Newcaste-Gateshead named in world eightcreative cities

Date : 2002-09-02 Publication : The Guardian

Newsweek puts Tyneside in top eight of world's cultural centres.
Newcastle-Gateshead, the Tyneside double act that grabbed international attention with a huge steel angel and an art gallery converted from a flour mill, has been named as one of the world's eight top creative cities.
The accolade from Newsweek magazine comes at just the right time to boost the councils' bid to become European capital of culture in 2008. Civic leaders are delighted at joining other "funky towns" on a list which might be described by outsiders as surprising, not to say eccentric.

Newcastle-Gateshead is sharing global glory with Austin, Texas; Tijuana, Mexico; Zhongguancun, China; Marseilles, Cape Town and Antwerp. The most unexpected city on the list is Kabul, to which painters, film-makers and musicians are said to be streaming back after years in exile.

Newsweek tells the familiar story of how Gateshead started its regeneration through culture by welcoming to a site by the A1(M) the Angel of the North, Antony Gormley's 60ft high statue with wider wings than a Boeing 767. That led in turn to the Gateshead "winking eye" millennium bridge, the Baltic centre for contemporary art which opened in July and the Sage concert hall and music school now under construction.

"Fantastical as it may sound, the angel has kicked off a flurry of activity that locals hope will transform this impoverished region into a European arts centre," says the article.

Author Adam Piore describes the creative rise of New York, Paris and Berlin and other big cities. "Only they had the wealth - and the means of distribution - to attract such a broad cross-section of artists from around the world," he writes. "Increasingly, that is no longer the case. In recent years new kinds of creative laboratories have emerged ... Driven out by the high rents of cities like Paris and London and aided by technology and the growing ease of travel, more artists and thinkers are congregating in smaller far-flung communities around the world."

Piore's analysis will be welcomed by cultural commentators in the English regions who have noted how cities such as Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and Newcastle-Gateshead are asserting their cultural independence from London.

Trafford, the Greater Manchester borough which is home to the new Imperial War Museum North, is not slow to point out that the only British building to be built to designs by internationally feted architect Daniel Libeskind is on the banks of the Manchester ship canal rather than in London.

Piore suggests that creativity emerges from chaos and that "the same chaos that once filled the rollicking cafes of Montmartre is thriving in the honky-tonks of Austin". (Chaos, less intellectual and more alcoholic, also thrives in the cafe bars of Newcastle's quayside, particularly on a Friday or Saturday night.)

Piore quotes Christine Stansell, professor of cultural history at Princeton: "[Artists] come to live life to the fullest, to be a 'player', to be where the action is, to walk the streets and feel what it's like - to be on the edge of what's possible."

Artists around the world are finding that life is fuller and cheaper outside the great capitals and are moving to smaller cities "which still have affordable loft spaces and cheap beer".

Piore adds: "Once word began to spread, these cities tended to attract secondary and tertiary levels of creatives - first artists in other fields, then small businesses, tech start-ups and design firms, seeking to glom [sic] into the cool."

Piore says the presence of "artists and bohemians" may be linked to economic productivity and the growth of jobs. Academics argue that a new creative class dominates many western societies as their manufacturing industries decline, an argument endorsed by English cities using creative industries to emerge from grim recession-dominated pasts.

"Creative people want to be around other creative people," he adds. "A city with artists, a nightlife, diversity, will also draw entrepreneurs, academics, tech geeks - those able to drive economic growth in the new age."

He claims civic leaders in Newcastle and Gateshead have pressed ahead with cultural projects because they believe a thriving arts scene will help lure hi-tech businesses. The downside is that the process results in gentrification which pushes up prices and forces out artists.

But Newcastle-Gateshead is not worrying about that yet. Sir Ian Wrigglesworth, chairman of the Newcastle-Gateshead Initiative, the regional marketing agency, said city and borough had been quietly building a reputation for creativity over 20 years. "We have tried to develop from a party city into a cultural centre with strong creative communities which attract not only artists from all over the world but also academics, tourists, entrepreneurs and all sorts of other people interested in living and working in a lively, contemporary European city.

"The Newsweek article and recognition as one of the world's top creative cities helps raise our international profile and gets the rest of the world talking about the exciting things happening here. It is great news for us."

Hip-hop and hi-tech ... where it's all at

The eight creative cities according to Newsweek

· Austin, Texas

Home to 1,500 music acts, part of a music scene that supports 14,000 jobs, generates $616m for the economy and produces $11m in tax revenues. Base for entrepreneurs who take advantage of an atmosphere that nurtures experimentation. Headquarters of Dell computers.

· Tijuana, Mexico

Home of Nortec, a blend of traditional Mexican folk music and electronic rhythms which won the city a reputation for more than tequila and brothels and gave its people "the freedom to explore". Tijuana is in the middle of an artistic flowering in which artists are re-examining the city's hybrid culture.

· Cape Town, South Africa

In the midst of a creative boom which is luring film-makers, advertising talent and fashion models from around the globe. Home of the country's best hip-hop and graffiti artists. Film companies take advantage of low costs, high skills and varied locations and the business has grown 20% a year for the last five years.

· Zhongguancun, China

The most frenetic neighbourhood in Beijing, perhaps in all China, and one that the communist party has said will lead the world's most populous nation into the information age. Base for IBM, Nokia and Motorola; the government claims that last year foreign firms moved in at a rate of one a day.

· Antwerp, Belgium

In the late 80s, the Antwerp Six, graduates of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, won fame for their avant garde designs. Other creative industries followed fashion's lead and helped stimulate a boom in property prices and regeneration of rundown areas. The Richard Rogers Partnership has designed a new court and the Royal Academy's fashion department moves into a new building with fashion museum and brasserie next month.

· Kabul, Afghanistan

Since March, 1.5 million Afghan exiles have come home, bringing a dynamic exchange of ideas not unlike that seen in Paris in the 20s. The Artists' Association of Afghanistan has 3,000 members and is growing. Film companies, theatre groups and art galleries are spring up across the capital.

· Marseilles, France

Fertile ground for the introduction of hip-hop by US marines and sailors who sailed into the port in the 80s. Fifteen years later, Marseilles produces some of France's elite hip-hop stars (while also being a power base for the National Front). The city centre is being transformed into an economic and cultural mecca with grand museums and reclaimed docklands.

· Newcastle-Gateshead

"The Angel of the North was about making Gateshead a name," said John Devlin, the town's director of property services. "Because we delivered, money was switched on from other projects." A Hilton hotel is going up and a planned business park has tripled in size to accommodate demand from hi-tech manufacturers.

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