The ideas factory

Arranging an interview with Tony Wilson, founder of Factory Records, the Hacienda nightclub, former TV presenter and the subject of 2002’s biopic 24 Hour Party People, is a tricky buiness.

When I finally meet him at a trendy hotel in central London, I have an hour slot squeezed in after an interview for a documentary he’s making about Richard and Judy (good friends and former colleagues from his days presenting regional evening news programme Granada Reports) and before a trip to Peru to make a film for Channel Four about hallucinogenic tree bark.

But it is Wilson’s latest project, working with east Lancashire’s housing market renewal pathfinder Elevate, that we are here to discuss. Livesey/Wilson Ideas Management, the company Wilson and his partner Yvette Livesey set up in 1996, is one of 10 consultants that Elevate has drafted in to produce fresh ideas for transforming the region’s image. Wilson, with a wry smile, says their role is one of “cultural imagineering”.

Livesey, a former beauty queen and Miss UK, is meant to be here too, but she’s at home in Manchester with the flu. She phones at the beginning of the interview to check how Wilson is feeling. “Bloody awful,” is the response. He thinks he might be coming down with it too.

I begin to worry that this is not the best time to do an interview.

But as cheesy house music pumps away in the background, Wilson gets straight down to business. He explains that the couple have been good friends with David Taylor, Elevate’s chairman, for 15 years. It was Taylor who suggested the pathfinder bring them on board to develop a number of “big ideas” to redefine the region’s image, something that Wilson is confident can be done.

“It is impossible to remember how utterly derelict, dirty, spat-out and dark Manchester was in 1975. There was no sign then that Manchester had any future whatsoever. And now you look at it, it’s hard to imagine that it even had a past.

“One of the main reasons why we are doing this with Elevate is that we have explicit experience of that Manchester phenomenon. I was quite intimately involved with the cultural regeneration,” he says.

But Manchester is one large city, whereas the work of Elevate covers six towns spread across east Lancashire. Surely that’s a whole different ball game?

Wilson acknowledges this. “East Lancashire is a tough proposition. It’s a valley full of towns and in that way it does challenge some of the basic principles of regeneration. We are now used to cities regenerating, but not regions. And, to be very honest, while Manchester regenerates and is the most wonderful city in Britain, two miles out you still have major problems.

“So one doesn’t expect to overcome all those things. But east Lancashire can find a spirit of regeneration to go with the renovation of the housing stock,” he says.

“Elevate has a vision that it’s more than just housing. This is where we come in,” he explains with a confident smile. “We have to think about all the things that are more than just housing.

“One of the other things that convinced us to take the job was looking at the work Max [Steinberg, Elevate’s chief executive] had done before in Gorton, Manchester. It showed that imagination and intelligence, applied to anything, makes it better.

“That’s my home town, and it’s stunning to see just how much better those once shabby, shit streets are now,” he says.

Wilson is a big name, and Livesey/Wilson’s appointment will no doubt raise eyebrows in the housing sector. Despite the pair working for Elevate for more than six months, Steinberg has refrained from publicising the fact, clearly aware that people in the housing industry might see the move as a publicity stunt.

Though he is intimately associated with Manchester’s cultural resurgence in the early 1990s – in 24 Hour Party People, Steve Coogan, who plays Wilson, says his main motivation is an excess of civic pride – he does seem an unusual choice. But Steinberg says this is exactly why he was brought in.

“We are looking for projects that are a bit out of the ordinary, perhaps a bit beyond what we think might be possible now. East Lancashire needs something remarkable to build, not only for local pride, but also to raise our profile in the rest of the country.

“We are looking for proposals that will help increase economic activity, attract further investment, boost business activity and increase leisure tourism.”

Steinberg also singles out racial cohesion as a particular focus. East Lancashire towns such as Burnley and Nelson have very segregated white and Asian populations and tensions came to a head in the riots of 2001. In Burnley, the British National Party won three council seats in 2002.

I ask Wilson if he and Livesey have any experience of working in this kind of situation. “Racial cohesion is a problem that I haven’t dealt with before and it is a fundamental issue,” he admits.

“In the nine months since we started working with Elevate, what Yvette and I have done is drive around and talk and argue and talk and argue and come up with ideas, which is what we do best. We also talk to and consult lots of people, some of the brightest people we know.

“And 90% of our thoughts about things to be done, especially the difficult bits, are about racial cohesion. There’s no doubt, it’s enormously complicated.”

Wilson mentions that one of the “big ideas” they considered is a museum of enrichment that would “celebrate what great things immigration has done for this country”. They vetoed the idea for being too simplistic, but Wilson emphasises that they are still very much interested in creating something that makes a statement about the value of immigration.

So what other ideas do they have?

“We have a very good idea about how to give individual identities back to the towns in east Lancashire,” he says.

I ask him for examples, but it’s fruitless. He insists he can’t reveal any ideas until he has presented them to Elevate in December.

Wilson is keen to stress, however, that the ideas encompass a range of areas, rather than being focused on music.

“We are required to give background to our ideas. We will produce a 30-page booklet with rebranding ideas, big ideas, and about a dozen project ideas to cover the region. Some on business, some on software development, some on sport, some on entrepreneurism.”

He adds that he and Livesey will be consulting schoolchildren about their needs and expectations.

Then, all too soon, Wilson looks at his watch and tells me our time is up. The interview isn’t completely over, however. Before he leaves, he gives me a brief history of William Blake and excitedly shows me some digital photos of William, his Weimaraner dog. Then he rushes out of the room, ready to fly off and test out some Peruvian tree bark.