as well as project teams at the Universities of Melbourne and Toronto.
How are arts, culture and creative industries used to animate places and regenerate spaces beyond major cities and their centres? What are the policy challenges for growing sustainable and inclusive creative economies and how do some places get ‘left behind’? This international interdisciplinary network examined policy models and practices of creative placemaking beyond the ‘creative city’ paradigm.
Professor Abigail Gilmore
Research outputs
The Beyond the Creative City network produced agenda-setting and peer-reviewed research, policy engagement, and creative digital outputs.
With three study visit programmes in Manchester, Melbourne, and Toronto, associated workshops with academics and practitioners, and creative documentation, the network brought together existing knowledge with new challenges for creative placemaking through scoping, discussion and debate.
Learn more about these project activities by visiting this link.
This commissioned research explores the development of area-based policy models in the UK to support the development of Creative Improvement Districts (CIDs).
Duration: April – September 2022
Funder: The University of Manchester and Bruntwood
Key people: Professor of Cultural Policy Abigail Gilmore (University of Manchester), Professor of Poetry John McAuliffe (Creative Manchester Director), Carl Fraser (University of Manchester), Ailbhe Treacy (University of Manchester), Eleana Brearley (University of Manchester), Bethany Adam (Bruntwood)
The report reflects on the activities and outcomes from the Placeholders project which emerged out of a collaboration between Bruntwood Group Ltd. and the University of Manchester.
The project objectives were to create, test and refine a process for engaging young people in town centre place-making, with particular attention to young women as a recognised group who have been historically under-represented in consultation processes1. Its aim was to encourage participation from communities with a specific focus on younger people within Stretford.
The project involved the engagement with over 100 young people living, socialising or in education in the Stretford area. Participatory methods were adopted to overcome the challenges of involving young people within place-making processes.
We also engaged with over 50 social, community, outreach and activity-based organisations who work with young people in the area and who helped facilitate, promote and in some cases co-host our events with their young people.
The report offers reflections on and recommendations for facilitating participatory processes for engagement. A key recommendation is to carry out this process at an earlier stage of an urban development plan to help amplify the voice of young people as key users of public spaces who can identify important and useful areas of action.
Furthermore, the report recommends the dedication of someone with a permanent role in a stakeholder organisation to act as a continuous point of engagement with young people in Stretford, both during the time of participation and remaining a point of contact afterwards.
Central Library Manchester, Wednesday 6 November 2024, 5.30 – 7.30pm
Organisers: Prof Abi Gilmore & Dr Claire Burnill-Maier (School of Arts Languages and Cultures), Dr Eric Lybeck (Manchester Institute for Education/School of Education, Environment and Development), University of Manchester
What kinds of cultural infrastructure do places need to thrive? How might they attract visitors and investment whilst providing quality of life and creative expression for their residents? Who has a stake in local arts and cultural provision, and how do they make change happen?
This event combined creative practice and research to explore the challenges for places beyond the ‘creative city’ with panel discussion. It aimed to showcase new ideas and thinking about cultural provision and policy from researchers, creative practitioners, policymakers and community leaders involved in placemaking in coastal resorts and places on the periphery of large conurbations.
The event builds on research practice and case studies in the satellite towns in Greater Manchester and coastal town of Southport, Liverpool City-Region in the North West of England.
The event also launched a related research report produced by researchers at the University of Manchester in collaboration with Bruntwood on engaging young people in placemaking.
Further information on the background research project and initial film can be found here: Changing Places: Creative Improvement Districts in Post-Industrial Manchester
You can find further information on the Engine Room, Southport, on their website.
Participant Bios
Simon Buckley works as an artist under the name Not Quite Light, making work with photography, film, text, audio, music and performance. Mixed media commissions include ‘Dark Days, Luminous Nights’ in collaboration with the Manchester Collective, ‘Our Future is Ancient’ with the Barnaby Festival and a book ‘You Live With Us, We Live With You’ for 5 Plus Architects.
