Yorkshire needs a top-flight football club...desparately

Ben McKenna
Information Communications Manager, Yorkshire Culture

Ask any tourist in London where they hope to see on their trip here and they will more than likely tell you that they hope to take in some football at either Arsenal or Chelsea’s ground, maybe even Tottenham if they are being really adventurous or can’t get tickets for a quality side. Ask any tourist who has braved the trip up north to either Manchester, Liverpool or Newcastle and I’m sure the likelihood that they will take in a game will be as close to 100% as you are able to get. This affiliation with football and in reality the Premier League not only boosts the profile of the city but with close to five thousand supporters from opposition clubs virtually guaranteed to come to town every fortnight it boosts visitor spend and bed-occupancy figures, especially for us in the northern reaches of the country.

Following Sheffield United’s teary but strangely inevitable relegation on the last day of the season back in may Yorkshire is again faced with the prospect of having no teams in the top tier of the English game, the self professed - some would say hyperbolic - “Most Exciting League in the World” (Copyright BSkyB). Leeds United’s stirring Champions League runs are now a distant memory following their spectacular, combustive demise and fall through the trapdoor of the Championship, parachute payments and all. The Blades’ steady progress under Warnock has now hit a hiccup following his departure and the less said of Wednesday and my now-hometown club Bradford City the better. There’s a real sense among the region that football is becoming something that other places “do”.

I guess I’d probably get a few emails if I didn’t mention Headingley at this point, test cricket matches have taken place there this summer and have been as successful as they usually are. Cricket and similarly, but in an entirely different way geographically at least, Rugby League are where this region’s strength seems to lie. It’s fair to say that I don’t know enough about League to comment with any great, informed perspective but I do know it is still very much a “niche” at National level, even with the inclusion of French side Catalan Dragons in this and last season’s competition.

The game of cricket though is certainly not undergoing a boom, the symptoms of this slow demise are probably best seen not in the recent, farcical and overlong World Cup but in the fact that children in the West Indies now want to be Allen Iverson rather than Viv Richards.

I really hope I’ll be able to watch some premiership football the season after next, and it looks like the task of putting Yorkshire and Humber back on the map will fall to the relegated and, ominously, managed by Brian Robson, Sheffield United. They’ll be ably, in some cases anyway, assisted by Sheffield Wednesday (9th last season) Barnsley (20th), Hull City (21st) and the newly promoted Scunthorpe United fresh from winning the League One Championship.

I fear though, it’ll be a little while longer until we see a team from the region lift the top division’s trophy or take on Valencia in a Champions League Semi-Final.

How green is my strategy?

Ben McKenna

Information Communications Manager, Yorkshire Culture

One of the inevitabilities of life in the public sector is the fact that, each morning when you receive your post, without fail you will be confronted by a strategy of some shape of form. My desk is littered with them and from time to time I feel like I am drowning under the weight of nicely printed paper and cleverly illustrated action plans.

Now, I’ve done my fair share of strategies in the past. Big ones, little ones, quiet ones, loud ones and sometimes even fun ones. They play a useful role in our world even if a small percentage of them exist solely for the sake of pointing to some sort of achievement, namely writing a strategy. The business of writing, designing and publishing these auspicious tomes has become an art in itself. There are great designers, either in house or at an agency level, working on a lot of these things but it’s a massive challenge to make a lot of what the cultural sector does truly engaging.

We’re lucky really, that in the cultural sector we can illustrate our work with exotic dancers (steady), taught and striving sporting figures and either sexy new buildings, fascinating old ones or sweeping landscapes. It’s a lot easier than sending out business, science and technology or regeneration pieces. Men in pinstripe suits, white coats and hard hats are never going to play well with whatever target audience you’re trying to hit.

