Opinion: What's your Northwest?
The Skinny is new in the Northwest of England. We spoke to some of those involved in Manchester and Liverpool's arts scenes about place, community, and belonging
Dominic Berry
Poet
When I left school I had no idea what I was doing with my life besides the fact I hated every job I got and wanted to do 'something arty'. I knew I was gay so came to Manchester for its famous gay scene. I thought this would be the place where all the bullied kids from school got together and said nice things about each other's acne (my teenage acne was legendary). I was wrong. If you love Canal Street then that is fantastic, it is an important place and has helped a lot of people, but I am not one of them. I have never dressed right, looked right, talked right or done anything remotely cool or fashionable so for me Canal Street was just like school but with more crop tops.
When I stumbled upon the much missed Greenroom theatre, I found an event run by Chloe Poems – gingham, socialist, transvestite poet magnificent – aka Gerry Potter, now my all-time favourite poet. I thought, 'This is it! this is me!' I quickly started writing new stuff to bring to Chloe's open mic nights.
At its best, the poetry scene can cut through social limitations in a way I have not seen other arts events do. At no other events do I see people from such broad ranges of background, belief and levels of mental health. The poetry scene, I have found, is a particularly nurturing place if your own mental health is feeling frayed.
Hayley Flynn
Researcher, writer, and the voice behind theskyliner.org, a blog that uncovers and explores the stories behind the Northwest's hidden – and not so hidden – spaces
I started looking for the back-story of a street, building or artwork when I was in an old job. I would take the office dog for a walk, and the same route every day soon became boring so I'd look for interesting architectural features around me, then investigate them that evening.
I've seen some remarkable things, and some things that we assume to be unremarkable – from walking into what looks like a bog-standard community centre only to discover a baroque music theatre, to noticing historical artefacts hidden in plain sight, such as fading air raid shelter signs on doorways I've walked by a thousand times. I've sadly discovered how our heritage can mean so little to those who matter, with new developments being put before restoration even when locations are protected, or poor decisions leading to important buildings being left to rot.
Manchester isn't a cocksure city like the Madchester scene led people to believe; it's also a challenging city to love because you have to work at it.
Keith Wilson
Poet and musician
Creative, inventive, diverse, cheeky and irrepressible, Liverpool is a whole experience in itself: the exceedingly rare accent, the bags of attitude, the inventiveness, the warmth, the humour, the passion and the culture. If I didn't come from Liverpool, I'd wish I did.
With writing being such a solitary activity – you spend most of the time inside your own head or sitting at the laptop emptying out its contents – it's difficult to feel part of an extended family. I do feel part of the music and theatre community, though, and – contrary to popular urban myth – it's a thoroughly supportive band of brothers and sisters.
My Liverpool is epitomised by the people: firm in times of heartache, solid and supportive in tragedy, proud and resolute in social decline and will always flick a 'V' at the merest whiff of prejudice.
“Our heritage can mean so little to those who matter” – Hayley Flynn
Jon Hannan
OWT Creative collective
What Manchester and Liverpool share is the same attitude towards 'doing'.
In the relatively short space of time since I came through Manchester School of Art, there has been a shift in expectation from an acceptance that the more ambitious designers would have to move to London to fulfil their potential, to a genuine belief that they can now fulfil those ambitions here in the Northwest.
I came to Manchester at a time when the city was struggling to form a new cultural identity. [It was] a long-time industrial giant suffering a post-industrial, post-Hacienda/Factory cultural hangover, something that is occasionally still thrown at us by the less informed outsider. Today I think Manchester is an optimistic, modern city of collaboration.
Mark Carlin
Director, Islington Mill, Salford; organiser, Sounds from the Other City festival
I guess my Manchester is not Manchester at all but Salford! It's got some of Greater Manchester's most beautiful buildings that people often miss among the dereliction.
Places like the Mill are so rare – it's not built on any one defined artistic medium or practice but instead has a lot of people who are tied together by a genuine desire to make things happen. It's also not really built on conscious decisions about what is 'quality', and people are allowed to try out ideas and fail. I think that single factor is so important for any arts/creative community. You really need places to get things wrong!
I do wish there was more crossover between art forms and disciplines; sometimes it feels a little like the visual arts, music and digital sectors all exist in their own places. I find that when the boundaries are blurred and things begin to merge and meet, it makes for a more inventive and imaginative community.
This city is stealthy. It's ugly to begin with but its character and colour slowly creep up on you. It's like your favourite record – it's never the one you love on first listen.
