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As the final beats of the Pet Shop Boys floated from a very muddy Moor Park across the city, is Preston’s cultural scene set to see a bounce from being in the spotlight?
All signs would point to yes. Preston has been talked about, on the airwaves, on the TV, on social media and plenty of people – predominantly from the North West of England – have made a visit to Preston when they otherwise wouldn’t have.
What BBC Radio 2 In The Park, and the Preston Partnership meeting held last week focused on culture in the city, show is that as we all know Preston has much to offer. Deep tradition, pockets of innovation and upstarts doing different things.
Read more: Pictures as the Pet Shop Boys close a soggy Sunday at BBC Radio 2 In The Park
But the fundamentals are stuck. A major event like Radio 2 coming to town has clearly caused tremors of concern about how to handle parking, trains, buses, Ubers and more. The city is not used to having an event with more than a few thousand people at once anymore. This was the biggest event since the Guild, 12 years ago. Were train operators scrambling to put on extra services? No. Were extra buses put on? Only if you’re willing to pay a tenner rather than make use of a Lancashire County Council backed ‘ride for £1 on Sunday’ scheme – and even then most found a locked up Bus Station on arrival or had to pack themselves at bus stops (many unlit) and find single-deckers trundling up to them and then a long wait for another bus as standard threadbare evening weekend timetables ran.
During the Preston Partnership event, focused on Culture In The City, then Pete Alexander from Blitz alluded to how a lot of places in the city centre have dramatically cut their opening hours. I heard similar from Paul Yates at Guild Ale House in Winckley Street when speaking to him about the need for the Guild Hall to get back open.
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, we’ll cut the opening hours from Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesday because we don’t get enough trade, and then others follow suit and people think it’s not worth trying to go anywhere on weekdays. Christine Cort, part of the driving force behind Chewsyard, echoed those thoughts – how can she justify being open for traders to serve just a handful of people on a Wednesday night.
There’s a big challenge in encouraging people to engage in culture – and I mean that in the broadest definition of the word from food, to art, to buildings, to meeting up with like-minded people. But there’s no shortage of that happening in the city and surrounds – we’ve had more than 160 events listed on our new-look what’s on section within the space of a month of going live. Everything from large-scale festivals to the smaller community meet-up. So it is happening, those who say ‘there’s nothing on’ perhaps need to do a little more searching.
The elephant in the room, as it was at the Preston Partnership event and indeed on Jeremy Vine’s Radio 2 show live from The Black Horse where he failed to quiz the city council’s leader on it, is the Guild Hall.
While efforts to get the foyer open as The Guild Lounge are commendable, the lack of a large-scale civic and entertainment venue is pointed to throughout all communities in the city as being one of the major reasons for Preston’s feeling of being stuck. Even Scott Mills was surprised when I was interviewing him about the lack of a major venue in a city the size of Preston (he has very fond memories of Tokyo Jo’s like many of us). Rightly or wrongly, his assumption was that everywhere of Preston’s size would have a good-sized venue for DJs, bands, comedians or others to play in. Getting out there, to see audiences in real life, was crucial – he said.
I don’t doubt the ambition to want to re-open The Guild Hall, and we all know the RAAC is a major stumbling block, but as Sunday showed – the Preston weather cannot be relied upon so having an indoor venue for large-scale events is crucial. Not even huge events of the Radio 2 size, don’t under-estimate the funding, time, manpower and more needed to pull off an event for 30,000 people.
The Harris reopening (assuming they can solve the fit-out issue we revealed this morning), The Youth Zone opening and the Animate cinema and entertainment complex coming into operation throughout 2025 are big step-changes happening for a reason for being in the city centre. There’s no doubt about that.
What bubbled up particularly during the Preston Partnership meeting is where is the support for those doing things off their own back? Or for more community-led organisations operating in arts and culture?
This was in part answered by the city council’s head of events and culture, Tim Joel, who gave an insight into the swathes of cut-backs experienced by both local and central government agencies when it comes to arts and culture provision. He seemed to indicate the mood music of Labour giving some more focus to the creative sector as being more likely – but perhaps not initially given Sir Keir and Rachel Reeves rather sombre tones about the ‘tough times ahead’.
Preston does buck the trend here with Arts Council secured funding for the likes of the Encounter Festival. But as Shawn Sharpe, mural man of the city, alluded to when he was quizzed about events then it hasn’t put the city on the map in the way that the likes of the international street art festival has in Southend in recent days. Finding a niche, and then growing an event around that – unless you’ve got the big budget and deep pockets of the BBC to put on a huge stage event with big acts – feels like the way for the city to go.
It came back to a discussion about what is Preston famous for? What is the essence that attracts people here and weaves its way through people, places and organisations in the city.
From speaking to BBC presenters during interviews at Radio 2 In The Park – they felt they had been very welcomed to the city. They spoke of a true warmth that came without expectation of something in return. People were just genuinely pleased for them to all be here – and spent a lot of time apologising for the weather.
BBC Radio 2 In The Park could, and should, be the spark for the city’s cultural ambitions and creating more opportunities for people to have shared experiences together. Whether that is bopping around in their wellies to the Manics, grooving in a tent to Rylan, supporting new acts with Jo Whiley at The Ferret or just all experiencing something in a large room/space together, all at once. This gives cities, communities and people a shared bond and understand. Perhaps something we sometimes lack in Preston because for many our last big shared experience is the cost of living crisis and the pandemic. Not exactly uplifting. But now, for thousands of people, our shared experience was grumbling about chairs, trudging through mud and realising we knew more Pet Shop Boys or Sting songs than we did – and that Craig David doing assembly bangers is a nailed on hit (according to my ten month old son anyway).
There are infrastructure issues to resolve, no doubt, and the fragmentation of responsibilities for those issues and challenges in the city means there’s a lot of people and organisations to bring together to be on the same page. That’s not easy. And as Jeremy Vine said, when I interviewed him, ‘one more politician’ is not always the answer.
Lots of other towns and cities, smaller, same-size and bigger can do it. Preston can, and we’re sure it will, and let’s hope those who have the ambition and ability to do so start to help the city realise its potential and place in the North West of England and beyond. Speaking to people at the festival I was struck by how many, from places not that far away – say 10-15 miles – had not been to Preston for many, many, years. ‘Give us a reason to come back again’ was their overwhelming message, judging on the support for an event like BBC Radio 2 In The Park at a reasonably high ticket price.
Arts, culture and venues can’t just rely on the direct population of a place to survive. They need to attract from other towns and cities to thrive and Preston shouldn’t be afraid to do this – we have, when it works, a natural location that gives an advantage for getting to and from.
For now, we will all dry off and recover our bank balances from the weekend in Moor Park, the clean up operation will continue and the repair job on the city’s tattered cultural reputation will hopefully have an extra spring in its step now we’ve remembered we can be Proud Preston to be beamed into living rooms up and down the country.
What do you think? How should the city build on BBC Radio 2 In The Park? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below
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