I’m in no way as green as I should be, I recycle a bit of paper here and there but I don’t compost, wash my cans out or take regular trips to the bottle bank. The problem is though, that the culture of how the public sector as a whole communicates is still very much based around the strategy document ethos. Write it, make it look nice with some “inspirational” shots, print it and then post it. I know that 99% of these documents will be printed on at least 80% recycled stock which has come along way in the last decade but is this really enough? Especially in these Green days where party leaders cycle to work and former US Vice Presidents implore us to make a difference to the world through the medium of middle of the road pop. I’m not sure that, if we looked good and hard at the carbon footprint of each of these documents, we’d like what we saw. Or for that matter that we’d feel we are truly getting value for money.

We live in an age now where the internet gets information to you faster, cheaper, easier and more interactive. Maybe the price of the matt effect, double thick stock paper or the lushly de-bossed accompanying envelope could be better spent elsewhere on a cool viral or a site which grabs the attention and gets the message across. Direct Marketing still has its part to play and I’m not saying the standard of the design needs to be lower, just that maybe the medium for it could do with changing. It’d certainly last longer, be cheaper to deliver and wouldn’t have coffee spilt over it or get left in the office.

Skills Trains and Drum Beats.

Gary Topp - Chief Executive, Yorkshire Culture
6th July 2007

Culture and sport are about creativity and energy. There is plenty of energy around at the moment concerned with the London 2012 Games and our task, as managers of the Yorkshire Committee for the 2012 Games is to involve and engage with as many partners as possible in the region to ensure that Yorkshire maximises the opportunity.

It is not every week, therefore, that ends with a partnership meeting in a carriage on Hull Trains and a mass drumming session with the regions sporting professionals. The teams at the Learning and Skills Council and Sport England really did come up trumps with these two ideas.

On Thursday a wide range of partners from the world of skills were invited on a trip to London to see the Games site first hand. The train left Hull with only a couple of us on board but at each stop Between Hull and Doncaster more people joined and we soon had a private carriage bustling with briefings and networking. This was an important beginning to the region’s 2012 skills activity and the fact that we saw the Games site up close, shared some stories and policies, and began to piece together project ideas made for a great day.

The following day, at Doncaster’s new Keep Moat stadium, the drums came out to play. At the beginning and end of a fascinating and inspirational morning with the region’s top sports development officers we were all invited to be part of a drumming workshop. We all sat in a circle, banging away to ‘I like apples, I like pears’, creating a great noise and jigging about. David Gents solo had less artistry than Steve Sawyer’s but no less passion and a goodtime was had by all.

Both sessions serve to remind us that fun and inspiration are important parts of getting the job done. Thanks to all involved.

A visit to China

Gary Topp - Chief Executive, Yorkshire Culture

Gary recently visited China with a delegation from the region including Yorkshire Forward, Yorkshire Culture and the Northern Ballet.

The visit, designed to strengthen ties between the Yorkshire and Humber region and the world’s most populous country, proved to be eye opening for all involved reinforcing the links between culture and business in what is soon to be the planet’s economic powerhouse. Reflections on a week in Beijing

Towards a context. Gary Topp

China is sparking the world’s imagination. It is compelling, baffling, worrying and deeply fascinating. Western businesses are crazily negotiating and determining to open up this enormous market- it offers both the cost savings of the third world and the potential for phenomenal growth through the emerging consumerism of its 1.4 billion people. In the week that we were there Google conceded its principles and launched Google.cn and on the flight back I had a detailed conversation with a leading mobile phone company’s ethical manager. He had spent two weeks in Beijing undertaking a strict ethical audit on proposed factories. He determined that the Chinese workers would be paid 50 cents (euro) an hour and sleep in dormitories with 2 square metres of personal space – apparently this is better than current minimum legal standards in China and will pass their test. Beijing is a city of 15 million people…up to half of them migrant workers from the country’s 800 million farmers.

