Loft living--Bombay calling: culture, work and everyday life on post-industrial Tyneside; a joint polemic.

The Observer of 7 December 2003 carried two stories that had resonance for Tynesiders. One--illustrated with a photo of three attractive but, for nightlife Newcastle, surprisingly fully-dressed young women, with only decolletage on show--asserted that Newcastle's loft-dwellers, residents of a place transformed from coal city to cultural capital, lived in the new cool capital, a boom city with a glittering night-life and affordable luxury living.

The other described how UK-based global capital, in its continuing search for maximum possible exploitation of the workforce, was exporting call centre jobs to the massive reserve army of graduate English-speaking labour in India, with consequent returns to its profits. I don't know if the Three Graces of the first article's photograph were call centre agents but, on postindustrial Tyneside, there is a pretty good chance that they were. Party on, girls--but it may be the last-chance saloon. Bombay is calling.

There is just so much to rant about here.

Contemporary Newcastle as a 'City of Culture'?--not really, I would say. Sure, we have some new cultural provision notably the Baltic, which was essentially a product of Gateshead's desire to do something with a well-liked industrial landmark, and that borough's long-term, old-fashioned, social-democratic commitment to art for the people. Alongside that--and even behind it, in the case of the Baltic, and ruining the impact of that building against the definition of the Tyne gorge--we have exceptionally banal, property speculators' over-priced flats for people with perhaps more expectations than sense. Never forget that the Newcastle-Gateshead City of Culture bid was fronted by Sir Ian Wrigglesworth--an SDP turncoatturned-property magnate. The bid got kicked into touch exactly because the judging panel saw just how over the top it had gone in kowtowing to property money, and ignoring the people. However, this is not a city that is producing culture, if that word means something that relates the experience of life to the production of artistic representation both 'popular' and 'high'. Rather, it is a 'fantasy city' a useful expression of the American urban commentator Hannigan's for describing the urban core as a corporate-dominated, bland consumption experience (Hannigan, 1999).

There was a time not so long ago when Tyneside was a place with a culture-producing culture--the city of Sex, Brown Ale and Rhythm and Blues--the title of Pearson's lovely book about the 'the world that made the Animals' (Pearson, 1999). A culture-producing industrial city full of life, character, and music made by local bands who could rehearse in wrestling halls alongside drunken mad poets, able to relate people's own experiences to the global music of resistance and just plain hell-raising. The Animals lead singer, Eric Burdon, is still keeping it up. At his last gig on Tyneside, he looked like a middle-aged betting-shop manager, sang like a boozy angel and called George Bush worse than muck-that's the way to do it, bonny lad.

What do we have, really? A city of booze and boozers: not the old, industrial boozers--a term covering both the people and the pubs--but new, spangly, bland drinking dens, which serve much the same purpose as the beer halls of black Johannesburg under apartheid. Or, as the great nineteenth-century Tyneside songwriter and performer Joe Wilson recognised in his later life, as the gin palaces of mid-Victorian industrial Tyneside--places to keep the proles happy and disorganised whilst capital and capitalists make hay, rooking the workers both at work and at play. I truly hate working-men's clubs, but this kind of thing makes me think that they have a point. And alongside this, young people with aspirations to quayside lofts (don't mention global warming, by the way, and the River Tyne seeping into the living room in twenty years' time); aspirations based on insecure jobs in a deferential and disorganised--'dis-', not 'un-' organised, because this is an active process-workforce. The new, networked society of global helots is here and now, and partying fit to drop.

Of course, there are exceptions real cultural makers, who can put experience and art together--but how much they depend on a sense and sensibility drawn from what has gone before. David Almond, author of Skellig (1998) and The Fire Eaters (2003), is a prime example--a brilliant writer in that most alive genre of fiction: books for children. He has a skill and style to knock the typical Booker Prize-winner into a cocked hat, and his work is permeated with the very essence of the Felling. AMBER, through its films and photographs, keeps plugging along with the most honourable record of documenting people's lives and how they change. Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen's wonderful photos of the post-coal Durham coastline have been one of the best things shown in the Baltic in 2003. I was also very taken with the exhibition of COBRA work, representing the leftbank, avant-garde art group of the 1940s and '50s. This is what Fred Johnson, Gateshead's original Chair of Libraries and Arts, wanted when he stated the council's commitment to art: the best from here and from the world. This is well outside global corporate entertainment--and at 55[degrees] North, in a converted office block!

I am running out of rant and steam but have one last toot left in me.

The Tyneside of my adolescence and young adulthood--the city of the '60s--was a much livelier and more vivid place than our contemporary facsimile of a 'city of culture'. There was just as much booze; plenty of drugs; frankly, I think, rather more sex; and a real world whose people still thought that organised workers had the power and the right to change the future.

