Is the council guilty of 'bizarrely misreading the cultural essence' of Manchester?

'There’s something going on behind the scenes'

Dear readers — today, we’re following up on our very popular weekend read about Night & Day Cafe, after a reader asked why our story had missed out a statement from Greater Manchester’s Music Commission. The commission was utterly scathing about Manchester City Council and accused local leaders of “bizarrely misreading the cultural essence of an entire city.”

Which is interesting, because the commission was founded by Andy Burnham, who attends its meetings and is described as its “political lead”. However, the mayor’s team didn’t endorse that statement when we approached them this week, and more than half of the commission’s members chose not to sign it. One member said recent meetings had become dominated by discussions about Night & Day, perhaps owing to the fact that the commitee’s co-chair used to work for the venue.

The story provides an interesting snapshot into how influential local figures are interpreting — and responding to — one of the city’s most talked-about controversies.

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‘I beg you to define me’

From today’s sponsor: What does this image tell you about Azraa Motala? The beautifully ornate lehenga says one thing, the trainers might say another. When Azraa first created a version of this self-portrait, it was so striking that the prestigious Chelsea College of Arts hung it as a super-size banner on the front of their building in London. Now, it can be seen as a stunning oil painting at Manchester Museum, hung in what the New York Times calls “the first permanent museum gallery in Britain to spotlight the South Asian diaspora.” Azraa hails from Lancashire and her painting, I beg you to define me, explores the “multi-layered identities of Lancashire-based British South Asian women”. Why did she leave parts of the work unfinished? Follow the story on YouTube or TikTok. And then plan your visit to the museum. 

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Your Mill briefing

🚫 HOME has cancelled an upcoming event titled “Voices of Resilience”, which included readings from Don’t Look Left: A Diary of Genocide, by Palestinian writer Atef Abu Saif. The venue says it cancelled the event because of safety concerns and its designation as a politically neutral space. “In the face of recent publicity around Voices of Resilience, we have cancelled this event,” HOME said in a statement yesterday. On Wednesday, the Jewish Representative Council for Greater Manchester called on HOME to cancel Voices of Resilience. Beth Powell, the managing director of Creative City GM, said it was “really alarming” to see the event cancelled “with such a limited explanation”, while the urban researcher Jon Silver tweeted: “their censorship is a political act”.

🇺🇦 A man from Oldham has returned to the Donbas region in Ukraine, to fight for Russia. Ben Stimson, 48, was jailed in 2015 for fighting alongside pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine. In a YouTube video earlier this week, he said: “Every man takes a choice, we do what we believe is right.” Martin Stimson, Ben’s father, has cut off communication with his son. He told the BBC he was horrified at his son’s decision to fight for Russia. "I have no control over him, he's a 48-year-old man."

🏡 Residents in Heywood are threatening to move out after a new complex of homeless accommodation was approved to be built in their neighbourhood. Curiously, some residents are worried the new scheme will exacerbate congestion and parking issues in the area. Others are concerned about crime and personal safety. It reminded us of a piece we wrote last year about Daisy Bank Road in Longsight, where the local community were trying to adjust to a homeless hostel opening on the street. 

🧱 39 schools in Greater Manchester will receive funding from the government to help repair faulty roofs. It’s part of the £450m Condition Improvement Fund dedicated to making vital repairs to schools across the country. You may remember, last year, the number of schools who had to delay start-of-term due to issues with crumbling Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete, or RAAC. 

🤖 The leader of Bolton Council says the local authority is going to begin making the move towards artificial intelligence systems for some of its services. Nick Peel said there would be a pilot introducing generative AI, which “creates high quality content using deep learning models”.

⚫️ The Mayoress of Oldham, Afsheen Chauhan, died peacefully yesterday at the age of 45, following a cancer diagnosis last year. The council’s chief executive said: “While Afsheen took ill early on in Cllr Chauhan’s time as Mayor, she bravely continued to support him in his role until the end — a true reflection of her kind and dedicated character.” 

📻 And finally, our latest podcast is out. And yes, it is about Night & Day, including some thoughts from Jack about why this story has become so resonant, and a little update from Matt Healy’s agent…

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The fallout from Night & Day: Who speaks for Manchester’s music industry?

By Jack Dulhanty

Following our weekend read on the dispute over Night & Day Cafe’s infamous noise abatement notice, a reader pointed out something missing from the piece. The reader, commenting on Instagram, said it “seems a bit odd” that we had “left out/ignored the Greater Manchester Music Commission’s statement on Night and Day”.

They were right that we had left the statement out. It had been in the original draft of my piece, before being ruthlessly excised during the editing process. Why? Well, we wanted to spend a bit more time understanding the context behind the statement. Was there, we wondered, any significance attached to the fact that only half of the commission had signed it?

If this sounds too arcane for anyone to care about as they prepare for their lovely Easter weekend — if you sense that Night & Day derangement syndrome has consumed The Mill, dragged so far into the weeds of this dispute that we’re counting signatures on statements and researching different models of “sound limiters” — then please bear with me. I think it might be more interesting than you think.

The Greater Manchester Music Commission was set up by Andy Burnham soon after re-election in 2021 and is supposed to champion and promote the industry, including nurturing musical talent and identifying “areas requiring intervention”. It features a broad range of local cultural figures, from Dave Moutrey (the longtime boss of HOME, who now works for the council) to BBC radio presenter Chris Hawkins. At the time, Burnham said he would be “following and supporting them every step of the way.”

Last Tuesday, the day after the court judgement about Night & Day, the commission released their statement, which absolutely tore into the council for its role in the saga, which “has done significant damage to the reputation of Manchester as a music city.”

The statement says that Manchester “would not be the city it is today without grassroots music venues like Night & Day,” and adds that the commission is “concerned by many aspects of this case, particularly by how operational limitations may impact on Night & Day’s cultural programming.” It criticises the council for failing to ensure “that the developer undertook crucial acoustic reporting” when the flat in question was built and calls the judge’s reference to the Northern Quarter as a “mixed use” area as “disturbing”.

The commission saves its harshest words for last:

It’s welcome news that Night & Day are able to operate as they have done for over 32 years, albeit with conditions in place, but we are left with a local system that is unable to recognise and correct historic poor practice, one that spends excessive amounts of public money, one that puts venue operators and their teams under huge emotional and financial pressure, and one that can make wildly unpopular decisions while bizarrely misreading the cultural essence of an entire city. And sadly, one that could still lead to the permanent closure of any part of our cultural and night-time landscape.

Given the searing criticism in the statement — most of which seemed to be directed at Manchester City Council specifically, although “a local system” could well be interpreted to mean the combined authority too — we were interested when we saw that it had been signed by 13 of the 28 commissioners. Was that just a quirk of people’s schedules — missing the email perhaps, or being on holiday — or does it point to the divergent ways that key local figures have interpreted the lessons from the Night & Day story?