Just heard that Factory is to be called Aviva Studios! Is this true! If so it’s a disgrace! After all the millions that the people of Manchester have put into this centre and it’s given a name that has no link to Manchester and smacks of big finance and sponsorship. It doesn’t sell itself as an independent centre of creativity and artistic excellence of international standing. Instead it sounds like a think tank for an insurance company! This ‘project’ has diverting arts funding that should have gone to other worthy schemes and had enormous amounts of city council funding and we end up with a name that exemplifies all that is the worst aspect of art in a capitalist context! How long until Aviva influence programming? Whilst I’m on a rant - the programme for Manchester International Festival is such a disappointment. All those highly paid staff and that’s all they could offer us. Was there no money left for performance? Have they lost sight of their responsibility to the audience?
Interesting thanks, can I ask where you sourced the data for the map? I’ve always been interested in ‘who owns what’ in Manchester and think some sort of register of the key landowners in the city would be beneficial from a transparency point of view, since ownership of land and assets is king. How many landlords are there in Manchester compared with the number of properties? Could we get a histogram of that data? Just some ideas for further investigation (keep up the good work) 🕵🏻♂️🕵🏽
Thanks Rory. We got the data from the 2021 census - which is information about households, not the properties themselves. You're right that land ownership is a hugely important topic - unfortunately in the UK this data is not made freely available. For any land parcel you can buy the right to the details from the land registry but it isn't cheap to do so!
I believe longtime Miller Jonathan Silver (https://twitter.com/invisiblemapper) made a tool that maps various developments in the city and who owns them. He's worth a follow but I don't have the link to hand Rory.
Just heard that Factory is to be called Aviva Studios! Is this true! If so it’s a disgrace! After all the millions that the people of Manchester have put into this centre and it’s given a name that has no link to Manchester and smacks of big finance and sponsorship. It doesn’t sell itself as an independent centre of creativity and artistic excellence of international standing. Instead it sounds like a think tank for an insurance company! This ‘project’ has diverting arts funding that should have gone to other worthy schemes and had enormous amounts of city council funding and we end up with a name that exemplifies all that is the worst aspect of art in a capitalist context! How long until Aviva influence programming? Whilst I’m on a rant - the programme for Manchester International Festival is such a disappointment. All those highly paid staff and that’s all they could offer us. Was there no money left for performance? Have they lost sight of their responsibility to the audience?
Interesting thanks, can I ask where you sourced the data for the map? I’ve always been interested in ‘who owns what’ in Manchester and think some sort of register of the key landowners in the city would be beneficial from a transparency point of view, since ownership of land and assets is king. How many landlords are there in Manchester compared with the number of properties? Could we get a histogram of that data? Just some ideas for further investigation (keep up the good work) 🕵🏻♂️🕵🏽
Thanks Rory. We got the data from the 2021 census - which is information about households, not the properties themselves. You're right that land ownership is a hugely important topic - unfortunately in the UK this data is not made freely available. For any land parcel you can buy the right to the details from the land registry but it isn't cheap to do so!
I believe longtime Miller Jonathan Silver (https://twitter.com/invisiblemapper) made a tool that maps various developments in the city and who owns them. He's worth a follow but I don't have the link to hand Rory.