CULTURE-LED URBAN REGENERATION

AND THE REVITALISATION OF IDENTITIES

IN NEWCASTLE, GATESHEAD AND THE
NORTH EAST OF ENGLAND

Christopher Bailey, Steven Miles and Peter Stark

0Steven
March
Head
Miles
00000
of2004
International
10.1080/1028663042000212328
GCUL041004.sgm
1028-6632
Special
Taylor
12004
10 & ResearchCentre
Issue
Francis for Cultural
(print)/1477-2833
Journal
Ltdof Culture PolicyPolicy and Management, c/o School of Arts and Social Sciences, Room 010, Lipman Building, University of NorthumbriaNewcastle upon TyneNE1 8STUK+44 (0)191 233 3853steven.miles@northumbria.ac.uk
(online)

The rhetoric of the cultural policy dimension of culture-led regeneration makes a variety of assump-
tions concerned with the democratisation of culture and the empowerment of local communities. In
this article, we ask whether there are alternative paradigms that might offer different connections to
other drivers of regeneration in the social and economic fields. The article suggests that successful
culture-led regeneration is not about a trickle-down effect at all, but rather represents a counter-
balance to broader processes of cultural globalisation. We chart the emergence of cultural policy in
the North East of England paying particular attention to the impact of Year of the Visual Arts 1996
and to data emerging out of a 10-year longitudinal research project on the Gateshead Quayside. It is
suggested that only an in-depth understanding of geographical and historical specificities will help
us understand the way in which cultural regeneration potentially strengthens existing sources of
identity rather than imposing new ones.

KEYWORDS cultural regeneration; globalisation; Gateshead; Newcastle; longitudinal

The long-term social impact of culture-led regeneration remains something of a

mystery. Broadly defined, there is an overriding assumption that culture-led regeneration
has a trickle-down effect insofar as it enhances the quality of life of the wider community.
However, the key word here is “assumption”. The distinct lack of, and commitment to, in-
depth research into this issue creates a situation in which policy makers are unable to draw
an evidence base upon which to make key decisions in the application of culture-led regen-
eration strategies. In this article, we will discuss the cultural policy framework of a specific
region – the North East of England – over a period of twenty years, paying particular atten-
tion to the Year of the Visual Arts in 1996 before considering the findings starting to emerge
out of an ongoing 10-year longitudinal research project that focuses on the impact of the
NewcastleGateshead Quayside. By doing so, we hope to begin to understand the sorts of
conditions in which culture-led regeneration may be able to succeed. In particular, we want
to consider the possibility that the success of culture-led regeneration could be related to
the degree to which it effectively engages with local identities.
A key concern of this article is the way in which cities have sought to adjust to an uncer-
tain economic (and by implication social) future. Many commentators have jumped to the

International Journal of Cultural Policy, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2004

ISSN 1028-6632 print/ISSN 1477-2833 online /04/010047-19
© 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/1028663042000212328
48 CHRISTOPHER BAILEY et al.

conclusion that culture may provide some kind of an alternative in a so-called “post-indus-
trial world”. Graeme Evans (2001) has pointed out how cities have sought to incorporate
production and consumption of culture as part of their efforts to sustain a new industrial
future. Yet the actual role of culture as a motor for urban regeneration in a time of social
change remains uncertain. Sharon Zukin (1995) argues that the “rules” of culture have
changed: the idea of a common destiny has been exhausted and as such the appeal of
culture has been strengthened. As Evans (2001) points out, the cultural city is far from being
a new phenomenon, but on the other hand, the post-industrial era appears to be witnessing
a more self-conscious and self-styled urban re-creation. What Evans calls the “renaissance
city” may in fact be more open to the particularities of local identity:
the arts and cultural industries … can distinguish themselves by restoring identities as well
as local economies, in an eclectic urban society conscious of not only the traditional, but
also of other cultures (and lifestyles), whether also local or experienced through the mass
media, and by exchange/fusion in all its forms. (Evans 2001, pp. 267–268)

How can we explain the prominence of culture on the urban agenda? Richard Florida’s
(2002) thesis that the creative ethos is increasingly dominant in developed societies and that
creative cities are thriving because creative people want to live there is of particular interest
in this regard. Florida sees the economy as increasingly taking form around concentrations
of people in creative places. From this point of view, culture can potentially at least, offer a
powerful means of attracting creative people into the city. However, Florida argues that
people also seek “quasi-anonymity” – that is, they prefer weak community ties to strong
ones. Community ties are not so significant in a city that has cultural creativity at its core, “the
city [now] allows you to modulate the experience: to choose the mix, to turn the intensity
level up or down as desired, and to have a hand in creating the experience rather than merely
consuming it” (Florida 2002, p. 232). Similarly, Scott (2000, p. 4) points out that the clustering
of culture potentially “has deeply erosive or at least transformative effects on many local
cultures”. Zukin (1995, p. 274) argues that despite the language of inclusion we might asso-
ciate with culture, the reality is that culture is not the unifying force we might like it to be. In
many cases, cultural strategies simply reflect the “utter absence” of new industrial strategies
for growth. In turn, the potential economic benefits of cultural appropriation as a strategy for
enhancing economic value are counter-balanced by the erosion of local distinctiveness.
The suggestion we want to make in this article is that above and beyond economic
outputs, successful examples of culture-led regeneration do in fact engage with a pre-
existing collective sense of local identity. We might assume that the economic benefits of
culture-led regeneration may bring with them some kind of a social cost, but the truth is that
very little is actually known about what the impact of urban-led regeneration on local
cultures may be. Indeed, one of our aims in this article is to take issue with Zukin’s (1992)
suggestion that culture-led regeneration actively undermines urban distinctiveness. We
want to suggest that culture-led regeneration may indeed be most successful in those
circumstances in which it, intentionally or unintentionally, teases out that distinctiveness.
The cultural developments we associate with globalisation such as homogenisation and
predictability may not be all bad. In fact they may create the very conditions in which tradi-
tional identities can thrive. As Byrne (2001, p. 72) puts it: “contemporary conceptions of the
local are themselves in no small part a global product, even in their local expression, but …
at the same time there remains a distinctive sphere of the local”. As such, and in considering
the findings that continue to emerge from our own longitudinal research, our concern is that
 CULTURE-LED URBAN REGENERATION 49

