I read with interest your support for Yvette Cooper et al and their proposal for a town of culture (Editorial, 31 December). While mentioning just Oldham and Margate as towns that have developed a cultural footprint despite having suffered urban decline, the citing of Aldeburgh, Hay-on-Wye, Wigtown and Stroud as the other four likely contenders surely misses the point.
While the UK’s major cities have all reinvented themselves as cultural destinations over the past 30 years or so, their neighbouring (often former industrial) towns have struggled for a share of voice and many have suffered a substantial decline as places to visit and as centres in which to live and work. The implication that a celebration of town-based culture should focus on highbrow festival towns and/or rural centres reflects a lack of imagination.
Every deprived town, despite economic challenges, will have a mix of (often hidden) activity in music, performing and visual arts and wider cultural engagement – which could be boosted by a town of culture award (or similar). While not wishing to disappoint the less-than-impoverished residents of Hay and Aldeburgh, it is in towns like Pontefract and Castleford (Ms Cooper’s constituency), and a host of centres across the UK with similar urban and cultural profiles, where town-focused initiatives must surely be targeted.
Paul Baker
Director, Vector Research Limited, Birmingham
• You write that “Glasgow’s year as European capital of culture [in 1990] can certainly be seen as one of a complex series of factors that have turned the city into the powerhouse of art, music and theatre that it remains today”. Perhaps a rather more important factor is that Glasgow was one of the twin cities of the Scottish Enlightenment. Glasgow was a powerhouse of art, music, theatre and culture for centuries before it was awarded the status of European capital of culture. Please note that I write this as a committed Scottish European.
Peter Dewar
Bromley, Kent
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