The Manchester Culture Model
September 2011
Manchester’s cultural leaders who have jointly agreed
this paper are:
Alex Poots, MIF
Fiona Gasper, Royal Exchange
John Summers, Hallé
Bob Riley, Manchester Camerata
Maria Balshaw, Whitworth Gallery and Manchester Art Gallery
Drew Stokes, Marketing Manchester
Dave Moutrey, Cornerhouse
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Contents
Page
1.
Introduction
4
2.
Areas of Work
5
2.1
Digital Content Development
5
2.2
Collaborative Arts Programming
6
2.3
Engaging and Developing Talent
8
2.4
Strategic Marketing and Cultural Tourism
9
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1. Introduction
This document, produced by Manchester City Council together with
Manchester’s Cultural Leaders, supported by the Arts Council, outlines our
shared vision for strengthening the city’s cultural offer and helping to deliver
Manchester’s Cultural Ambition strategy.
Manchester has made significant investment in culture over the past decade.
Its Festival has garnered international acclaim and many organisations in the
city are national leaders in their field. Engagement with children and young
people is central to the work of all of the city’s cultural organisations and their
groundbreaking work with communities and volunteers is at the heart of the
city’s cultural life. Manchester is seen as a vibrant, dynamic place in large
part due to the impact of culture in the city.
Challenge and opportunities arising from the profound changes across the
economy mean all partners believe it is time to extend collaborative working
by cultural organisations in the city. By working in partnership across different
governance and funding structures, and beyond typical art form allegiances,
we believe we can take some bold steps toward a cultural sector that is much
more than the sum of its individual organisations. All partners are intent on
forging new artistic collaborations and finding new collaborative models of
delivery, and through this securing an outstanding return on public investment
in the city region. An early achievement for this new collaborative way of
working is the development of a major new Cultural Facility to house Library
Theatre Company and Cornerhouse which is due to start on site early in 2012
and open in Spring 2014. This must be the next step forward for culture in the
city if it is to secure the international reputation and the local economic and
social benefit all partners are committed to.
We have identified four initial priority areas where working together will have
the most significant and immediate impact. Plans for each thematic area
have been developed by a group of the City’s cultural leaders, with specific
organisations leading on their areas of specialism. These priority areas will
be seen as a focus for new investment. They reflect our shared ambition to
accelerate improvement of the city’s cultural offer, and to grow an ever more
dynamic mixed economy for the arts – ensuring that Manchester continues to
model cultural collaboration that has international reach and profound local
benefit.
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2.
Areas of work
These have been shaped by ACE’s ‘Achieving Great Art for Everyone’, MCC’s
‘Cultural Ambition’ and its Museum and Libraries companion document and
the aspirations of the City’s cultural leaders:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Digital Content Development
Collaborative Arts Programming
Engaging and Developing Talent
Strategic Marketing and Cultural Tourism
2.1. Digital Content Development
Context and Approach
The city’s cultural institutions and their partners are committed to making the
most of new digital opportunities that enable audiences and participants to
engage with art in new ways. Better online content and deeper digital
engagement in production are vital if the city’s cultural organisations are to
reach new audiences and maximise the impact of their work.
The challenge for cultural organisations is how to respond to this expansion of
opportunity and expectation. The key enablers here are staff time, staff
technical know-how and access to technical equipment – all issues that could
be overcome through funding and sharing of resources. Most arts
organisations are too small to be able to hold the level of technical and
creative expertise to realise their ambitions for digital engagement and too
inexperienced with digital technology to realise its full potential.
Working collaborative city cultural organisations wish to take full advantage of
Manchester’s pioneering free wireless network as well as the Living Lab,
which takes superfast broadband into homes, to trial and roll-out new modes
of digital practice. A project of this scale has potential for global reach and
impact and would position the city as a global innovator – in that no other city
has adopted this integrated approach – and help transform the skills base of
both the cultural institutions and a wider group of volunteers and participants.
Proposal:
Create a new digital knowledge-sharing network for the city region.
Led by recognised innovator Cornerhouse, who will coordinate the network,
and supported by fellow travellers Future Everything, Manchester Camerata,
Band on the Wall and Manchester Museum and make links with centres of
excellence in the city’s Universities through the Corridor initiative.
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The network will support a pool of shared equipment and people, with the
capability and knowledge to produce digital outputs of the very highest quality.
The aim would be to hire a lead producer who would work with the city’s
cultural institutions to help improve the quality and quality of their digital
content, develop and expand audiences, create more accessible routes into
the arts, engage with people and aid in developing an open dialogue between
organisations and audiences.