Richard Florida over-generalises about the declining influence of community ties and iden-
tities. In fact, it could well be argued that culture-led regeneration may be most successful in
those places that have particularly strong local and regional identities. It may well still be the
case that our evolving communities are marked by a greater diversity of friendships and
more individualistic pursuits than in the past as Florida suggests. The key to urban success
might well lie in developing a “world-class” people climate. In the case of culture-led regen-
eration, however, that climate may actually prosper most effectively in a context in which
local and regional identities can be incorporated as a key part of the post-industrial future. In
particular, we will go on to suggest that where the commercialised identities we might
associate with globalisation can be reconciled with more localised expressions of identity,
culture-led regeneration may be especially effective.
Perhaps successful urban regeneration is not about a trickle-down effect at all, but in
fact almost the reverse: it is about revitalising cultural identities in a way which represents a
counter-balance to broader processes of cultural globalisation. In other words, culture-led
regeneration perhaps provides a framework within which, given the right conditions, local
people can re-establish ownership of their own sense of place and space and, perhaps more
importantly, of their own sense of history. This sense of history can therefore be said to be re-
conceptualised as a sense of the future. In this context, the only credible way of understand-
ing the impact of culture-led regeneration is through geographical and historically specific
research that taps into the long-term social legacy of cultural policy, as opposed to its
short-term outputs. To this end, we will now go on to discuss the British context in which
Newcastle/Gateshead was able to pursue its own particular brand of culture-led regenera-
tion. This context is informed by Figure 1, which denotes the current Arts Council England
regions as designated by the 2002 structural review.
English regional boundaries as at the Arts Council of England s 2002 structural review allying them with the Economic Development Agency boundaries. Reviews in the 1980s and 1990s led to the loss of separate Regional Arts Associations for Merseyside, Lincolnshire and Humberside. Source: Arts Council of England, North East, 2002.

The Policy Background

The rationale for public subsidy of the arts in the United Kingdom since the 1970s has
been dominated by two schools of thought. The standard model of outreach (the democra-
tisation of culture) conceives of a situation in which the arts should be democratically available
to as many people as possible. From this point of view, cultural policy is about opening up
the arts to those who would not normally have access to them; it is about enhancing the qual-
ity of life for a wider section of the community through the promotion of an appreciation and
understanding of artworks. This model is juxtaposed with that of cultural democracy, which
takes as its starting point the community itself and seeks to build the self-confidence of
communities and indeed of individuals. It recognises the validity of indigenous cultures and
seeks to empower those cultures through the facilitation of arts practice; by, in effect, provid-
ing those cultures with the springboard from which they can discover their own creativity. A
key aspect of arts as cultural democracy is, therefore, as the English Regional Arts Board (2000)
indicate, to ensure as many people as possible get the opportunity to be involved in the arts:

by backing activities that give people the opportunity to get involved in their own commu-
nities, and to unlock their own creativity: for instance by supporting the networks through
which people get involved as amateurs, and by introducing professionals to enable
the music society, drama group or artists workshop to learn new skills and raise its game. …
The results are having a positive and tangible effect on the quality of life in these areas,
enhancing the built environment and contributing to economic regeneration, job creation
50 CHRISTOPHER BAILEY et al.

FIGURE 1
English regional boundaries as at the Arts Council of England’s 2002 structural review allying
them with the Economic Development Agency boundaries. Reviews in the 1980s and 1990s
led to the loss of separate Regional Arts Associations for Merseyside, Lincolnshire and
Humberside. Source: Arts Council of England, North East, 2002.

and helping people achieve a new sense of pride in their communities. (English Regional
Arts Board 2000, pp. 12–32)

Similar sentiments are also expressed in Chris Smith’s (2000) vision of a “Creative
Britain” in which he discusses the impact of culture-led regeneration as highlighted in the
work of Comedia. In this context, Smith sees such regeneration as an effective route for
personal growth; a valuable contribution to social cohesion; of benefit to environmental
renewal and health promotion; a producer of social change; and “a flexible, responsive and
cost-effective element of a community development strategy [that] … strengthens rather
than dilutes Britain’s cultural life, and forms a vital factor of success rather than a soft option
in social policy” (Smith 2000, p. 135).
There is, however, a problem with such models that continue to maintain an uneasy
co-existence – namely, that regardless of local demonstrations of success in this regard, the
broader cultural impact of such initiatives remains uncertain. What evidence is there that
cultural initiatives benefit the population beyond those people who appear to be directly
involved? The Visual Arts UK bid, discussed below, is instructive in this regard. There is indeed
evidence that short-term impacts result from cultural interventions. However, the earliest
cultural programmes such as the European Union Cities/Capitals of Culture and the Arts
Council’s Arts 2000 series lack the long-term tracking that might validate the claims made by
their proponents (see Myerscough 1994).
A key question here is whether a one-size-fits-all notion of regenerative cultural policy
is capable of adapting to the specific places and times in which it is deployed. Or will cultural
 CULTURE-LED URBAN REGENERATION 51

initiatives of this kind only work in a specific set of local circumstances? In this article, we will
illustrate the benefit of an approach to culture-led urban regeneration that has cultural
motivations at its heart and which hints at an alternative paradigm to that more commonly
associated with “outreach” and “development”, one in which the democratisation of culture
and cultural democracy can actually work together in partnership. To this end, in the next
section, we will outline the cultural policy framework that developed in North East England
over the past twenty years that made the cultural development on Gateshead Quayside the
reality it is today.

Cultural Policy and Change in the North East

The journey of the de-industrialised North East of England and of the two local author-
ities at its heart is remarkable. By telling this story in some detail it may be possible to
comprehend the local circumstances in which culture-led regeneration can make a genuine
difference. Gateshead Quayside stands as one of the clearest examples in Europe, and
perhaps the world, of urban regeneration led by arts and cultural investment. The questions
we will ask here are what circumstances made this possible and how might cultural policy
strategists learn from such developments?
Any discussion about the impact of cultural policy and initiatives should recognise the
core role played by significant increases in degrees of funding. As such, the changes in grant-
in-aid and average national lottery funding between 1980 and 2001 are worthy of note. Most
interestingly perhaps, North East Arts saw an increase of over 40% in its relative percentage
share, while the East Midlands, the South West and London areas saw dramatic decreases in
funding during the same period (see Wilson & Hart 2003). The roots of the policy framework
that led to this exceptional development in the North East can be found in the campaign to
protect the arts and levels of arts funding during the abolition of the Metropolitan County
Councils (MCCs) in the mid-1980s. As Table 1 illustrates, Tyne and Wear, the major urban
areas of the Northern Region of England (and Merseyside) were confronted with an order of
problem different from those confronted by the other Metropolitan County Areas if the arts

TABLE 1
1984–1985 Net expenditure on arts and culture activities by Metropolitan County Councils
and successor authorities

£000

Greater Manchester MCC 2561

Metropolitan Boroughs 3987
Merseyside MCC 5121
Metropolitan Boroughs 1105
South Yorkshire MCC 515
Metropolitan Boroughs 3610
West Midlands MCC 604
Metropolitan Boroughs 7364
West Yorkshire MCC 699
Metropolitan Boroughs 5914
Tyne and Wear 3056
Metropolitan Boroughs 229

Source: Northern Arts, 1991.

