“It’s a society-wide problem. The young aren’t being empowered to create and that’s resulting in a generational log jam where the elder demographics still have the majority of wealth and cultural power and it’s not being handed on.”
That’s a repeating cycle that was as true in the nineteen-eighties & nineties as it is today. It will take a while for Hacienda & Factory to pass through the atrophying system of old-timers. Irritating as the build up of nostalgic gall might be, best not to be knocking writers of a certain age for having fond memories, archived notebooks & a good tale to unspin.
I really enjoyed Sophie's engagement with Alex Niven's account of the Manchester he found, not the one he went looking for.
Notions of the North as a devolved political entity are as old as Wars of the Roses. What Alex Niven appears to be driving at resembles late architect Will Alsop’s SuperCity; his book, Urbis-exhibition & Channel4 series (2005) proposing a mega-city spanning the M62 corridor from Liverpool to Hull.
Maybe the new dawn of the North is slightly mistimed. Better if Andy Burnham were to be leading Labour into Downing Street. If that was the case, our neck of the woods would seem to be especially well patrolled by Bev Craig & Paul Dennett.
Hi Phil, thanks for this thoughtful comment — interesting to hear about Will Alsop's concept of the SuperCity, I wasn't familiar with this.
This said, re: "the atrophying system of old-timers" — I'm not sure Niven was attacking the right of older artists to tell their story so much as the economic context disadvantaging young people and making it harder for them to create things. You talk about a repeating cycle, but I'd argue that the current situation is radically different than anything in recent memory. Aren't millennials the first generation to earn significantly less than their parents? (This was the prediction in 2016 — not sure how it's played out, but probably worse than this prediction, given Covid, Brexit, etc.? : https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/millennials-will-be-the-first-generation-to-earn-less-than-their-parents/). And I don't think it's entirely due to individual decisions that millennials are also reaching milestones like buying houses, getting married and having kids far later than their predecessors. I'd hoped that maybe millennials only would bear the brunt of this — we'd just be one singularly unlucky generation. But it looks like things are getting even harder for Gen Z. I guess the question is: how do we create the context for young people now to be able to make art that's as vivid and experimental as what we once had?
I guess that any producer - publisher, commissioner, curator, impresario or promoter - will always feel the constraints of their time. Is there not always a bridge to be built from artist to audience? And is not bridge-building - fabricating, funding, fettling - the challenge that is taken up generationally, by people who take the risk on the upstairs rooms in pubs, or Co-op halls, church halls, & sundry decaying buildings just before collapse? I think you are right in every respect, save perhaps the judgment of what might be “vivid & experimental “. Speaking for my decaying self, I am regularly amazed by the sheer artistry I find around many of the corners I summon the energy to turn. Thankfully, people like you, & Joshi & your cohort are the very people who turn up the goods. To my mind, Manchester Collective at the White Hotel is as dynamic & boundary-busting as (takes deep breath) Factory at PSV or Rabid at Electric Circus. My cupboard is fairly crammed with the stuff that I’ve picked up along the way, & I’m not so conscientious in my shopping for the novel & new-minted these days. I’m clear that some days are better than others, and that we are all living in an especially shabby version of the country we share. But nothing is so bad that bad judgement didn’t make it so.
“It’s a society-wide problem. The young aren’t being empowered to create and that’s resulting in a generational log jam where the elder demographics still have the majority of wealth and cultural power and it’s not being handed on.”
That’s a repeating cycle that was as true in the nineteen-eighties & nineties as it is today. It will take a while for Hacienda & Factory to pass through the atrophying system of old-timers. Irritating as the build up of nostalgic gall might be, best not to be knocking writers of a certain age for having fond memories, archived notebooks & a good tale to unspin.
I really enjoyed Sophie's engagement with Alex Niven's account of the Manchester he found, not the one he went looking for.
Notions of the North as a devolved political entity are as old as Wars of the Roses. What Alex Niven appears to be driving at resembles late architect Will Alsop’s SuperCity; his book, Urbis-exhibition & Channel4 series (2005) proposing a mega-city spanning the M62 corridor from Liverpool to Hull.
Maybe the new dawn of the North is slightly mistimed. Better if Andy Burnham were to be leading Labour into Downing Street. If that was the case, our neck of the woods would seem to be especially well patrolled by Bev Craig & Paul Dennett.
Hi Phil, thanks for this thoughtful comment — interesting to hear about Will Alsop's concept of the SuperCity, I wasn't familiar with this.
This said, re: "the atrophying system of old-timers" — I'm not sure Niven was attacking the right of older artists to tell their story so much as the economic context disadvantaging young people and making it harder for them to create things. You talk about a repeating cycle, but I'd argue that the current situation is radically different than anything in recent memory. Aren't millennials the first generation to earn significantly less than their parents? (This was the prediction in 2016 — not sure how it's played out, but probably worse than this prediction, given Covid, Brexit, etc.? : https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/millennials-will-be-the-first-generation-to-earn-less-than-their-parents/). And I don't think it's entirely due to individual decisions that millennials are also reaching milestones like buying houses, getting married and having kids far later than their predecessors. I'd hoped that maybe millennials only would bear the brunt of this — we'd just be one singularly unlucky generation. But it looks like things are getting even harder for Gen Z. I guess the question is: how do we create the context for young people now to be able to make art that's as vivid and experimental as what we once had?
I guess that any producer - publisher, commissioner, curator, impresario or promoter - will always feel the constraints of their time. Is there not always a bridge to be built from artist to audience? And is not bridge-building - fabricating, funding, fettling - the challenge that is taken up generationally, by people who take the risk on the upstairs rooms in pubs, or Co-op halls, church halls, & sundry decaying buildings just before collapse? I think you are right in every respect, save perhaps the judgment of what might be “vivid & experimental “. Speaking for my decaying self, I am regularly amazed by the sheer artistry I find around many of the corners I summon the energy to turn. Thankfully, people like you, & Joshi & your cohort are the very people who turn up the goods. To my mind, Manchester Collective at the White Hotel is as dynamic & boundary-busting as (takes deep breath) Factory at PSV or Rabid at Electric Circus. My cupboard is fairly crammed with the stuff that I’ve picked up along the way, & I’m not so conscientious in my shopping for the novel & new-minted these days. I’m clear that some days are better than others, and that we are all living in an especially shabby version of the country we share. But nothing is so bad that bad judgement didn’t make it so.