Arts and Culture: Economic Regeneration

Baroness Hooper Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hooper]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Quin. We worked together in the early days of the directly elected European Parliament in a number of areas, when she represented Tyne and Wear and I represented the great City of Liverpool. I congratulate her on securing this debate on a topic which is close to my heart.

In the European Parliament and later as a member of the delegation to the Council of Europe, I took a great interest in cultural heritage and arts issues and I have no doubt about their relevance and importance to economic regeneration. It will come as no surprise that I intend to use Liverpool as an example of what can be achieved. As a former trustee of the National Museums Liverpool, I have always been aware of the wealth and diversity of what is on offer there, from the traditional Walker Art Gallery to the very modern Tate and from the Maritime Museum to the International Slavery Museum.

Michael Heseltine’s initiative after the Toxteth riots, way back in the 1980s, the garden festival and various other events led up to 2008 when Liverpool won the bid to become European Capital of Culture. Liverpool is one of the great old industrial cities, which has had to come to terms with its past in order to transform itself and to find a new image and identity. As we saw when Glasgow was the European Capital of Culture, there can be no doubt that the effect on Liverpool and the wider north-west region has been substantial. Apart from the many jobs that were created in preparing the infrastructure, thousands of jobs have proved to be long lasting. The Museum of Liverpool project was a physical result of that year, although it was not completed by 2008. However, since it opened fully in July 2011, more than 2 million people have visited it. Those numbers are way ahead of the projection.

I believe that Liverpool’s transformation into an educational and academic centre of learning, with its four universities and other institutions, owes much to its cultural and arts heritage and the way in which that was highlighted during the Capital of Culture year. Certainly the tourist figures are well up and now the port is beginning to revive with cruise ships calling in and finding so much of interest virtually at the foot of the gangway, in terms of the city’s artistic and cultural heritage.

This year, building on that experience, Derry—Londonderry—is the first UK City of Culture and a nationwide competition has been announced to find the UK’s City of Culture for 2017. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to give us more information about these two events and their impact to date on Derry.

I think that we all still share a very warm feeling about the success of last year’s Olympics and Paralympics, and indeed of the Cultural Olympiad, which, apart from anything else, led to the regeneration of Stratford and has an ongoing legacy. I was delighted to learn, as a result of participating in this debate, that the Lord Mayor of the City of London has decided to make arts and culture one of the central themes of his mayoralty and is even now publishing a report on the economic, social and cultural impact of the City’s arts and culture cluster and its effect not only on the City but on the surrounding boroughs. However, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, that the importance of government policies must reflect not only what London has to offer but the wider nation and the regions.

Funding is of course important, and the noble Baroness has pressed my noble friend on this score. Much is being done and I hope will continue to be done—and said—to support the work going on in many of the regions. I look forward to hearing the views of other speakers in this debate and, in particular, hearing what my noble friend has to say about future government policy in the area.