52 CHRISTOPHER BAILEY et al.

were not to suffer from the abolition of the MCCs. As we will illustrate, funding increases
followed marked changes in cultural activity. This funding was entirely necessary if the
impact of such activity was to be maintained.
The government provided almost 100% replacement funding for that previously
provided to the MCCs, which was made available at regional level by the Arts Council
through the Regional Arts Associations. The Arts Council would not permit replacement
funding to be allocated to receiving theatres and, in the North, therefore, the two principal
City Authorities, Newcastle and Sunderland, had to take direct responsibility for replacing
the funds required to operate two theatres: the Theatre Royal and the Sunderland Empire.
This left substantial replacement funds available at regional level which were deployed by
the Regional Arts Board (the Northern Arts Association incorporated in 1986) in accordance
with a newly adopted policy framework that prioritised the creation of formal “Local Arts
Development Agency” (LADA) agreements with each of the region’s 33 Local Authorities and
support for individual artists and new productions.
By 1990, the Northern Region had a local delivery infrastructure for arts policy (via the
LADAs) that was unmatched elsewhere in the country, and its strength in the visual arts had
been clearly demonstrated at the National Garden Festival in Gateshead where there was
almost as much artistic as floral activity. The scale of replacement funding had also created a
Regional Arts Board that was far more strategically important to the arts in its region than
was the case for most others. Northern Arts provided nearly two-thirds of the total Arts Coun-
cil spending against an average of under one-third in England as a whole. The region also
enjoyed the third highest per capita investment in the arts (£1.89) in England after London
(£6.47) and Merseyside (£2.08).
Nonetheless, when Northern Arts embarked upon a strategic review to determine its
priorities for the decade to 2000, it faced some stark realities. A Northern Arts Board paper of
the time (Northern Arts 1991) considered strengths and weaknesses of the arts in the region:

Strengths
● Some exceptional projects, for instance, Grizedale Sculpture, Bloodaxe, Amber, WSI,
Folkworks; new visual arts work.
● Established “quality” institutions: Northern Sinfonia, Theatre Royal (RSC Season); visual arts
“higher” training.
● Local Arts Network: some exceptional projects (for example, Brewery) and overall cover.
● No medium-term structurally unsound large organisations (such as repertory theatres).
● Artists/arts organisations have, in general, made a conscious choice to be based here.
● Generally arts organisations are financially sound in the short term.
Weaknesses
● Very little unquestionably first division from a broad national perspective.
● An underlying lack of self-confidence too prevalent.
● No large, independent, well-staffed organisations.
● Too many artistically and/or managerially weak organisations; too many poor arts festivals.
● Very poor availability of major traditional arts repertoire; what there is, is in poor venues.
● Long history of lack of availability of standard, repertoire, unsophisticated audiences; lack
of sophisticated market for art sales.
● Sense of cultural isolation, lack of choice, sense of monopoly supply.
● Very dispersed population, poor public transport (outside Tyneside).
● Some vulnerable “middle-scale” venues in performing and visual arts.
 CULTURE-LED URBAN REGENERATION 53

TABLE 2
Arts attendance in the United Kingdom and the North, 1988

National sample: 24,087 Northern sample: 1,737

Currently Attend UK % London % North %

Theatre 35 43 24
Plays 24 33 15
Ballet 64 9 3
Contemporary dance 4 6 2
Opera 6 8 3
Classical music 12 17 6
Jazz 8 12 6
Art galleries 22 26 15

Source: Northern Arts, 1991, based on Target Group Index 1988.

The key problem for the region was that it was simply not in a position to argue for
substantial increases in funding for its general work in tackling such shortcomings. It was
already one of the highest funded regions in the country. What it lacked, however, was the
large-scale infrastructure of major facilities and producers that was enjoyed by other regions
with major urban population centres. Could a campaign be mounted to achieve these new,
major facilities and the revenue costs of running them while maintaining the focus on local
infrastructure and support for artists and new production?
In getting to grips with these questions, the BMRB’s Target Group Index provided
particularly relevant information about arts attendance (see Table 2). In all areas, the North
had the lowest levels of usage in England, broadly one-third below the national average and
one-half of London levels. Was the region’s population just “disinclined” to partake of such
activities or might a major factor also be a lack of opportunity?
In Table 3 these “whole population” figures are checked against the returns on the
same questions for the student population of the region. Drawn more broadly from the
country as a whole, this particular sector of the population, which is more likely to partici-
pate by virtue of its socioeconomic status and education level, showed the same broad
pattern.

TABLE 3
Students’ arts attendance in the United Kingdom and the North, 1988

Currently Attend UK % London % North %

Theatre 46 48 36
Plays 38 37 29
Ballet 7 10 3
Contemporary dance 7 11 3
Opera 7 9 4
Classical music 16 17 5
Jazz 18 18 24
Art galleries 31 33 26

Source: Northern Arts, 1991, based on Target Group Index 1988.

54 CHRISTOPHER BAILEY et al.

TABLE 4
Availability of large-scale performing arts in the United Kingdom

Region 1984/1985 1984/1985 1983/1984 1983/1984 1983/1984 Total Events per

Producing National Opera Dance and Symphony 1,000 of
theatres Theatre/RSC ballet concerts population

Eastern 1276 8 25 14 30 1353 0.27

East Midlands 1456 22 25 41 53 1597 0.42
Greater 3298 1740 323 166 589 6116 0.91
London
Linconshire & 301 14 9 - 11 335 0.24
Humberside
Merseyside 585 - 21 24 95 725 0.38
Northern 231 28 19 35 18 331 0.11
North West 1546 8 34 83 115 1786 0.38
Southern 886 7 29 49 110 1081 0.25
South East 1198 16 81 24 63 1382 0.43
South West 956 36 55 81 72 1200 0.33
West 1427 553 20 61 117 2178 0.42
Midlands
Yorkshire 1590 14 61 48 100 1813 0.44
Total 14,750 2446 702 626 1373 19,897 0.42

Source: Northern Arts, 1991, based on Myerscough (1986).

