A debate featuring Charles Landry and Paul Chatterton.
The American cities guru Richard Florida has said that: “Time after time the people I speak with say there are signals that a place “gets it” – that it embraces the culture of the Creative Age”.
So does Huddersfield ‘get it’?
Someone must have thought so once because in 1997 Huddersfield dubbed itself ‘The Creative Town’. The inspiration for that bold gesture came from Charles Landry, who went on to celebrate the town as an model for how small places could reinvent themselves in his book The Creative City.
We have invited Landry back to take the pulse of the town. Ten years on what does he feel about the creative city in general as an idea and has Huddersfield fulfilled the promise he thought it showed back in 1997? And what new insights does he have to share from his most recent book The Art of City-making?
Paul Chatterton, from the University of Leeds, was never convinced by the Creative City idea. He describes it as “a comfortable ‘feel good’ concept for consultants, policy makers and politicians rather than a serious agenda for radical change”. We have invited him along to challenge Landry and put forward his own ideal of how Huddersfield and towns like them should be going forward.
More information at:
http://www.charleslandry.com
http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/p.chatterton/
Charles Landry is the founder of Comedia. He is a leading advisor on city revitalization and has worked throughout the world, most recently as ‘thinker in residence’ for the city of Perth, Australia. His books include The Art of City Making (2006); The Creative City: A toolkit for Urban Innovators (2000), published to widespread acclaim; Riding the Rapids: Urban Life in an Age of Complexity (2004) and, with Marc Pachter, Culture @ the Crossroads (2001). His association with Kirklees first began in 1993 when he advised the Council on its first cultural policy. He was a board member of the Huddersfield Creative Town Initiative from 1997 to 2000.
Dr Paul Chatterton is a geography lecturer at the University of Leeds, his home town. His interest is in urban change and regeneration policy and alternative models for organising social and economic life and his work focuses on both British cities and Latin America. He did a major study of the growing night-time economy in 6 cities. His two current projects are autonomousgeographies.org which explores the ways in which social activists and community groups are developing self-managed models for organising social and economic life beyond the welfare state; and Who runs Cities? (see www.whorunsleeds.org.uk) which promotes citizen engagement in urban governance.
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15 comments:
Doesn't every city call itself a creative city these days - to the extent that it ends up meaning very little. I see these days in Huddersfield we are blue sky country or some such. Well - it's pissing down today. But then I remember the time that Bradford was Bouncing Back ... from?
The trouble is that the marketing people get hold of the essence of something and kill it with blandness. let's hope this evening goes a bit further - gets to the nub of how uncomfortable creativity can really be
Maybe they are all creative cities and towns because people like Charles Landry make a business out of going round the world as consultants telling every town and city they come to that they should be creative.
Nice work if you can get it!
Oh and don't forget "Bradford. A surprising place" You think it's going to be rubbish... and you get a pleasant surprise. Huddersfield - you think it's going to be dark and satanic and then the sun shines
surely before we talk about a creative city we have to define what we mean by creative (in that the main source of a place's creativity is the people who choose to create there)? Are the people working in the 'creative industries' all creative people? Are they all being creative in their day-to-day jobs? What about the people working their way up in those organisations, wading through admin or servicing other people's ambitions? Are they being creative? Do their opinions matter?
Maybe where we've got stuck in Huddersfield is in thinking that cultural industries themselves define the limits of our creative ambition:
"Redefine the scope of creativity, focusing much more on unleashing the mass of ordinary, day-to-day, dormant creativity that lise within most of us. The focus should fall equally on social and other forms of creativity. This would represent a shift in attention from assuming creativity only comprises the creative industries and media. Creativity is in danger of being swallowed up by fashion"
Charles Landry - The Art of City Making
So if you're hoping to address wider issues of creativity, is this event targeted at the mass of creative people engaged outside the 'creative industries'? Or is it another moment for massaging the egos of Huddersfield's creative industries movers and shakers?
well ... it's a bit of both. We want people from the cultural field there because we don't feel we've spent enough time and energy discussing the important issues and challenging the feel-good solutions. But there's no bar on those of us who would not use the term creative industries to define themeselves. As well as that, each event is also targeted at different sectors - so we hope to get an interesting cross section of people - creative or not.
And with regard to massaging egos - what can I say - as we face what Jane Jacobs has pointed out as a dark age ahead: identifying the five signs of cultural collapse - then let's not see it as a time for being smug. Or in other words - don't get me started.
But the proof of the pudding comes in the eating - come along and undermine as many egos as you fancy... see you next week?
Thank you for a very interesting and stimulating evening. Only trouble is, you ruined my sleep as I couldn't switch off from the discussion when I went to bed.
As I said, it was a fascinating evening but, where the hell was Huddersfield University? Apart from a lady from 'architecture' (good on you), they were just not there. As Charles Landry said 'creativity' spans much farther than the creative and arts industries. As far as I am aware the university runs courses not only in architecture but in industrial design and - innovation and entrepreneurship! The university is possibly also the most visual 'symbol' of development in the town at the moment with all the new buildings going up along with, of course, the new Media Centre building. And, if they run courses in entrepreneurship, isn't that the real challenge of a 'creative city' to be innovative and forward looking and by becoming a forward looking and innovative town it can filter 'down' to the masses. We can go to art-events and say we are a creative town but if the people on the street are not interested in the arts, they haven't gained anything from the experiment. So isn't the real challenge then to engage and grow new modern businesses in this 'creative city' project and, maybe, to achieve that, we need to drop 'creative' and use the word 'innovative' instead thereby, it becoming a more inclusive term? And surely, a good university should be a part of that too.
Last night was a challenging disucsison linking creativity with issues of power.
Ive got a new book out which follows much of this up. Have a look at:
DO IT YOURSELF: www.handbookforchange.org
Cheers
paul
Although i agree it would be good to get more of an involvement from the University, I am not so sure the answer is just more creative or innovative businesses. But rather a whole new approach to how we deal with issues in the town - whether that be planning, economic development or the racism endemic in parts of the district.
So, 'anonymous', would that be a question of better communication between people and sections of society do you think? It would be interesting to hear from someone if town planning etc has been proved to work towards solving the problems with tension between sections of people, and what that process involved. Through public events, better communication channels, better public places, policing, regeneration........?
No.
Huddersfield seems like a nice but lazy place with no music to speak of.
We visted Timeless Festival. Modern hip programme. Very cool. Strong ethnic theme. Urban flavas, rock, hippity hop. This is no more? Why?
Too old?
Creative Towns always have buzzin music scene.
If you want to be true Creative Towns you must encourage music. It is the key. Creative Towns need Music or they are just paper.
Madonna: Music Brings The People Together
this is an opportunity for a great
positive open discussion.
Excellent. Interesting that you mention the fate of live music, the University and the Timeless Music Festival. Have you seen
some of the remarks on the Huddersfield University Students' petition to save Timeless Festival???? Top drawer.
And this event is relevant to your forthcoming debate on multiculturalism too. Paste that into your browser (oooh):
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?tcmf2007
It is difficult to envisage how this town will ever develop any depth of creative field(s) until some fundamental revisions take place. If this town cannot bring itself to make the transition from town to city status we are always going to hankering after something that will be forever be beyond our reach. The practical difference between a town and a city is very marked, not least in the general self-confidence and financial rewards (for example, in education)such a move would generate.
However, such a change would mean that the people who have perpetuated the mythology of this town's creative potential would be exposed as inadequate and largely incompetent, driven mostly be a self-serving agenda that will keep up us in the same mediocre loop. What happened to the £4 million pounds of Creative town money that was spent? What the hell have we got to show for it. Absolutely nothing.
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