Robyn Woolston
Visual artist and winner of the Liverpool Art Prize 2012
Most of my work is what's called 'site-specific' or 'site-responsive', so in its very essence it responds to location, material and social context. 'Local' is an interesting label. I can feel kinship and connection to a charity like 5 Gyres, who operate out of Santa Monica, California, because we're both working towards widening an awareness of plastic pollution – environmental destruction requires both 'local' and 'global' solutions. Therefore I think it's important for an artist to engage 'full-stop'.
I came to Liverpool as I studied fine art here, and originally stayed for the European Capital of Culture in 2008 – it's been so exciting since that there's been very little reason to leave! Plus it's coastal – I need the ebb and flow of a tide.
Jackie Hagan
Playwright, performance poet, stand-up comic and live artist
I came to Manchester because I saw the programme Queer as Folk when I was 16 and saw that they had this thing here called 'rimming'. As soon as I got here I became the 'Lesbian Liberation Officer' at the university and was so disappointed that I didn't get a cape that I went back to men. By the time I found out rimming was in all the major cities I was already settled.
On Oldham Street my favourite theatre (3mt) faces my favourite chippy (Leo's), they do halloumi fritters. Three Minute Theatre (3mt) is a wonderfully bonkers and inspiring place, Gina and John who run it are like maternal wombles, I'm relaunching my spoken word/cabaret night, Magical Animals, there on 1 May.
The Manchester performance scene has enthusiastic youth, drunken stalwarts and a real enjoyment of talented weirdos, which is great. Naturally there are cliques and too many people wear hats but you'll get that anywhere. I think people in Manchester are really up for it, in a slightly ironic, piss-taking way, but it works. No matter how weird you might be, someone out there will relate to you, I think that's what I've learnt.
“NATURALLY THERE'S CLIQUES AND TOO MANY PEOPLE WEAR HATS BUT YOU'LL GET THAT ANYWHERE” – JACKIE HAGAN
Jayne Edwards
Comedian
Something like stand-up brings you closer together, so you naturally support each other, but I think the Northwest circuit is unique in that all levels of acts mix together – the atmosphere is motivating.
I came here for Uni – I had always wanted to do stand-up but didn't know where to start. I met a guy at the student radio station and he told me where he had tried it. I emailed the gig straight away and spent the next few weeks waking up in a cold sweat every night at 3am.
When I was first starting out, I would write in [Manchester's] The Deaf Institute all the time. There was a waitress who would always come over and ask me what I was writing and now I see she was being friendly, but back then I was convinced she was trying to steal my ideas.
Tim Brunsden
Filmmaker
When I moved to Liverpool from London, loads of people said, 'What you moving up there for, it's shit?' People were definitely quite snobbish about the area, and I think they still are in some ways, but I've never seen it like that.
The openness of people surprised me. It was really easy to connect. There are also lots of interesting spaces here: Liverpool is a dream for a filmmaker. There's all the marketing stuff that drives you mad, but I think you've got the opportunity to do more in this region.
One of my favourite places is the ferry. I know it's a bit of a cliche but it's just really nice. Just get a coffee or beer and sit on the deck. You get a different perspective from looking back.
Natalie Bradbury
Writer, self-publisher, and founder of The Shrieking Violet zine
What fascinates me about Manchester is how much history is written into the streets and buildings. You can marvel at the infrastructure of the industrial age by looking at canals and railway viaducts that are still in use; get a sense of textile magnates' wealth by looking up at grand warehouses (even if they are now turned into apartments); try to imagine life in the former mass workplaces of mills and factories, and see remnants of industrial philanthropy in lads' clubs and ragged schools. These aren't the kind of heritage venues where you have to pay a tenner to get in, put plastic covers on your shoes or peer at rooms over velvet ropes.
After graduating in 2008 I did a qualification in newspaper journalism but it was a terrible time to be trying to enter the media and it was difficult to even get work experience. I was unemployed for nine months, but decided to make the best of the situation so started blogging about the city around me, and then made The Shrieking Violet into a printed zine – if I couldn't be part of the established media then I was going to make my own media. I was disillusioned with the way in which Manchester was marketed, which was all about shopping and consumption, so The Shrieking Violet was conceived as an alternative guide encouraging readers to make their own fun, think creatively and realise the adventures they could have in the city without spending a penny. Some of my favourite interviews have been with Manchester's street buskers, who have really interesting stories to tell yet many people never stop to talk to them.