The role of lack opportunity in extending the region’s poor “performance” as

compared to national norms was also heightened, as Table 4 illustrates, by further research
drawn from material in Facts about the Arts 2 (then recently published) further substantiated
the argument (Myerscough 1986).
The region enjoyed an “availability index” for the large-scale repertoire in the perform-
ing arts at one-quarter of the national average. A similar picture existed in the field of major
exhibitions.
Armed with the above research, Northern Arts was able to make new policy for the
1990s that maintained the focus on the availability of the arts “live and locally” and the
critical importance of the individual artist. It added two new policy objectives. First, it set
itself the target of achieving major new capital facilities for music (of all kinds) and for
the (contemporary) visual arts and argued, successfully, after a period of consultation that
such facilities should be located in “Central Tyneside”. The policy consultation document
therefore referred to the need to
increase substantially the availability of the large-scale repertoire in the performing arts in
the region and the availability of major exhibitions through partnership with promoters
and through advocating and supporting the creation of new venues for concerts and
exhibitions of international standard. (Northern Arts 1991, p. 22)

Addressing this objective (and addressing it before National Lottery funding of the arts
had appeared in even the vaguest terms in any political manifesto) required a further redef-
inition of the Regional Arts Board’s own role. It had already shifted from perceiving itself as a
“responsive funding body” to setting out its role as a “policy-led development agency”. Now
it recognised that it was the largest arts organisation in the region. In order to get the arts in
 CULTURE-LED URBAN REGENERATION 55

the region acknowledged both nationally and internationally, it also needed to become a
promotional agency. In this context, it adopted the mission statement “Promoting the Arts
in the North”.
The extract from the policy consultation document above also shows the recognition
by the board of the need for the right promotional vehicle to make the arts in the region visi-
ble nationally before the capital ambitions would become believable. The then Chairman of
the Arts Council, Peter (later Lord) Palumbo had just announced a 10-year series of festivals
to promote a different art form in a different city or region each year. The Northern Region
had great strength in its visual artists and had in the LADA network a unique delivery system
that could create a truly regional-wide event. The region’s own assessment of its positions at
this time was that its galleries were small-scale, but that it had an international reputation for
its pioneering artworks in public places, with a site having just been identified for its boldest
project yet – a landmark sculpture in Gateshead at the head of the A1 motorway.
The subsequent success of the Angel of the North is another story, but beyond its
iconic properties, perhaps more than anything else it illustrated that beneath the figures
there lay a belief, a sense of identity and a willingness to get things done that could trans-
form the arts scene and perhaps even the region itself. The particularities of the local and
regional identity were key factors in ensuring the success of what would emerge as an inter-
nationally significant example of culture-led regeneration; the point being here that far from
taking away from it, the regeneration fed on and into that sense of identity.
The North East of England, driven by the concerns of local authorities and not least
Gateshead, sought to use large public works of art as a means of signalling the intention to
regenerate the locality. For example, the successes of the Garden Festival’s art commission
programme, innovative local promoters such as Projects UK (later to become Locus +),
partnerships such as the Art on the Riverside scheme managed by the Tyne and Wear
Development Corporation, and the Art on the Metro scheme run by Nexus, stimulated new
and higher expectations of the public realm. The question remains, however, whether or not
a sustained and intensive campaign of cultural activity could have a lasting effect on the
population and the economy. In order to begin to address this point, it would be useful, at
this stage, to consider a specific example of this policy in practice.

The Year of Visual Arts

In 1991, Northern Arts bid for and won the title of UK Region of the Visual Arts for the
year of 1996. The Year of Visual Arts in the North of England was the fifth in the series of year-
long art form celebrations sponsored by the Arts Council of England under the general title
of “Arts 2000”. Inspired by Glasgow’s unexpected success as European City of Culture in 1990,
the Arts Council viewed the project as a way of levering private funding into the arts, and
building their profile outside London. In all, 77 cities and regions put in outline or full bids for
one or more of the “years”, submitting their plans up to four years in advance and setting out
their case for the award, including existing facilities, plans for audience development and the
planned “legacy” of the “year”. Arts Council funding was modest compared to the total
spend claimed for each “year”. The capital projects that accompanied the “year” or emerged
in its wake, mostly aided by National Lottery funding, were claimed to be worth £60 million.
Northern Arts acted as agent for the Northern region’s bid, turning the very lack of
visual arts facilities into a strength by declaring “The Region is the Gallery”. Once the bid was
approved, a new company called Northern Sights was set up to “deliver” the Year of Visual
56 CHRISTOPHER BAILEY et al.

Arts. The board, which was composed of a mix of representatives of the public sector and the
region’s business community, employed just four staff and focused its energy on creating
partnerships and raising additional funds for projects, and on a highly developed marketing
strategy for the core programme.
The underlying intention was that the “year” should be judged on whether it actually
achieved this step change in perception within and beyond the region. The working
assumption was that a higher level of visual arts activity would correlate not just with a
greater awareness of visual arts in the population, but also with increased attendance and
participation. Given this objective, the programme of Visual Arts UK was appropriately wide
as well as deep, with regular programme strands on network television and widespread
print features in the local press, and a noteworthy schools programme. The term “visual
arts” was stretched to include the media, design and some performing arts. The “year” was
frequently, but contentiously, claimed to consist of 3000 projects (all “years” made claims of
this kind) and despite problems of definition, it is demonstrably the case for most age
groups that every centre of population throughout the region enjoyed some access to
visual arts at virtually every level courtesy of the “year”. Many of these local projects linger
in the public memory, although in the visual and written record of the “year”, it is major
exhibitions and public art projects that tend to define it – the Lindisfarne Gospels at the
Laing, Gormley’s “terracotta army”, Mach’s Brick Train and Bill Viola’s video installation in
Durham Cathedral.
After much discussion with Northern Sights, the Arts Council and Northern Arts
commissioned the Harris Research Organisation to undertake a substantial piece of research
into the audience of the visual arts. This consisted of a programme of face-to-face interviews
with the public in the region in three waves: before, during and after the “year”. Five
representative locations were selected, and interviews carried out with samples of 600 plus,
reflecting the demographic profile of the region. Some of the survey aims were dictated by
the wish of the Arts Council to demonstrate “value for money” for this and other “years”. This
concern led to a group of questions about approval for spending on visual arts, then and in
the future, and on whether Visual Arts UK itself was “a good idea” and aimed to find out what
people thought about public spending on the arts. A further group of questions sought to
elicit opinions about what the term “visual arts” might include. Like the questions on atten-
dance and participation, the purpose here was to discover what change might have resulted
from the “year”.
Alongside these “value for money” questions, the survey also questioned respondents
about their attitudes to art and artists. Harris tried to discover how comfortable respondents
were with art and the places in which it is usually encountered, how far they empathised with
the values of the artist, and whether they accepted the controversial role that art can play.
Answers to these questions helped demonstrate that, given the opportunity, the region’s
population was as enthusiastic about culture as the population of London, whose cultural
provision is relatively abundant.
Some changes in attitude were sustained into the year after Visual Arts UK, such as
agreement with the statement “when art/sculpture is displayed in a public place, it encour-
ages people to talk about it” (55:54:70% in Waves One, Two and Three, respectively) and
“when art/sculpture is displayed in public places, it becomes a focal point of the community”
(46:48:55%). However, as the Arts Council of England’s (1997) research report based on the
Harris survey concluded, Visual Arts UK had succeeded in raising awareness – in advance of
expectations with some age and class groups – but any longer term change in attitudes
 CULTURE-LED URBAN REGENERATION 57

