Arts and Culture: Economic Regeneration

Lord Bishop of Wakefield Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Wakefield]

My Lords, I also begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, for seeking out the opportunity for this debate, which is so timely and important for us all. Married to a Northumbrian—and an adopted Northumbrian myself —I was delighted to hear of her links with the Northumbrian pipers and also to hear the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, talking more of the north-east. However, I shall start elsewhere.

A decade ago when I arrived in Yorkshire—in Wakefield—there was much feverish talk of regeneration: a new hospital, new railway stations, a new shopping centre at the heart of the city and a new art gallery. There was the usual flood of scepticism, enhanced by a strong dash of Yorkshire realism. Would any of this ever happen?

The most extreme reactions in all this were to the art gallery. Here, west Yorkshire bluntness could find its ideal target: “We need a new art gallery like a hole in the head. There is enough modern art in the sculpture park already and no one can understand that anyway”. And so it went on.

Now, 10 years on, all these regeneration projects are complete—even the work on the railway stations has begun. We are amazingly fortunate to have received all this, and in the midst of one of the deepest recessions in modern history, as we have heard this afternoon. Most amazing, however, is the Hepworth gallery. The largest new-build gallery outside London for over a century, Sir David Chipperfield’s building has received universal accolades. With a target of 175,000 visitors for the first year, we achieved over half a million, and now we are heading for 400,000 in this second year.

The Hepworth effectively has placed the moderately-sized city of Wakefield, still recovering from the death of both the woollen industry and coal mining, on the map internationally. Barbara Hepworth, a daughter of Wakefield, and Henry Moore, a son of Castleford, just seven miles up the road, have given birth to the west Yorkshire sculpture triangle. That includes the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Hepworth in Wakefield. The sculpture park is a great triumph, unique in England, and also a tribute to the passion and energy of Peter Murray, its founder. The Hepworth has already hosted at least one national book launch and also the nation’s salute to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the 350th anniversary of which was last year.

Talk of prayer moves me on to the cathedral in Wakefield, the nave of which will re-open in a month’s time after a year cocooned in scaffolding. A £3 million regeneration project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund will make it a flexible venue for the worship of God, for which it was built, and an equally flexible venue for other cultural purposes. The largest venue in the very heart of the city, the cathedral will bring further economic benefits to the city and region just as the Hepworth has done. Of course, it is not only about the actual place itself in the case of the museum, the gallery or the cathedral but what it brings to the rest of the city and everything else thereabouts.

Talk of cathedrals comes close to my heart, having been the Dean of Norwich for some eight years. Here I declare an interest as a member of the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England. In so many of our cities, cathedrals are responding to the needs of a changing society. In Norwich, we embarked on providing new facilities, which have further opened up that great building more effectively to the wider community. The development there is indeed the largest single development within a medieval cathedral since the Reformation.

Twelve million people visit our cathedrals every year. In 2004, a report showed that English cathedrals alone brought £150 million into the various local economies. That would be £186 million at present-day levels. Visitor numbers have increased since then by some 50 per cent, so noble Lords can do their own calculations on today’s figures—I think that it is probably about £200 million.

The benefits do not end there, of course. Cathedral music thrives here in this country as it does nowhere else in the world. Furthermore, speak to so many of our outstanding musicians, conductors, soloists and instrumentalists and you will find that their musical education began in cathedral choirs. With the advent of girls’ choirs, that is now equally true of women.

There is one more essential by-product of arts and culture in regeneration. This time it is not about finance and economics but, instead, about the nurturing of our common humanity. One serious impact in our area of the death of the coal industry has been a loss of sense of purpose in so many communities. That undermines what I would call our corporate self-esteem. The Hepworth and similar projects have begun to repair this essential element in community life. Every one of us will know how serious the loss of self-esteem is for individuals, sometimes even to the extent of people talking their own lives. It is no less serious corporately in communities.

I have tried not to drown noble Lords too much in statistics, but even the few that I have quoted tell their own dramatic story. My message to Her Majesty’s Government is that even a minimal increase in funding for our cathedrals and their upkeep, for example, will yield a bonus proportionately way beyond what any other investment can offer in these tough times. So, too, with the arts. In Wakefield we are grateful this year for Arts Council support for the Art House, another unique institution in our city which works particularly with the less well off, and sometimes the disabled, in the area of the arts and the creative arts. Frank Matcham’s fine Theatre Royal has also received funding.

However, still all these institutions and agencies are up against it. Spending on the arts and on culture is tiny proportionately to our national spending and budgeting, but the benefits that it brings in regeneration, economic development and, as I said, in terms of corporate self-esteem exceed what any of us might expect. I ask the Minister in his response to please be both realistic and generous in supporting regeneration by this most imaginative route.