Rage Against Hallam

I remember the inventive electronic resistance campaigns that mushroomed at the time.

Here's an animated GIF of the NCPM turning into a turd:

 http://access.lowtech.org/events/morphs/hallam.gif

And this was just one of several spoof websites that were created at the time to lampoon Yorkshire Forward - or Yorkshire Backward as they came to be known:

 http://www.yf-sucks.org.uk/

The NCPM was dead in the water before it started. Whenever government or other institutions try to articulate culture it always fails. Culture is organic, it springs from real people doing real things with real imagination. Major corporations may dictate mainstream tastes, but the innovation never comes from them, they are just vampires feeding on the innovation of grassroots creativity and diluting it into something meaningless. Only institutional bores could come up with the idea that modern day music should be in a museum, displayed as if it were dead. People with a passion for music are not going to pay to see it dead and lifeless. Constructing these large set pieces is not what is going to regenerate our towns and cities and make them vibrant and the coolest places to live in. It was an elegant demonstration of the crapness of the trickle down theory of economics and regeneration.

If the NCPM was to be the gateway for the culture industries quarter then what does that say about Sheffield's take on encouraging creativity? Never mind the fact that when it did bomb, the real opportunities of this space were disregarded and the easy option of selling out to more instant ready made student industry was jumped upon. Examples of university cities where student demand for places exploded had nothing to do with this top down approach - Leeds' and Manchester's music scenes, driven by kids putting gigs on in grotty upstairs rooms in pubs, holding drugged fuelled grassroots club nights, artisan shops and markets, cool small bookshops, books and record shops is probably what caused this boom. I very much doubt that URBIS is causing the same excitement and energy of the 80's and 90's music scene in Manchester. The Showroom independent cinema is a cool addition to Sheffield nightlife and hosts many worthy events, but it ain't exactly fuelling the creativity of a city.

While there may be something worthy to the cultural industries quarter, I can't help having this feeling when I walk down the streets, of there being artistic and cultural space that I have no access to. It feels like a dead facade, towering buildings of nice intentions but no room at the inn to do anything real and spontaneous. Clicking on the CIQ website gives you more than enough information on how you set up your own cultural industries business, but without a bank loan, funding or a business plan there is nothing else for you here. Industry is the operative word. Yes you may visit and look, and the fortunate few who have managed to pocket the institutional funding and shoe horn their creativity into a possibly viable business get a chance. There may be an upcoming conference in Sheffield on the potential of community festivals for regeneration, but you can't imagine anything that comes from it having the vibrancy of the Creative Action Network inspired Sharrow Lantern Festival. Where in this quarter is there an opportunity to make a festival happen, do a film night, art show or gig without a couple of hundred quid in your pocket. If you wake up one day and decide fuck it, I am going to make a film, develop photos or do whatever, there isn't much on offer. This is what is sad about slowly losing the Drum/NCPM (thankfully we still have Access Space). To some extent you could roll in off the street and start working on something. But imagine if the whole space was like this, even better if there was open space where people were just about able to do anything creative - what would the emotional, social and economic regeneration flowing from this look like? There used to be large cracks and crevices in the landscape where this kind of activity could be sown and grown, but as the recent eviction of the silver squat highlighted, these spaces are getting narrower and aren't open for very long. With the steady sanitised refurbishment of Sheffield and the concreting over of the cracks, the loss of the Drum to a student's union is depressing, and in the long run likely to be a loss to the student population as well.

The creation of real culture is messy, dirty, random, sporadic, agitational and unpredictable. It comes from the most unlikely of people, and in these hands it is inspiring and sometimes life affirming. How exciting it would be if the cultural industries quarter space was put firmly in Sheffield people's hands. And why not, as this feature on Hallam and the NCPM points out, we have already paid for it! What ever the mix of crap and genius that would follow from that, it would certainly save me from drowning in blandness and choking on frustration.

As an endnote, and on a slightly different note, I think I saw on one of the Burngreave re-development plans that all the cool shops and restaurants created by local people, which people trek far and wide for would be bulldozed and it looked like all this 'diversity' and 'creatvity' would instead be boxed up into a nice 'showcase' market. I could be wrong, but the thought just makes me shudder and look for the cloud of doom to descend!

Reply to Dead Poet:

Excellent bit of writing there Mr. Dead Poet person!

The CIQ, and the great minds behind the 'Pop Museum', talk only of the 'creative industries' as a 'key growth sector' - it's seen merely in economic terms.

All the regeneration cash coming in is basically aimed at structural adjustment. IMF-stylee, we'll suffer the pain for a while, but by bringing in the corporations and big capital, everyone will be better off. Somehow. Magically. Holes in the pockets of the rich as they walk about, or something.

Applying this logic to the creative industries is perverse. But, as you mention, it's no less perverse when applied to Burngreave, where the Housing Renewal Pathfinder scheme is in the process of proposing shiny new glass towers as a gateway to Spital Hill.

And, sinisterly, we read in one report on the Pathfinder scheme:

"... many of the pre-existing programmes for neighbourhood renewal have been designed to facilitate community ownership and control of the regeneration process, and a fundamental premise of this approach is that the existing community is salvageable and sustainable. In contrast, Market Renewal strategies may need to be supported by a vision for the sub-region that assumes that not all neighbourhoods can be preserved and sustained."

It's policy that the World Bank uses too - called Supplant or Amend. If you don't fit in with economic orthodoxy - that is, if you are not producing capital - you must be supplanted, or you must change.
Thus, creativity survives only in as far as it's financially viable, or serving the interests of capital, say through advertising or the web design industry. It's creativity in the same way that water behind a dam, powering factories, counts as being a river or a lake. It's creativity channelled into utility.

Supplant or amend.

Right. Rant over.