might take a more sustained programme, and its results might not prove measurable for a
considerable time.
This set of questions about attitudes might also have been used to test hypotheses
about how far cultural competence correlates with other forms of positive social expression
and achievement, but this was not at the time a live concern for Northern Sights (various
years). It became a key question for the research programmes that followed, not least in light
of the rapidly emerging political agenda on social exclusion. In particular, the need to
prioritise the specific circumstances, both geographical and historical, in which such devel-
opments were “consumed” was becoming evident. This is no more so than in the case of the
Angel of the North, which was erected in the year following the Year of the Visual Arts. The
point here is that Gateshead Borough Council managed to realise this project amidst
widespread popular protest. Indeed, it could well be argued that the Angel of the North was
the key that allowed the potential of the Quayside to be unlocked. The Angel was symbolic
of what Gateshead Borough Council could achieve and gave funders the confidence that
they could reach such heights again.
Was there something unique about the regional and local identity that helped to
ensure the success of such initiatives? How did such developments tap into broader patterns
of cultural globalisation? We may come closer to answering such questions through a more
detailed examination of the culmination of culture-led regeneration in the North East –
namely, Gateshead Quayside, a development that would not have been possible without the
sorts of shifts in mind-set which the Year of the Visual Arts can be said to symbolise.

Gateshead Quayside and the Longitudinal Project

Three key icons lay at the centre of the Gateshead Quays development: the Baltic
Centre for Contemporary Arts, the Gateshead Millennium Bridge and the Sage Gateshead
(see Figure 2). The Baltic, which opened in July 2002, is a new contemporary arts centre
that overlooks the River Tyne. The Arts Council National Lottery funded project saw the
conversion, by Gateshead Borough Council, of a 1940s grain warehouse into the largest
gallery for contemporary art in the United Kingdom, which aimed to attract 400,000 visi-
tors annually. Conceived as an art factory, a place for artists from all over the world to work,

FIGURE 2
NewcastleGateshead Quayside, 2003. Source: Newcastle Libraries and Information Service,
Tyne Bridge Publishers 2002.
58 CHRISTOPHER BAILEY et al.

the Baltic has no permanent collection, and boasts five generous spaces for contemporary
exhibitions.
Due for completion in late 2004 or early 2005, the Sage Gateshead is not envisaged
Newcastle/Gateshead Quayside, 2003. Source: Newcastle Libraries and Information Service, Tyne Bridge Publishers 2002.

purely as a music venue. It is also a home for the Northern Sinfonia and Folkworks, as well as
a music education centre. The developments on Gateshead Quayside, which also include
residential areas and two international hotels, are linked to the Newcastle side of the
Tyne by the Millennium Bridge, the world’s first tilting bridge, which was opened in
September 2001. These developments were the end-product of lottery funding well in
excess £100 million.
We might assume that together such developments may have a major social,
cultural and indeed economic impact on Newcastle/Gateshead. The question is how do
we go about understanding the long-term and changing impact of such developments
beyond their clear economic potential? How do we understand the effect of the Gates-
head initiative, and of the broader theme of change, on the actual lives of the people of
NewcastleGateshead?
The answer lies in the undertaking of a large-scale, on-going and integrated piece of
work that maps and evaluates in rigorous quantified terms the social, cultural, economic and
regenerative impact of the Quayside development over the decade 2000–2010. The Cultural
Investment and Strategy Impact Research (CISIR) project is coordinated by the Centre for
Cultural Policy and Management at the University of Northumbria. Funded by Gateshead
Council, Newcastle City Council, Arts Council England, One North East and Culture North
East, the programme encompasses four major research projects carried out within the
framework of an unprecedented 10-year longitudinal study. This ongoing research project
represents an opportunity that has no immediate parallels in the United Kingdom, and no
exact equivalent anywhere else in the world. The aim of the project is to make a thorough
longitudinal study of the contribution which the arts and culture can make to the develop-
ment process, seen socially, economically and culturally. The project seeks to establish not
simply the facts about activity levels, attitudes and participation, but also to establish appro-
priate measures for the long-term impact of such developments. The 10-year time frame
provides an unprecedented opportunity not only to establish baseline data on the impact of
culture-led regeneration on the locality and beyond, but to address the meanings of such
developments as ascribed by those people whom these developments effect. Beyond the
social and economic impacts of these developments, CISIR is also concerned to address the
impact of arts investment on the overall cultural life of the area and to measure any changes
in attitudes and aspirations among key communities.
More specifically, the cultural dimension of the research programme involves: a series
of major surveys, carried out by Market Research UK which seeks information on cultural
values and attendance among the local population and how these factors relate to broader
social and economic indicators on a national basis; documentary analysis and interviews
with staff, stakeholders and consumer groups attached to the Baltic and the Sage which
seeks to benchmark management intentions and their impact upon users; data collection on
key comparative cultural organisations to address the impact of the Sage and Baltic on local
and regional “competitors”; and a broader profile of cultural organisations in three defined
areas: Arts and Entertainment, Sport and Recreation, and Heritage and Environment, in order
to assess the wider impact of the Sage and the Baltic on local cultural provision. The overall
intention of this programme of research is therefore to gather a dataset on the impact of the
Quayside development on the consumption and production of culture.
 CULTURE-LED URBAN REGENERATION 59

