Culture

82 Culture Vultures
amount to 110, in number, for this part of the ‘fringe’). They are
businesses with turnovers of between a quarter and a half a million
pounds.
City planners have tried to replicate the success of both Glasgow
and Hoxton. But they have failed to ask whether these are appropriate
precedents. Following Glasgow’s model, Belfast, Birmingham,
Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Canterbury, Inverness, Milton Keynes,
Newcastle-Gateshead, Norwich and Oxford all competed for
Britain’s nomination as European Capital of Culture in 2008, losing
out to Liverpool. (‘If you don’t pick Belfast’, joked the former paramilitary
leader Gerry Adams to Miranda Sawyer,‘don’t come back’. 28 )
But Liverpool’s bid document makes it clear that the nomination is
not about the city’s dynamism so much as its dependence on government
subsidy. Noting that ‘Objective One’ European funding will
run out, the document argues that ‘Capital of Culture status would
be the perfect exit strategy to Objective One’. Instead of celebrating
Liverpool’s contribution to culture, its award was overshadowed by
the perception that the city still wallows in its victim status.
Charles Landry took up the Hoxton model of development in his
Creative City. Despite pointing to ‘formula thinking’ as chief among
the barriers to regeneration, he subtitled his book ‘A toolkit for
urban innovators’. Landry’s kit has been applied as far afield as
Adelaide, Salem and Albania, as well as to Manchester, Newcastle
and Birmingham. City grandees were even persuaded to market
Newcastle as ‘a top international holiday destination in the
specialised gay market’ – though if an analysis of the census by
Sussex University researcher Darren Smith is to be believed,
Newcastle turns out to be straightest town in England. 29 Questioning
the branding of Newcastle-Gateshead, local playwright Alan Plater