Tim Cornwell: Capital reviews its creative credentials

Gateshead was touting its credentials as a creative city yesterday when the Turner Prize show opened for the first time in the north east.

The work of four of Britain’s top contemporary artists, in the running for the country’s best known arts trophy, go on show from today in the Baltic, the former flour mill that reopened as an arts centre after a £50 million overhaul in 2002.

Whatever your views of contemporary art, the Turner Prize show is worth a look, a stop on the train south or very possibly as the hook for a longer jaunt. It compares, and contrasts, the work of four very different artists, working in paint, concrete, giant airy sculptures and video.

The Baltic and local cultural bosses used the event to showcase the region’s other creative blessings to visiting arts journalists from London and other cities. They touted, for example, Gateshead’s Workplace Gallery, as that region’s first international commercial gallery.

This year a church in Gateshead was converted into the Brighton Road Studios, offering 12 affordable workspaces for “creative practitioners”. Staff at the One North East agency, which backed it with a £225,000 investment, cited it as another example of the “cultural-led economic regeneration in the region” over the last 15 years.

Turner Prize contenders yesterday showcased the output of another creative city: Glasgow. Two artists who launched their careers there, Karla Black and Martin Boyce, are among the nominations this year. The Glasgow School of Art has created a critical mass for Glasgow’s contemporary art scene which Edinburgh has largely failed to match.

How do you make a “creative place”? Scotland’s arts agency, Creative Scotland, partially lifted the veil this week on plans to revamp the capital’s creative scene. It centres on revitalising Creative Edinburgh, an apparently ill-fated venture mothballed by Scottish Enterprise after it flowered briefly a few years ago.

Creative Scotland’s chief executive Andrew Dixon is a product of the north east and credited, among other things, with a major role in championing the Angel of the North. His agency has set aside £120,000 in funding for Creative Edinburgh. The project’s other major backer, Edinburgh City Council, was being fearfully coy about the details ahead of an official launch in November.

After he took the post last year, Dixon stressed a new focus on creative cities and places. Creative Scotland is now in talks with six major cities, it says – Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness and Perth – to “realise the potential of all parts of Scotland.”

In Aberdeen there are discussions about the provision of “cultural space” in the Union Terrace gardens project. Creative Scotland says it’s working with Dundee on exploiting the new V&A, and with Glasgow on projects like the £5m National Centre for Youth Arts announced yesterday. There’s also a £1.4m “Place Partnership”, for five places from Fife to Dumfries and Galloway.

The relaunched Creative Edinburgh, it is said, will “help businesses work together, make the most of the city’s reputation and generate inward investment”. The European Union and the council are chipping in to help boost the “international competitiveness of the creative industries base” in Edinburgh with “new workplaces” and “creative hubs”, and business “incubators”.

Scottish Enterprise first established Creative Edinburgh Ltd, a not-for-profit organisation, in 2002 to support “digital imaging and enabling technology” and “business-to-business networking”. The company was mothballed in 2006 when Scottish Enterprise withdrew its funding, but there has been talk about reviving it since 2009.

The Edinburgh festivals aside, it is said the creative sector “remains one of the city’s least understood economic assets”. Future goals, according to a council paper, will be providing “clear and dynamic leadership” and to promote the watchwords of “creative Edinburgh”, “Edinburgh is creative” and “create-in-Edinburgh”. It will be worth watching to see if Creative Edinburgh can create any creative groundswell, beyond some very fetching rhetoric.