Tyneside could speak out through massively popular television: When the Boat Comes In was middle-brow and radical--a truly dangerous combination; in a poetic sensibility, not the bloodlessness of Bloodaxe--milky spoon, more like--but something which could bring together the heritage of Pound and Pickard's howling at the moon; and in which the main theatre season could be non-stop Brecht, in a form OK for the liberal bourgeoisie, but Brecht all the same.

However, nostalgia is not the point. What of now?

There are surely stirrings. It may be that it is exactly from the domain of culture and lived experience--the territory where people make sense of what they are outwith the world of work--that the next rising-up will come. Certainly, we do well to take note of what Jack Grasby--a dramaturge of insurrectionary resistance in the everyday, if ever we have had one-notes at the end of his The Unfinished Revolution--South Tyneside 1969-76, when he quotes from Neal Ascherson writing about the '60s in the Guardian thirty years on.

To paraphrase--could it happen again, this defiance out of nowhere?--probably, yes. Here's hoping. Because we certainly need it.

Could it happen again?

So, could it happen again, this defiance out of nowhere? Let's ask the Three Graces who introduce Dave Byrne's outline of post-industrial Tyneside to momentarily step to one side, in order to explore not only 'what is', but what 'might be'.

We will need to rejoin these three local lovelies who, however unlikely on a Newcastle winter's night, are the modern stand-ins for the classical personifications of Aglaia for radiance, Euphrosyne for joy and Thalia for flowering; who might together, dare we say it, personify culture.

Raymond Williams's work is the usual starting-point for talking about culture. Distinguishing between works of culture--the things produced and done--and those elements held up as ideal examples of cultural practice, Williams was rightly keen to ground this in the life and experience of people. What he referred to as a 'whole way of life' was more than the artistic and cultural activity of a few, and certainly more than an engagement in a politics and economics of culture by a local elite.

Perhaps our three party girls were pictured under one of Newcastle City Council's street banners. The council used a private company to design and hang banners in support of the bid to become City of Culture 2008, from what seemed like every lamppost in the city. Poorly-designed and inappropriate to the task, hundreds of banners proclaimed Newcastle-Gateshead buzzin', 'Culture 2008' and, flying high in the naff stakes, 'Love the buzz'.

Concentrating on cheesy publicity and overblown self-promotion, it was always going to be a bit of a gamble to win the Capital of Culture competition. And, in the end, having a flutter on culture as publicity--rather than investing in culture as a way of life-didn't pay off.

On the day the winner was announced, Sir Jeremy Isaacs, head of the independent judges, said that Liverpool's stunning dockside developments, its city centre and strong visual arts had contributed to its success in gaining the title.

More importantly, he added, 'If one had to say one thing that swung it for Liverpool, it would have to be there was a greater sense there that the whole city is involved in the bid and behind it.'

But it now seems that the Newcastle-Gateshead Initiative--the team responsible for putting together the failed bid for the European Capital of Culture--is to have another go. 'culturelo', or culture to the power of ten, is the latest scheme intended to do the cultural work for the region.

A study by PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that culture 10 will double the investment in culture, the number of jobs created through culture and tourism, and the number of people taking part in cultural programmes. It will, they say, create '24,000 new jobs and 1.2 billion [pounds sterling] investment in the region'. Sound familiar?

This comes without any acknowledgment of the real nature of culture, which is something pre-existent, and part of a way of life. It may be something that can be developed and extended, but it cannot be created out of nothing. These initiatives will fail.

Consumer culture is open to purchase, but that is all. Culture can't be bought; it needs to develop in an organic way, and neither can existing cultural elements simply be appropriated, because when events are hijacked by big business, big planning, big money, big security, they tend to fail.

Here is one, I suspect not untypical, example of not acknowledging culture and its practitioners. Jeff Price of the Poetry Vandals has been involved in the arts and in Newcastle's artistic community for a long time, running creative writing groups, organising poetry events, and performing poetry in pubs, clubs and at festivals.

Like many other local practitioners, he was not included in the latest culture scheme. 'The first I knew about Culture 10', reports Jeff, 'was the press release. Nobody talked to me or asked me my opinion. I don't know anybody that was asked. I heard nothing about any meetings that were organised to discuss Culture 10. Since the press announcement I have received no information about Culture 10.'

So much for the practitioners, but what about the cultural institutions-how are they faring in this cultural transformation?

Certainly, funding for projects like the Baltic and Sage have produced tangible cultural results, the former combining local art with works from further afield. But what impact is it having on the wider 'lived culture' of the region, and how are projects like the Waygood Gallery able to foster art and creativity amongst the local community? Recent changes have taken place at the Laing Art Gallery.

Extending the building and repositioning the entrance to face the modern centre of the city has been both symbolic and functionally beneficial, but what counts is the content: what's inside the gallery, and how it fits with the real lives of people.

