Stacks of potential???

[cotton]

Sorry, don't know if anybody has posted this article up before, but if not, peeps should read this article.
What do you think??

ww w.society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,,1506139,00.html

[michele cryer]

Stacks of potential

Pop impresario Anthony Wilson talks to Helen Carter about how curry by the canal, a 'fashion tower' and Philippe Starck garden sheds would regenerate east Lancashire

Wednesday June 15, 2005
The Guardian


Anthony Wilson and Yvette Livesey, who wrote the Pennine Lancashire report. Photograph: Don McPhee


He set up the legendary Factory Records and launched the careers of Joy Division, New Order and Happy Mondays. He also opened the iconic Hacienda nightclub in Manchester - now transformed into expensive apartments - and was immortalised in the film 24 Hour Party People. Now Anthony Wilson, pop impresario, TV presenter, creative consultant, wants to regenerate Burnley.
Wilson, along with his partner, Yvette Livesey, were hired last year by the housing renewal agency Elevate East Lancashire to sprinkle some creative magic over the region's former mill towns. They were asked to come up with some "blue sky thinking" - or, in consultant-speak, "imagineering" - on how to regenerate the area, culturally and socially.

This week, they publish Dreaming of Pennine Lancashire, their 20-page report. They prefer to call it "A Wish List: A Series of Consummations Devoutly to be Wished". It contains some striking proposals, including a "fashion tower", Philippe Starck-designed "chic sheds", the creation of a canalside "curry mile" (in conscious emulation of Rusholme in Manchester), and a football theme park.

The region would be rebranded as Pennine Lancashire, suggest Wilson/Livesey, noting drily that while this has the approval of brand consultants who admire its "upmarket connotations", they just like its simplicity. They report: "As someone said to us in the course of our inquiries in east Lancashire: 'Anything with a compass direction in the title is a bureaucratic concept, not a place.'"

The legend Pennine Lancashire, the report says, would also bestow upon it a catchy two-letter acronym: PL, as in LA for Los Angeles. The most successful rebranding of recent years, they claim contentiously, "has been to turn Milton Keynes, the suburb with the plastic sheep, into MK, the new hip retreat for London". They add, in case you were wondering: "The classic iambus/dactyl construction, two syllables followed by three, is why it works so well verbally, if you forgive this small piece of prac crit."

You quickly realise that this is no ordinary regeneration paper. Epigrammatic, self-mocking, occasionally pretentious, arch, knowing, amusing, surprising and quite often inspirational - some might say it is authentically Wilson-esque were it not a collaboration. Wilson and Livesey, who both are from the north-west, describe themselves as "two rebels". They say their report is a mission statement, a flag-waving. Mischievously, it declares: "It is hoped it will inform and provoke the public servants who are tasked with looking after the public."

The Wilson and Livesey canvas encompasses Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley, Hyndburn, Pendle and Rossendale. Wilson argues that, in the industrial revolution, these towns were the "muscle" alongside Manchester, which was the heart, and Liverpool, which was the mouth. Unfortunately, this muscle has wasted away in the last two decades, the victim of the collapse in the housing market and the textile industry, and appalling social and economic deprivation. Drastic measures, they say, are needed to bring about change.

One of their central themes is pride, "which is utterly lacking in east Lancashire", according to Wilson. A section of the report is assigned solely to this theme, the "we are not worthy" attitude they feel is endemic. Wilson and Livesey say this was encapsulated in a north-west regional TV programme on public art. "As well as the usual vox pops of the 'what is this modern art rubbish?', there was the frightening attitude of one woman who said: 'This would be all right for Manchester, but not us.'"

The Wilson-Livesey vision hardly lacks confidence. One of the most provocative ideas is for Starck-designed allotment sheds, as a way of making gardening fashionable to the young creatives that PL wants to attract. "The idea came to me because I want to grow my own vegetables - organic stuff," Livesey says. "I have been trying to encourage allotments. But, driving through Accrington, I saw all these crappy, rundown brown wooden sheds and I suddenly realised: 'Are you going to want to hang out in an allotment like this?'"

They know, you suspect, that "chic sheds" is virtually guaranteed to invite derision. But you suspect they know too that the publicity the idea will generate will help give PL a media profile. Elsewhere, they write: "Appearance in colour supplements is a slight thing, unless you are a B-list celebrity; but it encourages business to invest and move in."