Anna Rowe is Project Director of New Philanthropy for Arts & Culture (NPAC), now part of Figurative. NPAC’s goal is to increase philanthropic support for arts and culture nationally, through the development of place-based partnerships and underpinned by a large-scale match funding campaign.
Pete Courtie is a highly experienced cultural and creative specialist with a passion for nurturing effective, outcome driven partnerships between public and private sector partners to deliver tangible results for a broad range of beneficiaries.
Marie-Claire Daly (or MC) is Head of Culture at Greater Manchester Combined Authority with responsibility for investment, policy and strategy. This includes advising GM Mayor Andy Burnham, management of the Greater Manchester Music Commission, Town of Culture and more. She has recently led on GM’s culture strategy and negotiation of the cultural element of Greater Manchester’s trailblazer devolution deal.
Laura Sillars is a curator, academic, cultural producer and institutional leader, working with organisations including Tate, FACT, Artangel, Site Gallery and MIMA and as a board member with Engage, FutureEverything, Workplace and the Advisory Board of the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Carran Waterfield is an international award-winning theatre and performance maker, writer and creative teacher. She has produced a body of devised professional works spanning over thirty years. Some of this work has met with distinguished international critical acclaim. She was the Artistic Director and Founder of multi-award- winning Triangle Theatre est. 1988 (Coventry, UK).
Antony Rowland has published four poetry collections: The Land of Green Ginger (Salt, 2008), I Am a Magenta Stick (Salt, 2012), M (Arc, 2017) and Caldebroc (Arc, 2023). Rowland received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2000, and he was awarded the Manchester Poetry Prize in 2012. His poems were included in Roddy Lumsden’s landmark anthology Identity Parade: New British and Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010).
This film by Simon Buckley, Not Quite Light was made in collaboration with researchers Abigail Gilmore and Claire Burnill-Maier, supported by the AHRC Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre and funded by the SALC Research Impact Fund.
It was commissioned as creative documentation for the 'Beyond the Creative City' project which is looking at policy development for urban regeneration in satellite towns and places beyond conventional creative city spaces in Manchester, Melbourne and Toronto.
The film visits three local authority areas in Greater Manchester, Rochdale, Oldham and Salford to hear from those involved in the development of 'creative improvement districts'. These place-based projects are raising funds and investing in new buildings to support artists, creatives and cultural organisations with the aim of animating and rejuvenating 'left behind' places.
This film by Simon Buckley, Not Quite Light, was made in collaboration with Prof Abigail Gilmore, Dr Claire Burnill-Maier and Dr Eric Lybeck and the creative communities of Southport, with thanks to the Engine Room, the Atkinson, Southport Bid, Sefton Council, the University of Manchester, Southport Learning Trust, Southport Contemporary Arts, Stand Up for Southport, Spectrum Alliance Movement and other supporters and friends. This project was supported by the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2024, UKRI/AHRC DCMS Cultural Placemaking Fellowship and the SEED Research & Scholarship Fund.
It was a joint commission as part of a broader investigation into needs and opportunities for supporting local cultural infrastructure, led by Prof Abi Gilmore, and to provide creative documentation for the 'Engine Room' initiative, led by Dr Eric Lybeck. The Engine Room is a co-working and co-learning space designed to counter the trend of creatives leaving Southport for employment and opportunities. It forms part of a strategic effort to produce a generative ‘civic ecology’ where creative and digital entrepreneurs can start and scale new industries locally.
The film is a sequel to Simon Buckley's earlier work devised with Prof Abi Gilmore and Dr Claire Burnill-Maier utilising a similar methodology of interviews and visual documentation of 'left-behind' places on the periphery of conurbations. The film visits different locations in Southport, Sefton Council, to hear from residents and creatives from Southport about their perceptions of the town and its surrounding areas as well as their vision for its cultural future.