HOME, the new “cultural hub” in Manchester

“People ask me, ‘What is it about Manchester? What’s going in Manchester? Why is Manchester getting everything?’” Dave Moutrey, Chief Executive of HOME—a new centre for visual art, theatre and film that officially opens next weekend—is telling me about what it’s like to work in the city that George Osborne has anointed as the capital of what he calls the “Northern Powerhouse.”

HOME, into which the Dutch architectural practice Mecanoo has managed to cram two theatres, five cinemas and a gallery space, sits on an apparently unpromising plot of land abutting the railway line that runs west out of Manchester towards Liverpool —another of the nodes in a network that, in Osborne’s grand vision for the economic “rebalancing” of the British economy, stretches across northern England at the neck, from the Mersey to the Humber. Its official address is 2 Tony Wilson Place, and Moutrey is careful to pay due tribute to the late impresario and founder of Factory Records, who played a central role in marketing Manchester to the rest of the country (and, indeed, the rest of the world) as it began to rouse itself from its post-industrial slumbers in the mid-1990s. “Tony’s much-used quote was, ‘This is Manchester. We do things differently here.’ I think he contributed a lot to the thought-leadership of the city. It’s a matter of record that he wasn’t the best businessperson in the world. But he had great ideas and a way of getting things done.”

But Moutrey reserves his greatest praise for the two men who’ve run Manchester for the best part of two decades: Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council, and Sir Howard Bernstein, the Council’s chief executive. “Because of the political consistency and executive consistency at the top of the council,” he says, “[Manchester has been able] to take a strategic view. Following the success of the Commonwealth games [in 2002], the city backed the notion of an international festival. They’ve seen the impact of [Manchester International Festival] on brand Manchester. They understand the place of arts and culture in the overall brand of the city.”

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