Phil Redmond: Look to the future

Oct 26 2007 by Our Correspondent, Liverpool Daily Post

ELSEWHERE. Where everyone else thinks everyone else lives and nothing else happens. Or, on the other hand, where everything else happens?

So it is when you go off and visit other people or cities, and on the one hand get a pleasant surprise when, as I wrote recently about traffic, the problems you thought unique are being faced by others; yet on the other hand it can be deflating to discover that other people are coping just as well, if not better, than yourself!

This was always one of the great strengths of Brookside, the 25th anniversary of which is next Friday incidentally, which probably means I should have written the book by now. I’ll just have to make do with next week’s column, for now, but what Brookie was good at was tackling the island mentality that occasionally affects everyone. That sense of desperate isolation people feel when, whatever it is, can only be happening to them.

By dramatising issues that generated such emotions Brookie, and others like Eastenders and Corrie, showed that, whatever the problem or issue, someone elsewhere had experienced it, simply in order to write about it. As such, just as a problem shared, the island mentality was dispelled.

This thought was very much in mind when, in Bristol this week, with another reminder of Brookie’s anniversary upon visiting the Watershed Media Centre, itself launched in 1982. Then, it was a UK first and very much on its own in a derelict dock area, while now it has imitators elsewhere and is central to a thriving leisure environment of bars, restaurants and public spaces.

Seeing Bristol’s renaissance was yet another reminder that elsewhere people are also getting on with rebuilding, for no matter what any city’s heritage, to continue to prosper it must continually reinvent its own future. People may well come for its past, but will hang around only for what is on offer at present or promised for the future. In short, getting people to visit is one thing, getting them to stay is something else.

This is mainly a job for others outside the cultural camp, but one of the big cultural challenges is to balance the celebratory aspects of 2008 alongside the foundations for the future. It will not be enough to simply reflect on past glories, or showcase what’s current. There will also be the need to help seek out and promote the future.

This is also something that will help guide the thinking when reviewing ideas and suggestions that will come through the Cultural Clearing scheme. The deadline for resubmitting old ideas is next Wednesday, but the big question, apart from whether they fit into the European Capital of Culture year itself, will be around any lasting future potential.

If not, they could just as well go elsewhere!