Mark Andrews: Town of Culture? Our region never stood a chance

No recognition of Ludlow’s gastronomic heritage. The roles of Dudley and Ironbridge in the birth of the Industrial Revolution completely overlooked, as are Shrewsbury’s 600 listed buildings, the proud manufacturing histories of Stourbridge, Bilston and Smethwick. Bridgnorth, Warwick, Leamington and Malvern don’t get a look in, either, and to add insult to injury, they think Oswestry’s in Wales.

Instead, it will be cultural magnets such as the Basildon shopping centre, Birkenhead and Stockton-on-Tees - which did, at least, give us the world’s first friction match - that will be battling it out for a not-particularly-transformative £3 million prize fund.

Does that surprise you? Me neither, although I thought there might have been one token West Midland town in the mix, just to give a veneer of fairness.

First, there is the reality that, as far as the metropolitan elite is concerned, ‘culture’ is really just a euphemism for ‘horrible music’ and ‘daft clothes’, with a bit of inner-city deprivation thrown in so they can feel better about themselves. So the judgement is skewed from the start.

Maybe if some of our towns argued that hoodlums dressed in balaclavas riding around on e-scooters was a vibrant new sub-culture, they might have been in with a shout. But instead they droned on about all that boring old-fashioned stuff like history and art.

And anyway, the Midlands is always back of the queue for everything: Folk in the South shout the loudest, while those in the North do the sob stories better than us. Once the boxes have also been ticked for Scotland, Wales and Ulster, the leftovers are always thin on the ground. And what’s left is usually gobbled up by Birmingham.

The real question is: who thinks this will get much better when self-appointed King of the North Andy Burnham gallops into Downing Street on his white steed?

The irony is, of course, that Burnham’s northern credentials are not really that strong. His proposed ‘No. 10 North’ in Manchester would be 75 miles from Wolverhampton - and 120 miles from Carlisle.

In a way, I’m not actually that disappointed that we’ve missed out on the Town of Culture malarkey. A bit annoyed by the way it was done, but hey-hoe, what did any of us expect? As I said at the time the competition was launched, if city-sized towns like Shrewsbury and Dudley are not in the running for the proper City of Culture title, why bother with the Sherpa Van Trophy equivalent?

Besides, the Government was on a hiding to nothing the moment it launched the contest, at least in the format presented. For a start, the criteria was vague. Initially it was for smaller towns only, but then the Government extended it to cover larger towns, and clusters of towns and villages could also submit joint bids. So by the time it opened for entries, pretty much everywhere in the country thought it was in with a shout. And with only 15 on the shortlist, and one eventual winner, there were always going to be a lot of disappointed punters.

Another masterclass in public relations....

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