As a partner in this project organisations could expect to borrow equipment,
share the services of a live broadcast editor, draw on a pool of volunteer
camera operators, access professional editing equipment, take part in training
programmes on digital content creation, and participate in research
investigating how audiences engage with digital content. As a collective force
the network will develop cost efficient deals on new distribution channels and
significantly reduce the cost of creating and distributing digital content, with a
strong audience led focus in mind. It will also expand volunteering and
learning opportunities for the wider community
Resources
The creation of the shared knowledge and equipment pool and the audience
development and engagement elements would need to be supported by a
city-wide digital content development funding applications to the Arts
Council’s Digital Lottery Fund and to NESTA. MCC is prioritising this
collaborative bid and would support it by offering support through Manchester
Digital Development Agency and would coordinate this activity with other
MCC digital initiatives, including the Sharp Project and superfast broadband
Digitising the Corridor Project.
2.2. Collaborative Arts Programming
Context and Approach
Manchester Museums and Galleries have worked together to use collections
and exhibitions to create remarkable exhibitions that have engaged new
audiences. Orchestras in the city have worked together to programme
collaboratively to great effect through, for example, the recent Mahler Season.
Manchester International Festival has been a major catalyst for ambitious,
internationally significant commissions, in collaboration with citywide
organisations.
Cultural organisations in the city now wish to take this collaborative ethos to
the next level to produce high quality, high profile artistic work on a scale that
would not be achievable by any organisation working independently. This will
further enhance Manchester’s reputation as a culturally ambitious and
distinctive city, and protect the quality and ambition of the city’s cultural offer
at a time when resources are limited.
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Proposal:
A group of leading organisations in the city (eg Hallé Orchestra, Whitworth
and Manchester City Galleries, Manchester International Festival) will develop
various initiatives. For example:
a) 2014 is the centenary of the First World War and offers the possibility of
looking at the period 1914-18 as a moment of revolution across artforms,
which city cultural organisations could re-examine, re-imagine and present in
a radical, original modern way.
b) The Masterworks series is dedicated to presenting artistic masterpieces
from the past and across art forms. Curated by MIF, Masterworks will invite
leading artists to excavate past masterpieces; to re-mount, curate and reimagine former great works. It will feature unequivocal masterpieces with an
emphasis on high quality and UK exclusivity. (NB Where MIF looks to the
future through new commissions, Masterworks, excavates and presents
history’s greatest works of art).
This 5 event series will be developed and realised through a series of key
partnerships (eg MAG & MIF; Hallé & MIF) and will run in the opposite year to
MIF, i.e. from April to July 2014; April to July 2016 and so on…
Some of the featured artists will be in residence, creating opportunities to
realise meaningful and life enhancing education programmes. Others can
give Master classes and other avenues of engagement and opportunities in
the community.
Masterworks will draw on MIF’s successful business model of combining
existing programme funds with international co-commissioning funds,
philanthropic donations, commercially generated income and private sector
sponsorship, with all the attendant cultural and economic benefits this delivers
for arts and the city. Over time the series will showcase various Manchester’s
arts venues, making best use of the investments already made and
significantly improving the city’s cultural offer. It will also continue to build the
city region’s reputation as a thriving, desirable and growing cultural centre for
local, national and international businesses, organisations and visitors.
These various initiatives (eg WW1 Centenary; Masterworks etc), will be
developed and realised between city partners (eg MAG and MIF; Hallé, BBC
& MC; MCR Museums and Hallé). As has been found in previous successful
partnerships (eg Whitworth and MIF’s Marina Abramovic Presents), this
collaborative and complementary way of working enables participating cultural
organisations to pool resources, and attract artists and co-commissioners that
would be beyond their reach individually - thereby raising the quality of the
artistic offer to the public, developing the skill base of the sector and attracting
public and private income to the region.
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Resources
Taking collaborative programming across the city to the next level will require
significant collaborative investment from a number of stakeholders. At the
present time MCC is committed to realising the greater benefits this kind of
collective work can bring and intends to make available a sizeable investment,
if this can be matched by strategic investment by Arts Council
England/DCMS.
Cultural organisations are prepared to commit their own resources and the
network of cultural leaders will work together, with support from MCC, to
design a collaborative bid to the new fund for Philanthropic Giving in order to
optimise investment in this new way of working.
2.3. Engaging and Developing Talent
Context and Approach
The direction of future travel for cultural education is becoming clear.
The recent Government commissioned review of Music Education by Darren
Henley suggested that there should be more ‘hub’ based offers developed by
the cultural sector – so that Schools and other public commissioners would be
able to deal with single consortia rather than transacting with many individual
providers. Henley’s wider review of cultural education is underway and will
create a definition of what a solid cultural education should comprise of.
Renaissance in the Regions funding has seen museums and galleries in the
city region work as consortia to demonstrable education benefit and area
based pilots in North Manchester and Ardwick are demonstrating the
effectiveness of cultural organisations working closely together to offer
coordinated services for schools and a powerful integrated cultural offer to
young people. As schools in Manchester form themselves into ‘families’ of
schools, who will be selecting and commissioning cultural services for schools
alongside many other areas of their provision, the time is right for there to be
a coordinated approach to creative education for young people that steps
beyond specific art forms.
