Perth’s Cultural Contribution to the UK

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Wednesday 5th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

I am grateful for this opportunity to debate the cultural contribution of the city of Perth to the United Kingdom’s national life. As we await with bated breath the shortlist for the 2021 UK city of culture, our cultural contribution to this nation is vast, overwhelming and ever evolving. Nevertheless, we are not a city that rests on its laurels. We are a city that is rich in heritage and culture, oozing confidence and simply dripping with ambition. With our dramatic riverside setting in the heart of Scotland, where highland meets lowland, in the middle of a hybrid cultural melting pot, we are by far the most beautiful and attractive of all the city of culture candidates.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that support for the city of Perth goes beyond his party and his country? There are Government Members, whom he would no doubt refer to as Sassenachs, who think that Perth is a great city.

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend—I call him that because, as I think you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, he is my colleague in the rock band MP4—for that contribution. I do, of course, recognise the fact that Perth’s bid is supported in constituencies throughout the United Kingdom.

Our plan is to make Perth one of Europe’s great small cities and, in achieving that, give confidence to the other small cities and large towns throughout the United Kingdom. Let me tell you a little about the city of Perth, Mr Deputy Speaker, because our story is utterly unique and like no other, and I know that you are a student of the civic attributes of so many of the communities represented in this House.

Perth is the ancient capital of Scotland. In the 9th century, Kenneth MacAlpin forged the Kingdom of Alba from the Picts and the Scots and was crowned Scotland’s first King at Scone. From then on, every King of Scotland was crowned on the stone of destiny in Scone, which is now part of the Perth city region. I shall say more on that artefact later.

Perth became a royal burgh in 1210, and by the early 14th century it was the most fortified settlement in the whole of Scotland. In the 16th century, the Scottish reformation was sparked in Perth, when John Knox preached in the wonderful surrounds of St John’s kirk in the heart of the city. Our place in Scotland’s pre-industrial history was secured and cemented with a pre-eminent place in the Jacobite struggles and the idea and creation of the modern nation of Scotland.

With industrialisation, Perth’s contribution was matched only by our contribution to the concurrent Scottish enlightenment. Our whisky, dyeing and linen, and our industry powered by the mills along the River Tay, were matched by the cultural contributions from John Duncan Fergusson and Patrick Geddes.

In the 20th century, the city of Perth became the administrative centre for much of the Scottish whisky industry and for Scottish agriculture. It offered fantastic financial services, particularly insurance, which is still a feature of the city today. From the 1940s, hydro-electric dams shaped communities and landscapes right across highland Perthshire, signalling the coming of the renewable energy revolution.

To bring things right up to date, five years ago we were awarded full city status by Her Majesty the Queen during her diamond jubilee celebrations, in recognition of Perth’s contribution to the civic, cultural and national life of not just Scotland but the whole United Kingdom.

We simply overflow with cultural activities. We have four nationally recognised arts organisations: Horsecross Arts, Culture Perth and Kinross, Pitlochry Festival theatre and the Perth festival of the arts. We have 20 dedicated cultural venues, including the wonderful Perth concert hall, which is celebrating its 12th year this year and is the largest concert-hall venue outside the Scottish central belt and, in my view, the finest concert hall in Scotland.

We are in the process of renovating our existing cultural estate with the creation of a new cultural quarter in the Mill Street area of the city and the multi-million pound redevelopment of the wonderful Perth theatre, which is one of the oldest and best-established theatres in not just Scotland but the whole United Kingdom.

[Stephen Gethins (North East Fife) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend is making excellent points about why Perth should be the city of culture. Does he agree that Perth is the ideal location, not least because some of the areas nearby, such as North East Fife, would benefit hugely from Perth’s city of culture statue?

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is a son of Perth and knows the city particularly well. We are of course partners in the Tay cities deal, and I am pretty certain that the energy and activity sparked by Perth being the city of culture will be reflected in his constituency, too.

We are the only one of the bidding cities that has a premier league football team that is still competing in European competition, though that might be short-lived as the mighty St Johnstone take to the fields of Lithuania tomorrow night to try to get a goal back.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing tonight’s Adjournment debate. He will be aware of how fond I am of Perth, particularly of the mighty St Johnstone—good luck to them tomorrow night in Lithuania. What does it say about the cultural impact of Perth when the title of tonight’s debate is Perth’s cultural contribution to the UK? The debate I held on Paisley’s merits was about Paisley’s cultural contribution to the world, so there is a serious lack of ambition from Perth. Seriously, I wish Perth all the very best. Here is to a Scottish winner of the competition.

[Pete Wishart]

I think I am grateful for that contribution. It was a cunning plan to get the city and culture into the one title, which we have just about achieved. I say to my hon. Friend that I know that we are rivals in trying to be shortlisted for this competition, but the city of Perth will fall right behind the large town of Paisley if it is shortlisted. I am pretty certain that the large town of Paisley will fall behind the city of Perth if it is us who are successful in this bid. With all our particular cultural attributes, we are more than able and willing to carry with distinction the badge of UK city of culture.

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this matter tonight. Obviously, I look forward to working with him to help to secure the city of culture bid for Perth. Hopefully, he will agree that it is not just Perth that will benefit directly, but wider Perthshire—the 12 towns and the more than 100 settlements that feed in and further enrich Perth and that are enriched by Perth. We should also look back at Perthshire’s cultural contribution to the UK, which started not in the middle ages, but goes right back to Roman settlements. There were Roman roads and trading with the Roman Empire. A contribution was made by taking artefacts from Scotland and throughout the rest of the UK to the wider Roman Empire. In Perthshire, we have Innerpeffray Library, which was established in 1680 and was the first lending library in Scotland. I hope that he will consider the wider Perthshire area and its benefits in his proposal for the city of culture bid.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Can I just say that Members should make interventions, not speeches? I am sure that the hon. Gentleman wants to save that speech for another occasion.