S class Mercedes and 7 series BMWs rub shoulders with hundreds of thousands of more humble vehicles and the laconic cruising of the cities 10 million bicycles. Workers wave flags and blow whistles at every major traffic junction in a bizarre ritual of failed traffic control. Your eyes are gritty with smog and you soon develop the Beijing cough as you negotiate the city’s 172km by 160 km scale. B&Q and Ikea have major stores and virtually everyone from rich to poor lives in an apartment. You can get a mortgage, and finally, you can actually buy an AmericanEnglish style suburban house for circa £200,000.00.

One event dominates the cities skyline advertisements – Beijing 2008 Olympics. Beijing is revealing itself to the world through the Olympics. It reminded me of Los Angeles with freeways, pollution, dominant advertisements and a brutal two speed economy. A value supply chain model ? Yorkshire – UK – EU – China – Beijing- Culture. This is a challenging value/ supply chain to unravel. What did we learn on this first trip by way of an initial set of observations? Culture, particularly high culture, is fantastically important to the new Chinese elite- it has something of the ‘Victorian’ about it. UK culture has status in China. Mr. Yu (Deputy Director General- China National Tourism Administration) constantly referred to a Chinese/ UK ‘emotional’ state or relationship. This seemed to be based on a notion, as much as anything, of British manufacturing quality (ironically he talked about his cashmere coat!) that seemed vaguely mid 1900’s in origin (think Jaguar cars and British tailoring). Business and culture are natural bedfellows in China – more so than in the UK these days. It refers back to notions of patronage, pride, intellect and social status. Yorkshire’s UK cultural offer can build business relationships – it brings values, status, pleasure and etiquette to the party. It could be a significant part of the region’s calling card. Mr Yu was clear; clear in his facts and figures and clear in his view. Chinese people will come to the UK for the culture – specifically high arts and heritage. Our package tour should be London – York – Edinburgh. Our hotels must be at least 3 stars or above. Our brand should be a cultural one. Good shopping will be the necessary icing on the cake. Beijing 2008 will be enormous. Great tracts of the city are littered with cranes as entirely new facilities are built from the ground up. The media complex alone dwarfs any current development site in Yorkshire. They will green the city, tidy it, plump it up and stage a magnificent spectacle. Mr. Luzeng Song (Deputy Director General) is clear that they will top the medal table (‘leave some medals for us’). They are hungry for sports and events business. Delighted to host new sports events – better still if they bring new equipment and brand opportunities. He suggested that we should try to introduce cricket. Perhaps, at least, we could hold an exhibition match. Yorkshire County Cricket club, Leeds Met Carnegie…..there might be something in it. (I was delighted to meet the official that had arranged President Bush’s recent mountain bike ride with the Chinese national team!) China has, and readily builds, cultural facilities on a magnificent scale.

It has state of the art theatres, enormous museums and phenomenal heritage attractions. Our visit to the Great Wall was astounding as both a punter and a professional. Great Wall – York Minister. China is secular – Yorkshire’s world class religious heritage would be a powerful and fascinating draw for a country with a troubled history of Christian relationships. It would be a fascinating and dramatic story for Chinese visitors. Again, the insistent ‘emotional’ link that Mr Yu shared with us. He wanted to talk about the ‘problem’ – the Chinese wanted to visit the UK but the beaurocracy and prejudice exhibited by the UK was stopping it dead. Our visa arrangements were punitive and, in his informed and evidenced view, based on a misunderstanding that Chinese people would have any desire to desert their homecountry for ours as illegal immigrants. His message was blunt – sort it out now or the Chinese would look elsewhere. This is not a regional issue- but we could be a region that makes our voice heard on it. For his part he accepts that currently foreign tour operators cannot set up in China- it demands a joint venture approach. It seems that deregulation has not yet hit the tourism sector. Our opportunity To integrate our emerging business / inward investment activity with a vibrant cultural exchange programme- it could be our regional competitive edge. If we do it now, as we move towards Beijing 2008, we could bring together our cultural excellence, our Olympic London 2012 support and our inward investment strategies to deliver a strong thread linking Beijing and Yorkshire – worth a shot?