Lord of the Rings?

On my way home tonight I detoured so I could go past the first ring of Anish Kapoor's Temenos in Middlesbrough. This is a huge sculpture, or the first part of five over a decade (or so) - lauded as the world's biggest public art initiative when it launched in July 2008. You can see what I wrote about it then here, read about the raising of the ring here and see a photo above. Be assured, the Transporter Bridge is not that far away - this really is big. (There's also a great photo on the Evening Gazette website here, but I'm not borrowing that out of respect for the fantastic project manager Sean.)

There is only the first ring in place, but it is impressive and enjoyable in its own right, like looking at the first few marks an artist might make on a drawing or a painting. (Except, of course, you don't need years' of detailed engineering studies and so on to start a painting. )

The ironies of the piece, its location, conception and materials have only deepened since the launch, with the potential closure of Corus's steel plant just down river at Redcar. Regeneration has not got any easier, or any less important. But the imaginative impact perhaps only gains power from that. I can't wait to see it take shape over the next months - apparently the 'net' takes some time to be made taut.

(The eagle-eyed who read my July 2008 blog will deduce the project is slightly late getting finished. An accident early in the construction process led to some delays. It's nothing to the gestation period required for great big horses though...)

Should venues give free tickets to the newly laid off?

I've been a little slow getting going here since returning to work - a combination of pressing work to do and some technical issues. Anyway: Happy New Year.

I'll start with what I think is a cheering story of the arts responding to the economic doom and gloom, in Maryland, USA. Maryland Citizen's for the Arts and arts organisations in the state are providing free and subsidised tickets for state employees who are being forced to take unpaid leave to balance the state government's books. You can read the details here .

The McMaster-inspired scheme to give free theatre tickets to young people has not been uncontroversial. Some have said it could undermine long-term audience development, others have embraced it as a chance to break into new areas. We will see how those successful in the recent bids fare. But the Maryland scheme seems unequivocally a positive, community-spirited gesture. It's a fortnight too late to come over all George Bailey on you, but it'd be interesting to see whether some arts organisations could do something similar in the UK, not just for 'state employees', especially in places hit especially hard by lay offs. (Acknowledging that many venues work hard already on inclusion projects, of course.)

Hit the North?

I grew up in a village near Preston that contained several disused cotton mills, where generations of my ancestors had worked. I went to University in Liverpool but left to go to London for work the day after the 1987 general election. (The sun was shining on a triumphant Jeffrey Archer in London whist it poured with rain as we packed the removal van.) I live now in Stockton-on-Tees, work in Newcastle and can give you an impassioned and illustrated talk on the role of culture-led regeneration in North East England at thirty seconds notice.

So I really ought to have no sympathy at all with the authors of Policy Exchange’s recent ‘Cities Unlimited’ report. This was widely reported as saying (amongst other things) that cities and towns such as Stockton, Liverpool and Sunderland are beyond regeneration, let alone redemption, historical hangovers, and people unfortunate enough to be born or live there should accept that, and move down south. The south of England, meanwhile, had to accept that places like Oxford should double in size. (The only direct reference to the arts is to Baltic in Gateshead, but the point being made is that golf courses might be better for attracting high earners. The boys at Policy Exchange are obviously unaware that both Baltic and our council golf courses attract people from all backgrounds and earning potential.)

To quote Mark E. Smith’s apposite ‘NWRA’, ‘I was mad, and laughed at the same time.’ But, reading the report rather than the reports of it, it isn’t quite as mad, bad or dangerous to read as it might be. The report is sufficiently poorly researched and argued even I can pick holes in it. Their version of ‘economic geography’ seems simplistic, for instance, let alone their version of Sunderland. It obviously makes no sense in a place as small as Britain to write off large chunks of the country as ‘beyond their sell by date’. David Cameron called the report ‘insane’ apparently, which seems a bit strong. Suffice to say I’ve not put my house on the market.

But despite being easy to dismiss, the report raises some interesting questions for those of us who do believe in both the bits of this island that happen not to be London or the South East and in regeneration of all sorts, but especially culture-led:
· Isn't it true we can’t expect to have the same effect everywhere, and we don’t often make this plain?
· To what extent do the economic effects of culture-led regeneration rely on the density you can achieve it cities and large towns – and how might we need to act differently in smaller places?
· To what extent can we achieve an equity of cultural provision across the country without kidding ourselves that what will work or is necessary in Gateshead will work in Grimethorpe and Godalming?
· What would a ‘cultural geography’ reading tell us about Britain, and the places that have been, are and could be culturally ‘productive’?

Is Tees Valley really the Land of Giants?

Back in May I wrote about a seminar on the 10th birthday of Anthony Gormley’s Angel of the North. I mentioned some other big public art projects. This morning I was at the launch of another, even bigger, which I couldn’t mention at the time. Tees Valley Giants is a five piece, five site, 10 year work by Anish Kapoor with Cecil Balmond, and today the first, Temenos, was unveiled in Middlesbrough. It is the world’s biggest public art initiative. (Until we hear different.) You can read local coverage of it here. Hopefully it’s the beginning of a productive debate: if everyone likes it straight away, it may not have the ‘transforming’ effect necessary.

For me this is not primarily a story of ‘culture-led regeneration’ – though it is that, in spades. Nor is it a story of partnership – though it is that too, with five local authorities, a regional development agency, the Arts Council, a regional foundation, and even the local premiership football club on board (Middlesbrough FC contributing cold hard cash to set an example of civic leadership to some other clubs) under the leadership of Tees Valley Regeneration. It is a story about art (and engineering) and excellence. Get a world class artist into the right place and the unimaginable can happen. You can link the past and future and you can bring people together behind a vision. Take a virtual tour here. And next year, all being well, come to Middlesbrough and see the real thing.