Proposal
Over the next 12 months, key cultural organisations will work with MCC
Culture team to complete a comprehensive mapping cultural learning
provision for young people, in and outside School, with a view to being able to
capture and coordinate a joined-up creative offer for young people.
This work is already underway. In Museums and Galleries a coordinated
approach to primary and secondary education is in place and the Manchester
Museums Consortium is supporting organisations to move to a commissioning
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model, where schools will be able to engage a group of museums as partners.
This is being effectively supported by the new shared posts across
Manchester City Galleries, the Whitworth and Manchester Museum.
Manchester Music Service (MMS) and other education services that were part
of Children's Services are now becoming part of an MCC owned limited
company that will trade in and beyond Manchester. The Council will be the
sole shareholder initially, with Schools the majority customer. The company
will also retain a small commissioning budget. The RNCM, Hallé, BBC,
Camerata, RNCM, Chetham's, Brighter Sound and Music Stuff will support
this work and drive innovations across the City in terms of the shape and
character of music education.
In theatre education, the different but complementary forces of the Royal
Exchange, Library Theatre, The Lowry and Contact mean that the city is well
placed to be able to offer an innovative range of schools focused theatre work
as well as young person led practice and creative talent development. The
strong inter-disciplinary practice of these organisations means that theatre
education intersects with nearly every other artform area. The task over the
next year will be to coordinate and capture the range of work.
By the Autumn term 2013, we should be able to map a creative learning
journey from 0 – 19 for a young Manchester person, with appropriate signposts, support, interconnections for both young people and their schools and
parents. This should give the best possible experience to young people and
also ensure the best possible return on public investment in creative
education.
Resources
Bids to central government for a pilot project for music are expected, which is
likely to have an AGMA wide scope. There will be further substantive bids
into the post Henley landscape to build upon these pilots, and to help create a
unique learning focus that is culture wide rather than art form specific.
Museums and galleries are utilising Renaissance investment to support the
transition to a collaborative strategic commissioning model, so no further
investment is required.
2.4. Strategic Marketing and Cultural Tourism
Context and Approach
Manchester has been developing truly innovative and collaborative
approaches to cultural tourism and marketing and city’s cultural offer.
Creative Tourist (www.creativetourrist.com) has been a pathfinder initiative for
the city and a test bed for innovative collaborative working. Museums and
galleries have worked together with tourism agencies to develop an online
magazine and series of campaigns to sell the cultural experience of
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Manchester, rather than the product of any single institution. The website has
built an incredibly strong following through using a strong editorial voice to
provide compelling reasons to visit Manchester. Focused on culturally-active
tourism markets across the UK and overseas it has maximised use of new
media and social networking to strengthen the visitor offer in Manchester,
attract out of region tourists and grow the visitor economy
There is further opportunity to link all of these activities with the development
of the hospitality sector through visitor information, narrative tours and
journeys, accommodation and travel offers. This is underpinned by a 'cultural
concierge' model, which involves developing skills in customer care and
volunteering to deliver an exciting, distinctive welcome and after-care service
to make a visit to Manchester an unforgettable experience.
Creative Tourist is recognised nationally by the tourism sector as exemplifying
innovative practice and is now extending across the cultural sector to include
other art forms and creative agencies and driving a powerful partnership with
the BBC and Media City.
Proposal
We can now use Creative Tourist to provide the impetus for new ways of
working across city cultural organisations – offering a genuine example of how
different organisations can pool resources for greater gain. We have a
number of examples that are currently being developed and have tremendous
potential to go forward.
This summer a strategic partnership with Marketing Manchester is aligning
over £250k of investment to raise the profile of the city over the summer 2011.
Creative Tourist is coordinating the ‘cultural welcome’ for the BBC at Media
City, working with a wide range of cultural organisations in the city and a new
collaborations across whole of the city's cultural sector for this autumn’s
Weekender campaign that maximise the impact of creative programming
Rolled out to embrace all art forms and partners across the city Creative
Tourist can become the cultural marketing tool for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad
in Manchester and the North West. In the longer term the key partners will
work towards 2014. Creative Tourist’s seasonal magazine style approach, its
editorial ‘voice’, which is deliberately original modern in tone, and the fact it
belongs to every cultural organisation in Manchester and none make it the
best possible vehicle for the proposed Masterworks series as well as major
capital developments including the Whitworth Art Gallery, Cornerhouse and
the Library Theatre and Archive Plus.
Resources
None beyond commitment from cultural organisations across the city and
Marketing Manchester to finding a new business model and a new
collaborative working ethos to deliver a distinctive, original modern cultural
voice for Manchester. It should be noted however that this work was
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previously funded via Renaissance so new arrangements will be needed for
2012/13.
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