Britain a cultural wasteland? Not quite yet...
By Kate Simon
More bad news for the tourism industry reeling from the pandemic, cost-of-living crisis, and soaring energy prices. The Observer reports that many cultural and historic buildings are under threat due to 200-900% hikes in energy costs and a drop-off in visitor numbers. Reduced opening times and staff redundancies are spreading across the country.
Some venues have even shut completely, including Nottingham Castle, which I mentioned as a must-see in Between the Pubs: Nottingham, our guide to the city for visitors following its Ale Trails just last August. The Castle closed its doors when its trust fell into administration less than 18 months after unveiling a £33m restoration.
Yet some destinations are bucking the trend, not least Manchester. The city has just launched Factory International, a new cultural space for the performing arts designed by Rem Koolhaas and named after the late Tony Wilson’s record label Factory Records.
The £110m venue, which will be the new home of the biennial Manchester International Festival (29 June-16 July), has opened with First Breath (until 29 Jan), a new installation by Luke Jerram, shooting pulsing beams of light into the night sky to represent the first breaths of a baby.
The northern powerhouse is also reopening the Manchester Museum on 18 February, which has transformed Alfred Waterhouse’s neo-Gothic building to the tune of £15m. Home to more than 4 million objects from the natural sciences and human cultures, it will relaunch with a touring exhibition, ‘Golden Mummies of Egypt’, in the new Exhibition Hall.
Another landmark on Britain’s cultural map, the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh will reveal a new wing dedicated to home-grown art. This gallery has its fair share of Titians and Turners, but it is works by Allan Ramsay, Gavin Hamilton, Sir David Wilkie and other Scottish artists that will be the focus of the multimillion-pound new exhibition spaces, which the public should be able to enter by the summer.
It’s not all about the adults. Eureka! Science + Discovery recently opened in Wallasey on the Wirral. The sister museum to Eureka! The Children’s Museum in Halifax, it takes a playful stab at getting kids up to 14 years of age to engage with science, technology, engineering, arts and maths, and has been created with the help of 120 young people from local schools.
But you will need to be over 18 to try a tot of the house single malt, distilled from the waters that flow through the Cheviot Hills, at Ad Gefrin in Wooler, Northumberland. The museum-cum-distillery offers a potent mix, also showcasing artefacts found at Yeavering (aka Ad Gefrin), a 6th Century royal residence and one of Britain’s most important early medieval archaeological sites.
The curtain will go up on a newly refurbished Swan Theatre – which promises wider seats among the improvements – in Stratford-upon-Avon on 1 April with the RSC’s world premiere of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet (1 Apr-17 Jun). And Blackpool will celebrate its history as Britain’s capital of entertainment when Showtime opens this year. It features six themed galleries about magic, circus, shows, dance, the seaside and, of course, the illuminations.
A more sobering subject is tackled at the Museum of Homelessness. It launched at Tate Britain in 2017 and has worked out of borrowed spaces so far, but now has a permanent home in Finsbury Park, north London.
But this museum isn’t just dedicated to witnessing the failure of society to provide for all by preserving and sharing histories of homelessness, poverty and social action, it also campaigns for change and will hold regular surgeries on legal rights and housing. An appropriate addition to the cultural scene in these straitened times.
Phil’s Beer Notes
Manchester also continues to be a happening place for beer, with Leeds’ North Brewing crossing the Pennines recently to open a tap room at Circle Square. Innis & Gunn’s Taproom is now well established at its home in Edinburgh city centre, and worth a visit for its 26 craft beer taps, including fresh, unpasteurised tank beer straight from the brewery.
Just north of the new distillery at Wooler, you’ll find Cheviot Brewery, which happens to offer glamping as well as beer. Its on-site tap room is only open on Fridays but it has a pub down the road at Etal, the Black Bull.
Next door to the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon is a pub called the Dirty Duck, which happens to be one of the very first pubs I drank beer in, as a schoolboy on a trip to the home of Shakespeare. You’d never get away with it now. It’s operated by Greene King, which has just announced it’s making its cask ales available to pubs in pins, half the usual firkin size, which should help guarantee a quality pint.
Graphic interpretation © Metaphor