Culture-led regeneration in seaside towns

England’s North West: Blackpool

The Great Promenade Show⁸ is a permanent outdoor linear public art gallery – ten permanent installations over two kilometres, commissioned and curated between 2000 and 20033 by a small team of north-western artists as part of a culture and regeneration scheme in the development of Blackpool’s South Shore Promenade. Artist and co-curator Michael Trainor conceived They Shoot Horses Don’t They?, a 20-feet diameter rotating mirrorball as part of the project.⁹ He comments:

The Great Promenade Show obliquely references aspects of Blackpool’s special culture and history without being literal. ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’ was initially treated rather coolly and is now featured on everything from the Blackpool train timetable to the opening sequence of the BBC nightly regional news. The work was recently selected by Blackpool residents as an icon for the town only second to Blackpool tower (which, to be fair, has been there since 1894).

The initiative was part of Blackpool’s coastal protection scheme which included space allocation for art in the public realm. It was also intended to diversify the visitor audience for Blackpool with public art as a cultural attraction. The iconographic nature of the rotating mirrorball has become a Blackpool landmark and a twenty-first century symbolic image for the region, and an example of ‘art as visual representation of place’.

A more recent initiative is the temporary attraction Art Car Parade.¹⁰ Produced by Walk The Plank in Manchester in 2007, and in Blackpool and Newcastle in 2008, Art Car Parade invites professional artists, individuals and groups to ‘make transportable artworks from vehicles’ for procession. It is an example of the potential for capacity building in culture-led regeneration.

Anthony Preston, Head of Resource Development, Arts Council England North West, comments:

The illuminated Art Car Parade has the potential to grow to become an innovative addition to the illuminations attraction. When it took place on Blackpool’s promenade in 2008, it achieved community involvement and developed a new relationship with tourism. In fact the tourism department paid towards Art Cars 2008. The next stage is to begin to explore how the producers, Walk The Plank, together with the council, can put in place the building blocks for developing local skills and the capacity of communities in Blackpool to sustain this activity into the future and balance real meaningful participation alongside a high calibre, quality artistic offer.

There are some possible conclusions to draw. Blackpool’s regeneration has struggled for several years with the role of ‘culture’, initially through pursuing a culture and regeneration model. It has had deeper structural problems, a lack of inherent creative industries or at least the profile, recognition and development of such industries to meet the demands of a twenty-first century market, audiences and contemporary tastes, or strong links with higher skills or knowledge economies. Instead, strategies have for decades focused on engagement with spectacle. Now, more than ever, opportunities for culture-led regeneration, brought about by strengthened partnerships, financial investment and visionary leadership, can steer Blackpool’s fortunes with deeper rooted impact for long-term economic, cultural and community growth.