The programme will also collect a full range of economic, social and cultural data from
secondary sources. We will be collecting, for instance, data on employment (particularly in
cultural and related occupations and using the United Kingdom’s Regional Cultural Data
Framework), and on the composition of the business sector with particular reference to small
business start up and survival rates in the cultural and related sectors. We will be tracking
change in tourism and in the housing market. The programme will also monitor changes in
social indicators in such areas as educational participation and attainment, as well as health,
crime and housing. The research will seek to understand the nature of possible relationships
between the development of cultural facilities and changes in these supplementary indica-
tors that will be explored through additional primary activity.
The benefit of the data emanating from this project is that it, like the Quayside itself, is
constantly changing. This point is a prescient one, insofar as there appears to be consider-
able evidence to suggest that the impact of such an iconic development as that at Gateshead
Quayside simply cannot be taken as a snapshot in time. The people of NewcastleGateshead’s
relationship with the Quayside is in constant motion. More importantly, the impact of such
developments on the identity of the area and of the people’s living area appears to be
becoming increasingly profound insofar as the developments appear to be reinforcing a
certain sense of pre-existing local pride. Whether or not the forms of cultural consumption
made available on the Quayside are entirely inclusive or not, what they are not was the
erosive local force that Scott (2000) warns against.
Quantitative data have so far been collected from four major surveys on cultural
values and attendance: 1000 respondents in Newcastle/Gateshead, 500 in the North East
region beyond the city and a further 400 from Denton and Blaydon, two comparable wards
in Newcastle and Gateshead respectively. These particular wards were chosen for a number
of reasons: in measures of multiple deprivation, they achieved similar scores closest to
the median score across the two authorities; both wards have populations of around
10,000 residents; and the time and cost of public transport to and from Gateshead Quay-
side from both wards is almost identical. A further survey was taken in the two weeks prior
to the announcement of the result of the 2008 City of Culture bid.
Table 5, which reports data collected from a number of key surveys since 1988, shows
a significant increase in the percentages of people attending arts events in the North East:
27% of Newcastle and Gateshead residents attended a play in 2002, thereby equalling the
2001 English average, but doing so from very low base of 15% in 1988; 35% of respondents
attended art galleries and exhibitions in the last twelve months, compared to 15% in 1988
and the average in England in 2001 of only 19%. The enthusiasm on the part of Gateshead
residents is particularly marked: 64% made a special visit to the Angel of the North, while
64% of Blaydon residents made a special trip to the Millennium Bridge, as did 66% of the
region excluding Newcastle and Gateshead. These trends appear to indicate that the Gates-
head Quayside development has had a significant impact upon arts attendance among the
local population.
Of equal interest in this respect, as Table 6 indicates, is the fact that there is a signifi-
cant increase in terms of the awareness of activities and facilities for the arts in the area.
Respondents in Newcastle and Gateshead in 2001 were twice as likely as those in England
as a whole to feel that almost all activities and facilities are available locally: 83% of
NewcastleGateshead respondents in 2002 felt almost all or some activities and facilities
were available locally compared to 68% in London in 2001. Meanwhile, 84% of respondents
in Blaydon and 77% in Denton felt that almost all or some of activities and facilities were
60 CHRISTOPHER BAILEY et al.

TABLE 5
Percentage who have attended arts events in the last twelve months

Category/source TGI Arts Arts Arts CISIR CISIR CISIR

North Council Council Council Newcastle/ North East Blaydon
East North East England London Gateshead less N/G Denton
1988 2001 2001 2001 2002 2002 2002

Play 15 19 27 33 27 25 23
13
Classical 6 5 10 11 12 9 3
7
Art galleries and 15 16 19 31 35 28 24
Exhibitions 26
Special visit to 51 36
Angel of the North (N-42,G-64)
Visual arts visit 33 34
(N-34,G-25)
Special visit to 73 66 64
Millennium Bridge
49

Sources: TGI survey 1988; CISIR survey 2001; CISIR survey 2002; Skelton 2002.

available in NewcastleGateshead. From a situation in which in terms of cultural provision

the area lagged behind much of the rest of the country, it had now arrived at a position of
relative strength.
In many respects the above changes very much appear to be attitudinal in nature. In
this respect, Table 7 is particularly telling. In 2002, 81% of respondents in Newcastle and
Gateshead and 80% in the wider region said that if their local area lost its arts and cultural
activities, the people in the area would lose something of value, as compared to only 70%
of respondents in London in 2002 and 62% in England as whole in 2001, and a mere 56%
in the North East in the same year. Indeed, the number of respondents who felt that the

TABLE 6
Views on the availability of activities and facilities for the arts

Question/source Arts Arts Arts MRUK

Council Council Council MRUK MRUK Blaydon/
North East England London N/G Region Denton
2001 2001 2001 2002 2002 2002

Almost all are available locally 29 60

Almost all or some are available 58 65 68 83
locally
Almost all available in Newcastle/ 57
Gateshead
Almost all available locally 20 57
40
Almost all or some are available in 72 84
Newcastle/Gateshead 77

Sources: TGI survey 1988; CISIR survey 2001; CISIR survey 2002; Skelton 2002.
 CULTURE-LED URBAN REGENERATION 61

TABLE 7
Attitudes to the arts

Question/source Arts Council MRUK

North East Arts Council Arts Council MRUK Region
2001 England 2001 London 2001 N/G 2002 2002

If my local area lost its arts 56 62 70 81 80

and cultural activities, the
people here would lose
something of value
The arts play a valuable role 23 37 51 49 45
in my life

Sources: TGI survey 1988; CISIR survey 2001; CISIR survey 2002; Skelton 2002.

