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DAN HILL
Institute for Popular Culture
Manchester Metropolitan University

The Northern Quarter has been a focus of much of the Institute for Popular Culture's research. The Institute, in the shape of City Centre Research, was consulted on the regeneration study of the area. Many of its researchers develop close relationships with the area and its occupants in the course of their research, in order to inform their work with both an ethnographic evocation of the popular culture and a sense of proactive intervention in urban regeneration. The emerging digital popular culture is a current research interest of the Institute, as the fashion and music industries have always been (similarly future research at the Institute is likely to exploit and develop the strong relationship it has with the area as case study material in relation to proposed studies investigating business education in the cultural industries, and comparative studies of the music industries of Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield).

As befits the nature of the area, the incumbent cultural industries relationship with new information and communications technology (ICTs) such as email and the World Wide Web, is both varied and fragmentary. Some organisations are online - some haven't the slightest idea what being online means. The diverse nature of the businesses also represents a problem for policy-makers wishing to add the value of ICTs to the value of the cultural industry. This intersection of technology and small business in the culture industries - seen by many as the leading economic sector of the near future - is likely to pose interesting questions to current understandings of business practice and working cultures, business education and training, and local economic development. Here we have, overlaid on to the fundamental cultural shifts of the late twentieth century, not only the radical transformations enabled by the flexibility of new technology but also the challenge to the orthodox notions of business presented by the cultural industries. The resultant feeling of widespread confusion and latent potential has perhaps been expressed largely as hype so far, meaning a lack of sound understanding about how small businesses in the cultural industries can exploit this potentially fruitful interface between technology and culture.

Consequently, the Institute became interested in applying issues raised in previous research in the area, to the new issues raised as advanced ICTs surged into the domain of popular culture. During the second half of 1995, a small amount of funding was achieved to begin to develop a pilot study regarding digital networking in the Northern Quarter, with the twin aims of researching the relationship between networking in the 'physical' sense and the potential of the new digital networking, and beginning to introduce microbusinesses to otherwise inaccessible technology, raising awareness about the recent developments in certain advanced ICTs.

The Northern Quarter Network project is intended to capitalise on the creative potential of new information and communications technologies, positioning the 'cultural industries' of the NQ within an 'Intelligent Creative Quarter'. The NQ as intelligent quarter does not mean that other areas of Manchester are unintelligent, just as the choice of NQ as creative quarter does not imply other areas of Manchester area are uncreative .' Intelligent' in this sense is essentially a political term used in the regeneration process to imply an area 'wired up' and saturated with information technologies - a pointless exercise without any applications or use for this technology. Therefore, the fundamental objectives of the Northern Quarter Network are to develop the level of networking within the NQ, which previous research at the Institute had indicated was crucial to economic success within the cultural industries micro-businesses. Again, this is a variety of networking: formal and informal; physical and virtual; public and private. The Network's particular interest is in attempting to exploit the potential of recent advances in ICTs to equip these businesses with skills in information processing and sharing, knowledge location and generation, flexible communication and so on -skills deemed necessary for survival in post-industrial or post-Fordist economies.

Due to the initial funds being limited, the project is split into two phases, with the second phase dependent on ESF or ERDF money. The inital pilot phase of the project aims to raise the awareness of the cultural industries understanding of new technology such as email, the World Wide Web, and bulletin boards. In order to achieve this, a variety of free training is offered for cross-sectoral representatives of the cultural industries within the Northern Quarter. In tandem, a website is being constructed for the Northern Quarter Network, including information about the area, the regeneration process, the businesses in the area, and so on.

The Institute are coordinating the project with the Music.Network, a Manchester-based micro-business, who have direct experience in the cultural industries and issues regarding the introduction of new technology. They are responsible for the design and build of the pilot Northern Quarter Network website (link available here soon). They are also coordinating and delivering much of the initial training . Their background in the music industry, their specific knowledge of the Internet as a website design/build company, and therefore as actually being an SME in the cultural industries informs their training with unique and specific experience - a quality often lacking in more generalised training.

Due to the fact that the NQN is a pilot project in a new area, all parties involved are racing up a rapid learning curve. For instance, at an early stage in the project, the initial training model was found to be lacking. Times were arranged for representatives of SMEs to be trained at Music.Network's offices. These offices provided a focussed one-on-one training environment. However, only around 50% of the appointments were kept by the trainees, indicating certain issues involved in training businesses employing a handful of people. Taking someone out of the office for training means the business operating on proportionately low staffing levels. If the training was to take place on-site, the temptation for concentration to lapse into running the business would be high. So, after consideration, the new training model entails a free day-long 'event', publicised well in advance to give organisations more time to plan effectively. This training may not be one-on-one, but as the end objective is to raise awareness about these technologies and develop networking, a group event with similar businesspeople from the same local area may work equally as well.

Again, the initial model for the website was to represent a sample of 30 businesses, providing 'Yellow-Pages' style entries located within a framework of the Northern Quarter map. However, in order to stimulate a response from the organisations, it was felt that the website needed to grab the attention of reticent traders and evoke a strong aesthetic sense of the areas creative, experimental feel. Therefore, a swift re-design meant that the website is now intended to showcase the Northern Quarter area, and demonstrate how the web can work for 5 'flagship' businesses. These flagships will be visually-powerful, substantial sites for representatives of a number of sectors located within the NQ. This will enable the website to be used at the training to begin to indicate what is possible with the technology, and to stimulate thought as to the usefulness of the medium in their work.

The next phase of the project is dependent upon European funding, but it is envisaged that as well as extending the range of the pilot phase (training more businesses, developing the website, providing email and other technologies), phase two will also develop new initiatives such as a cultural industries database of useful business information relating to contacts, equipment,venues, grants; expanding the access to ICTs in the area, perhaps including a project to design and build a purpose-built Multimedia and Telematics resource centre or centres, which will comprise various public-access sites, access sites for Northern Quarter organisations, training rooms, 'cybercafé', venue for events, video-conferencing space, and management and administration of the information and networks.

This centre is also intended to be complemented by other access points, included the sites that already exist in the NQ such as Dry Bar, Ten Bar, and the City of Glass offices, with, in the near future, a project led by the Idea@Mcr1 consortium converting the old 'ratcatchers' building in the NQ into an 'intelligent' building of managed workspaces for cultural industries. The Idea project may also develop into a resource for specialist training in multimedia production, alongside other training providers such as new courses developed at MMU out of the New Opportunities for Women project, and those incorporated into the proposed Manchester Multimedia Centre.

The future development of the Northern Quarter Network also involves staffing, equipment (Internet servers) and developing 'professional' service delivery to the cultural industries. This Network is intended to grow into the main supplier of business services to cultural industries initially in the NQ, but increasingly beyond, both in terms of business sector and geographical area.

Part I

Part III

Part IV

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Send email to: d.p.hill@mmu.ac.uk and j.oconnor@mmu.ac.uk