[Pete Wishart]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that contribution. I was coming on to mention the big hinterland issues that support this particular bid. May I also congratulate him on what he said? I thought that I was doing well going as far back as Kenneth MacAlpin, but he has managed to beat me by going back to Roman settlement times. I thank him for that and look forward to working with a fellow Perthshire MP to ensure that this bid will be progressed.

This bid is truly inspired, innovative and creative. It fully captures the spirit and the idea of the UK city of culture. At the heart of our bid is a determination to tackle the quiet crisis faced by cities such as Perth and the 30 million people in the UK who live outside our big cities. It is a bid that speaks for the small cities and large towns where so many of our fellow citizens live; that recognises our particular issues, challenges and agendas; and that looks beyond the veneer of scale and rurality—where rural beauty can sometimes mask rural poverty and social isolation. I am talking about small cities where the lack of high-value jobs drives talent elsewhere, particularly among our young people. It is in this setting where culture could make a real difference in connecting people and places. In reply to the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Luke Graham), we believe that an outstanding city of culture is as meaningful for the people living in its hinterland as it is for those living in the city itself. We want Perth to lead the way in defining these issues and that agenda.

The quiet crisis that I mentioned is characterised in Perthshire by three big challenges, which is our dependency on tourism, hospitality and agriculture where wages are 9% below the Scottish average.

Perth is often seen as a prosperous city. I concede that it is, but sometimes the veneer of prosperity masks real defining issues such as a low-wage and low-skill economy, which is depressingly still a feature of so much of Perth’s community. Some 38% of neighbourhoods are classed as financially stretched, one in five children live in poverty and cultural participation among the 20% most deprived communities is limited in its opportunity. It is the quiet crisis of 150,000 people living across a massive 5,000 square miles with the associated social isolation and low cultural participation levels. These challenges are no less urgent and real than those faced by the big cities, but they are less recognised. We hope to change that in the course of the bid.

Our bid will focus on the contribution of small cities and large towns to the UK economy, alongside the large-scale cultural regeneration programmes that are a transforming feature of our big cities. Different approaches are needed for different types of cities to unlock the potential of places such as Perth and tackle the quiet crisis that they face.

We will use UK city of culture to make real step changes, using culture as a transformative tool and raising the bar for great small cities with imagination, joy, wonder, emotion and surprise. Since Sir Walter Scott’s time, Perth has been known as the fair city. It is a name with which we are very familiar and one that has become intimately associated with the city of Perth, but we want to move beyond the fair city. We will celebrate Perth’s beauty and place at the heart of Scotland’s story, but we will do so by jump-starting our future. We will honour Perth’s heart and our extraordinary history, including a mass celebration of our bid for the stone of destiny to be rightly returned to Perthshire. We will have that tick-box attraction that will drive new generations of tourists to our wonderful city.

We want it to be wild, taking outstanding creative work into the extraordinary landscape surrounding Perth—our wild places, hillsides, lochs and rivers—and giving a voice to the new tribes of the 21st century. We want it to be beyond, starting in our medieval city vennels, the ancient but clogged arteries that criss-cross Perth, flowing through the rivers connecting the city to its hinterland. And it will be connected, both physically and digitally. We are looking to democratise access to culture in a world where people can create and access it across many different and varied platforms. As the infrastructure to deliver this improves and becomes more accessible, we want to ensure that visitor experiences are improved and enhanced. Technology can enable togetherness. We will use it as such.

All this will be created with the participation of the 150,000 citizens living in the Perth city region. We expect more than 740,000 people to take part in person during 2021, and around 650,000 via our ambitious digital platform projects. We can deliver this. Our plans are fully costed and our bid is built on solid roots of delivery, bringing public services and communities together to plan and deliver these priorities across our city region.

We are looking for a solid legacy. By 2022, Perth can be the place that has led the way for other small cities and large towns by reconnecting with its huge hinterland through culture. We hope to create 1,500 jobs in the creative industries by 2021 and an extra 60 additional creative industry start-ups by 2025, to grow our creative sector by 25% to £58 million gross value added by 2021 and to £72 million by 2025, to increase our annual tourism visitors to 2.6 million in 2021, to recruit 2,500 volunteers for Perth 2021 and have 40,000 people volunteering annually by 2025. We hope to increase cultural participation in our most deprived communities by 16% by 2025. We will use the city of culture title to leave a profound legacy and kick-start our future beyond the fair city.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

All these targets are undoubtedly achievable not just by the city that wins the title, but by all the bidding cities. If they want an example of that, they have to look no further than Glasgow, whose cultural renaissance began with its award of European city of culture in 1990. I wish all the cities competing for the title the best of luck.

[Pete Wishart]

I do, too. I actually performed on the evening when Glasgow was granted its European city of culture status. It was in Glasgow Square, on the eve of 1989 to 1990. I am pretty sure my hon. Friend was not there, but he is absolutely right: even just the process of bidding is transformative for these large towns and cities. I have a particular vested interest in the city of Perth, and I hope we are successful, but I do wish all the other cities well.

I believe in this bid. The time is right for the voice of the small cities to be heard; for us to be held in the same regard as the big cities of the United Kingdom and to have our agendas addressed; for new cultural regeneration models to emerge in small cities, alongside what works in the large cites; and for us to speak for the 30 million people who live in communities such as Perth.

We are a unique and beautiful small city, and our cultural and heritage assets reflect Perth as the place where ancient Scotland was forged and modern Scotland was shaped. In Perth we have the capacity, the potential, the passion, the imagination and the means to do this. Perth is simply the place.