Similarly eye-catching is the fashion tower. Only "something concrete and truly impressive" will restore local pride, and get the areas talked about by the chattering classes, they declare. The tower would be a "vertical story of the industrial revolution as art installation. It would boast incubator units for new fashion-based businesses and a school of fashion and design. There would be a single shop, selling "items designed only for this shop by northern fashionistas", such as Vivienne Westwood, Wayne Hemingway and Matthew Williamson. At the top of the tower would be a bar built by an architect of international repute.

The report says: "The fashion tower will remember that the past, the industrial revolution, was the product of the present and future; the child of fashion, of a worldwide desire for the clean coolness of cotton to replace the rough surfaces of wool and hide."

Wilson is naturally unabashed at such ambition. "We want to get people starting to look up, and this tower will lift people's horizons," he says. Ideas tumble out of the report: PL as a "playground for Greater Manchester"; as a host for outdoor and extreme pursuits (Wilson has a vision of "a hairy person in front of a sports utility vehicle" with a windsurfer and mountain bikes on it); a festival of modernist garden design; a school of community cohesion ("establishing best practice for troubled parts of the country") at the University of Central Lancashire; a half day a week of state-funded bookkeeping services for creative artists; free public address systems and lights for pub bands; a public celebration of local heroes ("Hello, Alastair Campbell ...").

Almost inevitably, the ubiquitous US guru of cultural regeneration, Richard Florida, gets a mention, though Wilson and Livesey cleverly anticipate the experts' groans. "Please don't think the idea of name-checking Richard Florida is redundant for poor old east Lancashire," the report chides. Florida discovered that the greatest thriving, most moved-to bohemian town of the modern age is Seattle, they point out, and there are parallels with PL.

"Yes, it's got Microsoft in the hills and Meg Ryan in the movie, but that's now," the report says. "Twenty years ago, with Boeing in decline, Seattle was washed up, and someone famously graffiti'd on the Interstate sign going south: 'Would the last one out please turn off the lights.' And for further encouragement, please note that the climate in Seattle is slightly wetter, slightly colder and slightly foggier than Pennine Lancashire."

Seattle has its ocean sound, PL has the Leeds-Liverpool canal, says Wilson, without a blush. It will be PL's job to exploit the canal's leisure and development potential. "It is only with this bohemian culture you create the living environment for the creative class - the only way forward for the old smokestack towns - and surely east Lancashire is the world repository of the smokestack town."

Wilson believes PL can become the Silverlake (a "dull hilltop suburb of Hollywood" that he compares to London's Hampstead) of Greater Manchester, attracting younger professionals with starter dwellings for the young creative/middle classes. "We're not forcing something here," he says. "Artists are already moving to Bacup, and Ramsbottom is already a desirable suburb for young creatives in Manchester."

Transport is another issue. Wilson is keen to reinstate a short section of railway - known as the Todmorden Curve - that would allow trains to travel directly between Manchester and Burnley. He admits that he became obsessed with the idea, although it is not, he says, particularly popular with Elevate. Not that Wilson and Livesey are setting up in opposition to the local politicians and civil servants they encountered. "In fact, we were shocked by the talent, imagination and resolve of everyone we met," he says.

The report calls for the establishment of public spaces at the centre of each town ("the most significant thing you can do for a town"), employing the likes of urban designer Martha Schwartz, whose Exchange Square "is the true flowering of the new Manchester". It is often the smaller, softer details that make the difference, Wilson says. "The regeneration in Hulme [in inner-city Manchester] was not about the bridge. It was about when somebody planted daffodils - that is when it begins to change because it shows people care.

Of their vision for PL, Wilson says: "Some people might think they are leftfield and off-the-wall ideas. But the response has been very positive. There has hardly been any criticism."

For all his playfulness and teasing, Wilson has form when it comes to urban renewal - he was awarded an honorary degree from the Open University for his work on the regeneration of Manchester.

And it is from Manchester that Wilson and Livesey take their lead - "the single most successful regeneration process over the last 30 years". But PL is an altogether different challenge. "It could be a world better than Cardiff and Birmingham, and even Tokyo and LA," Wilson says.

[michele cryer]

Thanks for that link Cotton...I've copy/pasted the article because the link wouldn't work properly unless you typed in all the extra numbers and stuff at the end.

Interesting ideas coming from Tony Wilson and co...not sure if I like some of the 'yuppie'-sounding suggestions however...what does everyone else think about it?