theshriekingviolets.blogspot.co.uk
BC Camplight
Musician; moved to Manchester from Philadelphia after a revelation; plays The Deaf Institute, 6 Apr
I quit music abruptly after a strong start to my career. Music had always come so easy for me but I gradually became confused about the whole game. I began to have identity issues as well as overall mental turbulence. I stopped writing and began to rot, got in debt and made just about every bad decision one could; without sounding overdramatic I either had to get back to business or die or go to jail. I knew I couldn't stay in Philly. One night, desperate for answers, I sat in the desert outside my campervan and went into a bit of a trance. For some reason when I came out of it I was convinced I had to move to Manchester. One week later I was in town knowing only a couple of fans. It's worked out.
The weather brings everyone down to one level. I like that. It's more important than you think. The Smiths couldn't have existed in LA. Music means an awful lot to Mancunians. For some people it is everything. I credit the response I've received here to the overall pool of musical depth and intelligence this city possesses. I'm absolutely in love. I'm excited about my life for the first time in years. Manchester has everything to do with that.
I spend about 30 hours a week at The Castle Hotel pub on Oldham Street. It may be making my liver look like a leather-covered raisin but it's worth it.
Jack Whiteley
Filmmaker
The arts scene in the Northwest is on the underground, it's more in the fringes, it's not like a commercial mainstream thing.
A load of my friends had moved to Liverpool in 2007; come 2008 they'd got their own space, which then became The Kazimier. It's essentially the reason I moved here; it's very dear to me and has had a big influence on me and a lot of my work. There's also a little place called Mello Mello – it's a bit of a hangout for lots of different artists and musician types. All these places, on the surface it's like, that's just a nightclub, that's just a cafe – but obviously it's more than that, it's about the kind of conversations that are had there, the ideas that are formed there.
“The weather brings everyone down to one level. It's more important than you think” – BC Camplight
Steve Balshaw
Programmer, Salford Film Festival and Grimm Up North; helps run Filmonik, which stages guerilla filmmaking events and open screenings
There is a strong sense of community, a willingness to support one another, pitch in on one another's projects. There is rivalry, but it is of a friendly kind, and born of a desire to see one another succeed.
The downside, I guess, can be a degree of insularity. It's a reaction to the fact that the film industry in the UK is so London-centric – indeed, it's mostly focused in one square mile in Soho. And if you want to succeed, you need to engage with the people that are based there. This is frustrating for the rest of the country, and the result can be a defiant and strongly focused sense of localised creativity.
Fat Roland
Writer, and member of flash fiction collective FlashTag
Manchester flows through my veins like luminous liquid waste coursing through a clogged sewer; I can't imagine being anywhere else. I write because I need to write: my appearance at live events is a kind of by-product. It's a good job there's such a busy literary community in this city, because otherwise I'd just be standing in rainy streets shouting my stories at walls.
People have said the Manchester writing and blogging scene can seem insular, but three years ago I was not part of this scene at all: I was very much the outsider. If they'll have me, they'll have anyone. Writers also need support and accountability. I am a natural loner and a show-off at the same time, like a camel in sequins, so I also like having new friends with whom I can get drunk and sing Lisa Stansfield to.
Daniel Carpenter
Co-founder, Bad Language
The collaborations between writers who have met through literature events here are always my favourite part of doing work in the city.
The [literary] scene is akin to a musical movement. It feels vibrant and fresh and unique. People treat grassroots literature events like gigs here, which helps us get on the bill at festivals like Sounds from the Other City. I like to think that in some way, we've helped make the literature scene in Manchester cool.
My best kept secrets? Ignore the flash and busy Manchester Art Gallery and get yourself over to Blank Media Collective's space near Oxford Road. They do great work with really interesting artists, and have a wonderful painting of Christopher Walken in full-on psychopath mode on the front of the building. Everyone should also get down to our sister night at The Castle, Tales of Whatever, where you can find people telling true stories without any notes.
Jesca Hoop
Musician, moved to Manchester from California after supporting Elbow on tour; plays Takk cafe, 10 Apr
One thing I like about Manchester is that its musicians to a large extent are a real part of the community. They are in the pubs and parks and restaurants... Manchester doesn't seem to believe the hype and it doesn't accept anyone getting full of themselves.
How would I define Manchester in just a few words? Builder's brew, grey, green, brick red, Golden Virginia, curry, the Unicorn Grocery, laughter, pint after pint, long walks, long talks, late nights, dance parties, style.