would that make any difference, would that transform anything?


So Salford decided it had to be an international arts and entertainment centre of excellence, but deeply rooted in its community. And that is exactly what The Lowry is. At that stage, at a possible cost of £127 million, the Council had absolutely no idea how it would be funded, but international architects Stirling and Wilford were commissioned to start design work. Unfortunately Jim Stirling died suddenly just after they had won the commission so this is not a Stirling building, it is a Wilford building. Michael Wilford designed this building, and did a brilliant job. It is acknowledged as a genuinely international arts complex but on any day you will find it full of local people of all ages.


Development Agency. The Lowry had done a great deal. One of the best headlines we ever got through Lowry was in the Financial Times, of all places, under the headline “New York, Paris, Madrid, Salford.” That is just the kind of headline you want when you are trying to transform a place. It concerned the visit of the Paris opera/ballet company to Salford, the first time in 40 years that this company had ever performed outside a national capital; and they came to us. The locals were not the only ones to be hugely impressed. People came from London for those performances.


Central Salford URC


Central Salford is a URC, an Urban Regeneration Company. Our vision, developed jointly with the local community, one of our greatest strengths, is that we shall turn this area, immortalised in many ways by Lowry and which inspired Das Capital and the communist party manifesto, into a place which is renowned as being beautiful, vibrant and prosperous, with the accent is on the beautiful, not a word you often hear in planning or in design terms.


The Lowry hosts everything from the world’s most famous ballet companies, drama companies and opera companies right the way through to Peter Kay and sing along with the Sound of Music. There is something for everyone. One of the greatest experiences of my life was in the bar one evening listening to three local ladies solemnly comparing the relative merits of the 3 greatest ballet companies in the world. In 1989 had you asked those ladies had they ever been to the ballet, they would have laughed at you and said why would we want to go to a ballet and there aren’t any here anyway.


An important pre-requisite for the Lowry, when we built it, was that it was not to be reliant on public subsidy. To begin with the only public funding was £1 million pounds a year from Salford, which was not really a subsidy at all since s Salford received back far more than that in terms of services such as huge education out-reach programmes the housing of the Lowry collection and free public access to the building 364 days a year. The Lowry celebrates its 10th birthday this year (2010). It is totally financially stable and makes 95% of its own income. It was intended to be, and is, a great customer experience, people like going there. It is a huge success. The Lowry alone has, on an investment of £127 million, brought in to date, directly and indirectly, £1 billion of private sector investment. Not a bad return.


The Lowry was a turning point, it started to engender confidence, but it was not enough, so the City Council asked me if we could do something bigger. By that time I had given up broadcasting to become a director in the Regional


ASSET - Liverpool-10 Felicity Goodey CBE 47


We brought in Max Fuchsas, the great Roman architect, we brought in Urban Strategies from Toronto, and many other experts, but the people of Salford did the lion’s share of the work. We persuaded 13 community groups to work together to do all the consultations rather than bringing in professionals. Thus it was neighbour talking to neighbour, business talking to business, all of us working together. There are some keen and lively people in Salford. There is also a spirit of non-conformism in Salford and Greater Manchester, that asks


● Why do we have to put up with this? ● Why do we have to do it that way? ● Why can’t we think differently?


This is the URC.


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