arts played a valuable role in their lives had jumped from 23% in the North East to 49%
in 2002.
The changes we outline represent an extraordinary divergence from the national
pattern. There has undoubtedly been a radical change in the perception and role of the
arts in people’s lives in the NewcastleGateshead area. One might well attribute such a
change in attitudes to the iconic developments at Gateshead Quays and, incidentally, the
role of the 2008 bid for European Capital of Culture in building confidence in the local
population. This much is in evidence in the fourth survey conducted in the two weeks
prior to the announcement that Liverpool had won the nomination: 75% of respondents
in NewcastleGateshead said their pride in the area has been reinforced by the 2008 bid,
while 69% said they would be disappointed if the city did not win. If NewcastleGateshead
did go on to win, 78% of respondents felt NewcastleGateshead would be a more culturally
diverse place to live, and 67% that it would be a better place to live overall. Meanwhile,
56% said they were more likely to attend cultural events as a result of the bid. Perhaps
more importantly, far from suggesting a temporary blip, patterns of attendance and
awareness continue to hold strong. For example, while shortly before the Baltic opened in
2002, 56% of respondents said they were very likely to visit, the actual figures recorded in
2003, eight months after it opened, indicate that 49% actually had already done so. In
2003, 81% of NewcastleGateshead residents said they had attended arts and cultural
events in the last year, compared to 79% in 2002.
What do the above findings tell us about the circumstances in which the Gateshead
Quayside project came about? Perhaps the first point to make is that these developments
were underpinned not by economic imperatives, but by a will and determination on the part
of local arts activists and politicians to provide the area with the cultural facilities that it
deserved. It may well be the case that the cultural imperative is the crucial ingredient here.
That, in other words, these developments appear to be having such a marked impact on the
NewcastleGateshead area precisely because economic benefits were not their primary moti-
vating force. These developments succeeded precisely because the local people took owner-
ship of them, not as exclusive symbols of wealth but as sources of local pride
that regenerated a local source of identity as much as they did the local economy. In partic-
ular, the success of developments such as Baltic and the Sage Gateshead may partly be
attributed to the fact that they sought simultaneously to promote both the democratisation
of culture and cultural democracy: to in effect trickle-down and trickle-up. Nonetheless, as
62 CHRISTOPHER BAILEY et al.

we have already indicated, it remains absolutely crucial to penetrate the misguided sense of
inevitability that tends to surround developments of this kind. For that reason, it is important
to move beyond the discussion of the cultural-political circumstances that made such
developments possible in order to address the broader social and cultural contexts in which
they arise.

Cultural Identities and Social Change

The notion of identity is especially pertinent in any effort to understand the impact of
developments on the Gateshead Quayside and their subsequent impact on the local area. As
Byrne (1999) indicates, the North’s cultural identity is very much the product of the mixing of
immigrant populations from Ireland, Scotland, Cumberland, Yorkshire, Scandinavia and
other places in England who were attracted to the area by the prospect of high wages. Global
circumstances and the de-industrialisation of the North East created a set of circumstances
in which regional particularity had to be transferred from production to consumption
(Vall 1999). In this context, Keith Wrightson’s (1995, p. 29) thesis that Northern identity is
about pride and truculence is of equal interest:
A northern upbringing frequently involves the inculcation of an unusually powerful set
of attachments to place; a deep rooting in a particular physical, social and cultural
environment. At the same time, however, those loyalties are strongly inflected, almost from
the outset, by awareness of a questionable place within the larger social and political
geography of England.

According to this approach, pride qualified by anxiety breeds truculence. Perhaps it is

in this way that cultural initiatives such as those we have described have apparently had such
a fundamental impact on local peoples: the Gateshead Quayside may well be giving the
people of the region something tangible with which to reassert their collective identities.
After all, Newcastle/Gateshead’s Millennium Bridge did not wobble like its London counter-
part! The sociability generally associated with the people of Newcastle also plays an impor-
tant role here. Newcastle, for instance, was recently voted one of the world’s top ten party
cities by the Weisman Travel Agency. Lancaster (1995) points out that the working classes
have been the “leading” class in Newcastle for two centuries, the local elite having
abandoned the city for the mansions of the Tyne Valley. The end-product of all this is a noisy
and confident city, and a city that is having to adapt to social, economic and cultural change:
a city that fulfils many of the key requirements of successful city-making (Hall 1998). As
Lancaster (1995, p. 7) puts it:
Cities never stay still, they are always changing, consciously or unconsciously trying to be
something else. Cities are places where people strive to overcome the negative effects of
past and current circumstances and struggle to create meaning, joy and hope in the place
that history has located them.

The apparent success of Gateshead Quayside as an example of culture-led regenera-

tion suggests to us that, as Zukin (1995) has pointed out, the “rules” of culture have changed.
Yet it is not necessarily the case that the cost of this change is the exhaustion of a common
destiny, or for that matter a common past. In this instance, the appeal of culture has been
strengthened precisely because localised expressions of identity can flourish under the
circumstances it creates.
 CULTURE-LED URBAN REGENERATION 63

Conclusion
The above case study cannot be understood in isolation, but only in relation to broader
expressions of social change. It is easy in these circumstances to get carried away by the local
expression of such change, but it is equally important to be aware of the broader tensions
that lie beyond the surface. In this context, many sociologists have charted the emergence
of a new global environment that connects people and networks of communications in ever
more unexpected ways. Urry (1998), for example, describes this as the “hollowing out” of
traditional societies. Global flows combine and cross to fundamentally alter our experience
of time and space. Under these circumstances, immediate local space apparently becomes
nothing more than transitory and we can no longer determine who it is we are. Rather we
pick and choose elements from the disjointed offerings that confront us from day to day. In
this world, inhuman objects are becoming increasingly important to the construction of
human identities. Technology, imagery, symbolism, machinery and, above all, consumption
are especially important in this regard.
The continued attractions of consumer culture might therefore be said to encourage
a state of affairs in which the individual is arguably more likely to associate himself or herself
with a global brand and a lifestyle than the characteristics historically associated with a
particular nation, region or city. In short, the new global culture “is at present a predomi-
nantly commercialized culture, devoid of origins or place” (Dunn 1998, p. 135). However, the
model of culture-led regeneration as consumption can only tell us half the story. The paradox
here, as Dunn points out, is that despite commercialisation, such aspects of social change
continue to operate alongside cultural values, traditions and ways of life. Local cultures are
inevitably being reconstituted in new ways and this has important implications for the
nature of identity. This is particularly true of the city where

[s]paces are experienced by the many different people who inhabit them. What is “culture”
to one group may be “repression” to another. … Public spaces create a variety of public
cultures, and … the overarching public culture of the city is dialogue among them. (Zukin
1995, pp. 293–294)

As such, developments on Gateshead Quayside might well be interpreted as repre-

senting the radical reassertion of a rooted identity in new ways and therefore represent
something far more significant than the inevitable end-product of cultural commodifica-
tion. People experience city spaces, but they do not do so on a blank canvas. This lesson
should continue to be borne in mind by policymakers advocating a culture-led regeneration
model.
The suggestion here, then, is that a combination of a people’s or a region’s identifica-
tion with place and space, and pride in and of that place and space and its heritage may
potentially represent what is a powerful cultural force that can, in itself, effect regionally/
place specific change in cultural attitudes against, or accelerated beyond, national and inter-
national and socioeconomic norms. McGuigan (1996) suggests that we live in a world where
the “space of flows” gains pre-eminence over the “space of places”. In other words, the global
informational urban society in which we live is widening class differences. Perhaps this is a
gross simplification. Perhaps culture-led regeneration (and the access to cultural capital that
it implies) need not create an elitest urban culture at all. Perhaps the NewcastleGateshead
example illustrates the way in which existing (and, in some senses, declining) sources of
identity, regardless of class, can be strengthened. The process we are seeking to understand
64 CHRISTOPHER BAILEY et al.

