Rage Against Hallam
Anon | 11.02.2005 22:47 | Analysis | Education | Sheffield
Join the televised rally at 6pm on the 14th Feb at The National Centre For Popular Music, when Hallam will be re-opening the centre as a students union. The NCPM was built from lottery funding it is considered by some that its true ownership is that of the people.
The National Centre for Popular Music (NCPM) was built over five years ago as a visitor attraction centre for Sheffield using over £18 million of public money. The original project failed for various reasons and for a number of years this iconic building has been abandoned largely empty and unused at the heart of Sheffield's Cultural Industries Quarter — an area in which Sheffield's creative and digital industries are concentrated.
Action update: 1
The NCPM has now been taken over by Sheffield Hallam University which has relocated their Students Union to the building. It was rumoured some years ago that Sheffield Hallam had allegedly done a 'land swap' deal with the Regional Development Agency, Yorkshire Forward, and with Sheffield City Council in order to gain control of this public building for less than one tenth of its original cost to the National Lottery Good Causes fund.
The redevelopment of the NCPM as a students union is seen as a severe threat to the redevelopment of the CIQ area and Sheffield City Centre as a whole. This move shows a very poor understanding of Sheffield's indigenous cultural heritage and economy, a lack of recognition for the fundamental role of creative individuals in that cultural economy, and the bankruptcy of the policies imposed in a 'top down' manner by these so-called regeneration agencies.
Sheffield's cultural ecology has been built upon an understanding that creating genuine opportunities for the community to access facilities for cultural production, distribution and consumption will lever the social, economic, cultural and environmental regeneration of the entire city - not just for a small minority sector. This understanding has encouraged a grassroots campaign which started more than two years ago to realise the NCPM as a public centre for cultural and creative activities.
The National Centre for Popular Music is an iconic building strategically located at a major gateway to the City Centre from the train station - it is Sheffield's first impression to many visitors to the City. Our National Centre symbolised Sheffield's rebirth and we have a duty as concerned residents of our city to reclaim our future, Sheffield's future.
Anon
Comments
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Electronic Resistance
12.02.2005 18:33
Here's an animated GIF of the NCPM turning into a turd:
And this was just one of several spoof websites that were created at the time to lampoon Yorkshire Forward - or Yorkshire Backward as they came to be known:
Erwin J. Farquharson
Cultural Industry - business as usual
18.02.2005 17:51
If the NCPM was to be the gateway for the culture industries quarter then what does that say about Sheffield's take on encouraging creativity? Never mind the fact that when it did bomb, the real opportunities of this space were disregarded and the easy option of selling out to more instant ready made student industry was jumped upon. Examples of university cities where student demand for places exploded had nothing to do with this top down approach - Leeds' and Manchester's music scenes, driven by kids putting gigs on in grotty upstairs rooms in pubs, holding drugged fuelled grassroots club nights, artisan shops and markets, cool small bookshops, books and record shops is probably what caused this boom. I very much doubt that URBIS is causing the same excitement and energy of the 80's and 90's music scene in Manchester. The Showroom independent cinema is a cool addition to Sheffield nightlife and hosts many worthy events, but it ain't exactly fuelling the creativity of a city.
While there may be something worthy to the cultural industries quarter, I can't help having this feeling when I walk down the streets, of there being artistic and cultural space that I have no access to. It feels like a dead facade, towering buildings of nice intentions but no room at the inn to do anything real and spontaneous. Clicking on the CIQ website gives you more than enough information on how you set up your own cultural industries business, but without a bank loan, funding or a business plan there is nothing else for you here. Industry is the operative word. Yes you may visit and look, and the fortunate few who have managed to pocket the institutional funding and shoe horn their creativity into a possibly viable business get a chance. There may be an upcoming conference in Sheffield on the potential of community festivals for regeneration, but you can't imagine anything that comes from it having the vibrancy of the Creative Action Network inspired Sharrow Lantern Festival. Where in this quarter is there an opportunity to make a festival happen, do a film night, art show or gig without a couple of hundred quid in your pocket. If you wake up one day and decide fuck it, I am going to make a film, develop photos or do whatever, there isn't much on offer. This is what is sad about slowly losing the Drum/NCPM (thankfully we still have Access Space). To some extent you could roll in off the street and start working on something. But imagine if the whole space was like this, even better if there was open space where people were just about able to do anything creative - what would the emotional, social and economic regeneration flowing from this look like? There used to be large cracks and crevices in the landscape where this kind of activity could be sown and grown, but as the recent eviction of the silver squat highlighted, these spaces are getting narrower and aren't open for very long. With the steady sanitised refurbishment of Sheffield and the concreting over of the cracks, the loss of the Drum to a student's union is depressing, and in the long run likely to be a loss to the student population as well.
The creation of real culture is messy, dirty, random, sporadic, agitational and unpredictable. It comes from the most unlikely of people, and in these hands it is inspiring and sometimes life affirming. How exciting it would be if the cultural industries quarter space was put firmly in Sheffield people's hands. And why not, as this feature on Hallam and the NCPM points out, we have already paid for it! What ever the mix of crap and genius that would follow from that, it would certainly save me from drowning in blandness and choking on frustration.
As an endnote, and on a slightly different note, I think I saw on one of the Burngreave re-development plans that all the cool shops and restaurants created by local people, which people trek far and wide for would be bulldozed and it looked like all this 'diversity' and 'creatvity' would instead be boxed up into a nice 'showcase' market. I could be wrong, but the thought just makes me shudder and look for the cloud of doom to descend!
Dead Poet
Exactly!
19.02.2005 22:04
Excellent bit of writing there Mr. Dead Poet person!
The CIQ, and the great minds behind the 'Pop Museum', talk only of the 'creative industries' as a 'key growth sector' - it's seen merely in economic terms.
All the regeneration cash coming in is basically aimed at structural adjustment. IMF-stylee, we'll suffer the pain for a while, but by bringing in the corporations and big capital, everyone will be better off. Somehow. Magically. Holes in the pockets of the rich as they walk about, or something.
Applying this logic to the creative industries is perverse. But, as you mention, it's no less perverse when applied to Burngreave, where the Housing Renewal Pathfinder scheme is in the process of proposing shiny new glass towers as a gateway to Spital Hill.
And, sinisterly, we read in one report on the Pathfinder scheme:
"... many of the pre-existing programmes for neighbourhood renewal have been designed to facilitate community ownership and control of the regeneration process, and a fundamental premise of this approach is that the existing community is salvageable and sustainable. In contrast, Market Renewal strategies may need to be supported by a vision for the sub-region that assumes that not all neighbourhoods can be preserved and sustained."
It's policy that the World Bank uses too - called Supplant or Amend. If you don't fit in with economic orthodoxy - that is, if you are not producing capital - you must be supplanted, or you must change.
Thus, creativity survives only in as far as it's financially viable, or serving the interests of capital, say through advertising or the web design industry. It's creativity in the same way that water behind a dam, powering factories, counts as being a river or a lake. It's creativity channelled into utility.
Supplant or amend.
Right. Rant over.
Dan Aktivix
e-mail:
dan@aktivix.org