The gallery, having been closed for a while for refurbishment, has reopened in a more popular mode, but the number of paintings has been reduced to make way for an extended cafe and another shopping space.

Crucial to a real regeneration of culture in the region is the practice of a politics of culture. A politics of culture operates not only between the culture institutions and the funding bodies, and between the institutions and communities, but also within the cultural organisations themselves. The directors, administrators and supervisors of galleries, museums, theatres and even educational establishments need to engage not only with the processes of capital that at present determine so much of policy and, ultimately, the cultural output of the institutions, but with the knowledge, intuition and creativity of their own workforces, in conjunction with the latent cultural potential of the people. A politics of culture will create a space for artistic, cultural and educational producers to reengage with the world through the culture organisations. A recent case in point here would be a local university that, in order to fund expansion, attempted to make a large section of its teaching workforce redundant, creating chaos. 'People not profit' is an old slogan, but the sentiment is as fresh as a daisy, and essential for a cultivation of the arts and a re-growth of culture. Cultural regeneration will require movements and realignments of people and groups within and outwith the institutions. In short, a new politics of culture.

A new politics of culture will seek out untapped creativity, artistic and popular, and engage with the 'way of life' as it is lived by the majority--the ordinary, working people of the region. A new politics of culture will recognise the changes that have occurred in the social, economic and cultural world, which has seen Thatcher and Reagan come and go, leaving residual forms in the shape of Blair and Bush--the latter pairing, it might be noted, often nastier in intent than the former. 'If there is hope it lies with the proles', claimed Winston Smith in Orwell's dark world of 1984, brilliantly performed as part of the Northern Stage's Orwell trilogy. But who now are these proles, and what are the cultural manifestations of this proledom? The working-class experience of industrial capitalism has largely gone--swept away by economic and technological change, and by political decision. We can no longer, as Alan Plater's miners could do, 'march on London to touch the conscience of the nation'. The last of these marches was in 1992, against pit closures. The pits closed, and with the demise of the mining industry one of the symbols of working-class culture was shelved in a museum in Northumberland. Yet the politics and a kind of resistance live on at the annual Durham Gala.

So the question posed above--'what are the cultural manifestations of this proledom?'--might be re-posed with a recognition that the working class--still far and away the dominant group on Tyneside--has changed.

The lost male world of mining, and the demise of steel-working and shipbuilding, has given ground to people staffing call centres, working in education, and in the service and culture sectors. The form and the struggles may remain, but the outward signs have changed.

The coaxing, teasing and shaping of latent creativity to form a culture is very different to culture as business. Culture as business might bring some benefits to the lives and employment of people but, in the main, this kind of 'culture' gives the reorganisation and investment of capital a legitimacy--a sort of softer purpose. But this is not culture as creativity. Culture-as-business leads to a form of popular culture deadening in its 'sameness', where the Beckhams-or their northern equivalents--are enthroned as king and queen of kitsch. Conformity of 'culture' sits hand-in-hand with bigger, improved takings. Northern Stage's recent Homage to Catalonia features a scene, reminiscent of O'Brien's interrogation and torture of Winston Smith in 1984, in which the Communist commissar shouts down the non-Communist, anarchist and socialist opponents of fascism.

You will conform--join the Party. The threat to freedom, and the imposition of political and cultural conformity by Stalinism and other totalitarian forms, has been lifted for most Europeans. Yet the dead hand of conformity is raised in blessing over certain forms and applications of popular culture. The business of Big Brother has extended to TV programming, and is more popular than ever.

These aspects of the 'creative industries' touch the lives of the young in ways hitherto not experienced by previous generations. Bountiful in their provision of cultural commodities, and successful in their encouragement of cultural consumption, they close the door on artistic and cultural creativity. The overly-controlled and secured space of the creative industries restricts the places and skills necessary for young people to develop and be different. This is dependency, not DIY culture. The ultimate failure of manufactured culture to satisfy leads to cynicism and, consequently, vulnerability to hostile political and social forces. The counter to cynicism is creativity.

So what might the future hold for culture in the North-East of England? What of the festivals, concerts, poetry readings, street theatre; the art and culture from below that has been overlooked in the big, banal cultural plans? What of the real communities, in all of their lived variety and experience, waiting to be shaped and presented? How can they turn the familiarity of the everyday, the triumphs and tribulations of life lived in the North of England, into celebrations?

A short list of cultural groups might include: the gardening clubs, allotment societies, reading groups, art classes, artists, skateboarders; the music, poetry and theatre groups, the RSC and the National Theatre; the working men's clubs, young musician groups, faith organisations, festival organisers, sports clubs, local trades unions, and political groups like 'BAN waste in Byker'.