here does not appear at this stage in our research to be about the imposition of new
identities. The impact of the arts cannot be understood simply in terms of straightforward
economic and social outcomes. New places and new spaces represent the manifestation of
cultural change that recognises the significance of cultural history.
There is something intangible, a previously unquantified and misunderstood element
that lay behind the case study presented here. Something about how culture-led regenera-
tion taps into the cultural identities that underpin them. From a methodological point of
view, this makes particular demands of the cultural researcher who will be forced to stretch
beyond his or her traditional boundaries. In this article, we have begun to chart the findings
emerging from an ongoing longitudinal project. At this stage, these findings appear to be
indicating that any analysis of the impact of culture-led regeneration on the relationship
between the local and the global needs to be significantly more sophisticated than is
currently the case. The challenge now is to develop a reflexive qualitative analysis of the
meanings which local people endow into such projects. The quantitative data presented
here hints at a situation in which a sense of identity has re-enlivened. It also hints at an alter-
native model to that of culture-led regeneration that is in effect a far more flexible model that
puts culture back at the heart of cultural policy. This is a model that makes cultural policy
potentially more relevant to social and economic regeneration. From a research point of
view, then, the next stage is to address the longevity of that effect and its impact on people’s
everyday lives. The need for geographically and historically specific research is therefore
paramount. Culture-led regeneration does change people’s lives after all. It is about time we
understood how and why it does so.
The time has come to avoid the easy temptation to generalise about the impact of
culture-led regeneration. It may not be the case that culture-led regeneration simply articu-
lates the interests and tastes of the postmodern professional at the expense of the socially
excluded (see Harvey 1989; McGuigan 1996). The data emerging from this longitudinal
research illustrates that cultural forms of consumption can actively enhance and enliven
local communities. They are able to do so precisely because culture matters for its own sake
and not merely as a means to an economic end. Evans’s “renaissance city” may well be
emerging, and the key characteristic of that city may well be the reconstruction of local
identities in global contexts. When Zukin (1995) comments that cultural strategies imply an
“utter absence” of industrial strategies, what she is forgetting is that the primary benefit of
culture-led regeneration may not be an industrial one at all. On the contrary, the absence of
such a strategy could be said be the key to a prosperous future; a future in which cultural
planning is more about engaging with the lives of those people who live in the city than it is
about regenerating the city itself.

REFERENCES
ARTS COUNCIL OF ENGLAND (1997) Visual Arts UK: Public Attitudes Towards and Awareness of the Year
of Visual Arts in the North of England (Summary), ACE Research Report No. 15 (December).
BYRNE , D . (1999) ‘Is the north of England English?’, Northern Review, vol. 8, Autumn, pp. 18–26.
BYRNE , D . (2001) Understanding the Urban, Palgrave, Basingstoke.
DUNN , R . E . (1998) Identity Crises: A Social Critique of Identity, Minnesota University Press,
Minneapolis, MN.
ENGLISH REGIONAL ARTS BOARD (2000) Making a Difference: The Rôle and Value of the Arts, English
Regional Arts Boards, Winchester.
 CULTURE-LED URBAN REGENERATION 65

EVANS , G . (2001) Cultural Planning: An Urban Renaissance? Routledge, London.

FLORIDA , R . (2002) The Rise of the Creative Class: And How Its Transforming Work, Leisure, Community
and Everyday Life, Basic Books, London.
HALL , P . (1998) Cities in Civilization: Culture, Innovation and Urban Order, Weidenfeld & Nicholson,
London.
HARVEY , D . (1989) The Condition of Postmodernity, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
LANCASTER , B . (1995) ‘City cultures and the “parliaments of birds”: A letter from Newcastle’,
Northern Review, vol. 2, Winter, pp. 1–11.
M c GUIGAN , J . (1996) Culture and the Public Sphere, Routledge, London.
MYERSCOUGH , J . (1986) Facts about the Arts 2, Research Report 656, Policy Studies Institute,
London.
MYERSCOUGH , J . (1994) European Cities of Culture and Cultural Months, Network of Cultural Cities of
Europe, Glasgow.
NORTHERN ARTS (1991) Strategic Review Board Paper, Northern Arts Board Archive, Newcastle upon
Tyne.
NORTHERN SIGHTS (various years) Visual Arts UK Archive, Northumbria University (VAUK 4/3).
SCOTT , A . (2000) The Cultural Economy of Cities, Sage, London.
SKELTON , A ., BRIDGWOOD , A ., DUCKWORTH , K ., HUTTON , L ., FENN , C ., CRESSER , C . et al. (2002) Arts in
England: attendance and attitudes in 2001, Arts Council of England, London.
SMITH , C . (2000) Creative Britain, Faber & Faber, London.
URRY , J . (1998) ‘Contemporary transformations of space and place’, in The Globalization of Higher
Education, ed. P. Scott, SHRE/Open University Press, Buckingham, pp. 1–17.
VALL , N . (1999) ‘Where are you from?‘ Northern Review, vol. 8, Autumn, pp. 27–34.
WILSON , N . & HART , M . (2003) Regional Funding Revisited: Arts Expenditure in the English Regions:
Executive Summary, Arts Council of England, London.
WRIGHTSON , K . (1995) ‘Northern identities: The longue durée’, Northern Review, vol. 2, Winter,
pp. 25–34.
ZUKIN , S . (1992) ‘Postmodern urban landscapes: Mapping culture and power’, in Modernity and
Identity, eds S. Lash & J. Friedman, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 221–247.
ZUKIN , S . (1995) The Culture of Cities, Blackwell, Oxford.

Christopher Bailey, Centre for Cultural Policy and Management, Northumbria University,
Holy Jesus Hospital, City Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
Steven Miles (author to whom correspondence should be addressed), Head of Research,
Centre for Cultural Policy and Management, Northumbria University, Holy Jesus
Hospital, City Road, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 2AS, UK. Tel: +44 (0)191 233 3853;
Email: steven.miles@northumbria.ac.uk
Peter Stark, Centre for Cultural Policy and Management,Northumbria University, Holy Jesus
Hospital, City Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
Copyright of International Journal of Cultural Policy is the property of Routledge and its content may not be
copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written
permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.