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Huddersfield 'creative hotspot' as art takes over from textiles
Andrew Robinson IT famously hosted the Sex Pistols' last UK gig and is sometimes half-jokingly referred to as the Poetry Capital of England.
Huddersfield was once famed for the number of textile millionaires, but now has a new feather in its cap as one of the country's top creative hotspots. The town, population around 150,000, has been taken over by poets, musicians, artists and new media professionals – and more are on the way, according to a new book.
Huddersfield, Hebden Bridge and Sheffield are among the top 20 most up and coming places that encourage a "social, cultural and creative mix".
Dan Holliday of The Fish Can Sing communications agency, which has produced the book CreativeWorld, said: "We looked for locations that had an organised creative class, a social and cultural mix and had good communications coverage. Some are already associated with specific industries or crafts but we looked at those that would attract creative people and stimulate them once there."
Huddersfield's renaissance has been noted with pride by its residents. New bars have sprung up and hundreds of small businesses have flourished.
Dozens of ambitious and established musicians flock to the town's Beaumont Street studios, where local band Embrace recorded their million-selling first album The Good Will Out, and Shed Seven and The Mission put down tracks.
Studio chief executive Sean Leonard said the town always has had a strong cultural tradition, with its choral society and contemporary music festival.
The studio was now attracting a huge number of up-and-coming acts, many of them from Huddersfield and West Yorkshire, he said.
"There is also the Leeds effect – the Kaiser Chiefs have created a slipstream effect. But in many ways Huddersfield is an very ordinary town which has a few little gems."
Poets, including Simon Armitage, who was born in Marsden, Huddersfield, continue to put the town on the map.
Poet Janet Fisher, who jointly runs Huddersfield publishing company The Poetry Business, said enterprise allowances and cheap rents had attracted creative people to the town and villages like Marsden, which hosts a jazz festival this weekend.
She knows poets who have moved to Huddersfield from Scotland, Lancashire, even Africa and she herself is from the Midlands.
"Marsden is a hive of activity, it's full of creative people. There is a tradition of creativity in the town with lots of ex-punks and the university students."
Few in Hebden Bridge will be surprised the town made fifth place in the top 10. It has been a magnet for artists for decades and has its own arts festival, sculpture trails.
On Sheffield's Cultural Industries Quarter, which merited 17th place, the book says: "There's understandable cynicism about the 'creation' of a creative district. But the warehouses of this once-derelict industrial area were being colonized by artists and new businesses before the National Centre for Popular Music formalised the council's interest in it."
Peckham came out top in the book mainly because it is cheaper than anywhere else so close to the centre of London.
andrew.robinson@ypn.co.uk
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