Where are the television companies and radio stations and the creative people who make them in all this? How can the groups be linked, built on, funded democratically and encouraged from the ground-up as a loose, culture-creating structure? What needs to be done to start this process? Who might put it in place? These are some of the questions and considerations to be faced in the development of what a confident cultural strategy might look like.

But to be sure, a cultural strategy would have at its core a mechanism that would start to connect people, activities and institutions. A 'culture web' would connect together different cultural activities, interested individuals and cultural and artistic groups, to create a culture network.

The culture network would primarily operate horizontally, at ground level, and would cultivate energy, activity and creativity greater than that of its component parts.

It would come to form a culture of its own, rooted in its various parts. A well-managed website would be at the heart of this enterprise, with other, democratically-organised forms of communication such as magazines, newsletters, etc, channelling a free flow of communications. Secondly, the culture web would connect institutions with communities, cultural and artistic groups and individuals, in a reciprocal relationship.

This would tend to operate vertically, but a free flow of ideas between elements in both the horizontal and vertical structures would be essential. This might enable a richer artistic and cultural activity for individuals, groups, artistic and cultural workers, and for culture-producing institutions. It could provide the spark for Dave Byrne's call for a new cultural and artistic defiance. Not out of nowhere, but from somewhere: from a particular organisation of forces. A free flow of information, ideas and experiences, horizontally and vertically, would be an expression of a new politics of culture.

A new politics of culture based on the culture web would require not only the connectedness of communications, but also new spaces of culture.

Ground for debate and discussion, but also space and places for artistic and cultural production--accessible, welcoming and democratic. A reversal of the policy that has resulted in the closing-down of urban cultural spaces in the interest of developers and big business.

If you need an image of the future, delete the spectacle of business culture, at which the people can only gawp like the passive audience that hangs around Fenwick's window in the run-up to Christmas. Picture instead the Culture 2008 banners being taken down. The Three Graces of the opening paragraph step forward, arms linked. And in the middle, Thalia; flowering, blooming.

Chris Wharton

A last word

Although the notion of 'theoretical practice' makes me want to throw up, Chris's response to my original rant does raise some crucial issues which might be informed by reference, yet again--but who should be surprised--to Raymond Williams (1981). In trying to understand the implications and potential of this situation, we can turn to Williams's discussion of 'residual' and 'emergent' cultures.

Williams noted that, in any cultural context, 'some experiences, meanings and values, which cannot be verified or cannot be expressed in terms of the dominant culture, are nevertheless lived and practised on the basis of the residue--cultural as well as social, of some previous social formation.' This is 'residual culture'.

By 'emergent culture', he meant the 'new meanings and values, new practices, new significances and experiences' that, for him, were 'constantly being created'. Residual and emergent cultures do not exist in isolation from dominant culture. On the contrary, dominant culture will incorporate elements of both into itself.

Indeed, Williams considered that dominant culture 'could not allow' too much cultural practice of any other kind outside itself. The elements of the past and the future that are taken in, Williams identified as 'incorporated residual' and 'incorporated emergent'.

So, there are elements of the past that the present 'culture of mindless consumption', and of 'politics of property development', can take into itself. This dominant culture of passivity for the masses can live happily with the 'momentary hedonism' of the old industrial working class--live for now and live hard--as incorporated residual culture. It can absorb and commodify--although never without difficulty-popular cultural forms as they emerge. They can be made into products to be bought and sold as part of 'Fantasy City'.

What the dominant culture cannot live with are the unincorporated elements of both emergent and residual culture that, in post-industrial society, are in any event intrinsically linked, the one to the other. Just as the old industrial working class really knew how to let its hair down, it also knew how to see a different and better future, and how to organise and plan towards it. It represented a challenge and an alternative. That is, an 'unincorporated residual culture', independent of the zombified corpse of the institutional cultural forms through which the 'New Labour' aims of using culture are to be achieved.

The question I have, and with which I will close, is this: what and where are the unincorporated--and unincorporatable--elements of emergent culture? Cultural politics is not just a politics of cultural planning and institutional provision. It is wider than that, just as politics itself is always about culture as well. What I want to know, and we need to find out, is where post-industrial culture can throw up challenges to the bland, the dominant, and the same old shite under its new name. Because--as Jack Grasby reminds us--throw them up it will.

David Byrne

References

Almond, D. (198) Skellig (Hodder's Children's Books) London.--(2003) The Fire Eaters (Random House) London.

Hannigan, J. (1999) Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis (Routledge) New York.

Pearson, G. (1999) Sex, Brown Ale and Rhythm and Blues (SnagaP Publications) Newcastle.

Williams, R. (1981) Culture (Fontana) London.

Note: Thanks to Richard Bliss, the director of communications for Northern Stage, for his comments.