So far, we have seen that an insider positive story emerged as a counter story to the national culturally dominant storyline. We have also observed how insiders themselves have grappled with the evolving challenges facing the District by looking at council policy and reports on multiculturalism and deindustrialisation as they changed over the years. Considering the real tension between the two, what are the implications for the city? What strategies are used to negotiate the tension
between the local positive story and the acknowledgement of challenges? First, I look at the potential for “identity dissonance” (Trueman et al., 2004) in the city and secondly, I explore the potential pitfalls of the tourism campaigns.
The idea of identity dissonance is perhaps best encapsulated in the observation of Jim Greenhalf in relation to the various tourism campaigns in the city, when he writes of “Bradford’s failure to live up to its own propaganda.” (2003: 130) Trueman et al. (2004) theorise this in terms of identity dissonance, or a gap between the projected or communicated identity (which is not to say that the projected identity is a fabricated identity. Just like the negative story about Bradford has its roots in material realities, so does the more positive story.) and the actual or experienced identity by inhabitants and visitors alike. A range of examples can help us illustrate this point. First, in their research about the various identities of Bradford, Trueman et al. (2004) found that people tend to have a negative visual experience of the city, with the centre characterised by urban decline and dereliction. This is in opposition to the communicated identity of Bradford as a place of Victorian heritage encapsulated in its imposing town hall, the model village of Saltaire, and further afield in Haworth with the legacy of the Brontës. This gap is all the more pronounced that a “succession of improvement schemes that have not materialised because of policy changes arising from continual shifts in political governance,”
(Trueman et al., 2004: 324) as is currently obvious with the successful recent transformation of Centenary Square into City Park as opposed to the status quo just a few hundred meters away with “the hole in the ground” in the centre where a Westfield shopping centre was due to be built before the recession hit in 2008, and which is yet to materialise.31Another example of identity dissonance regarding the city can be found regarding the work of Andrea Dunbar already explored in Chapter Three. Following the success of the film, she was hailed locally by politicians and tourism officers “as living proof of working-class pride and spirit.” (Russell, 2003:
59) But on the national scene, Russell observes that “tensions between official
31 It was announced in December 2013 that the completion of the site was now going ahead.
(Yorkshire Post, 2013)
aspiration and harsh reality were being opened up for scrutiny.” (Russell, 2003: 59) In sum, the various local stories about Bradford point towards an issue around the identity of the city itself. It seems as though Bradford can be one of two things. On the one hand, Bradford is a positive place, an entrepreneurial and creative city with a rich industrial past and heritage but a multicultural city that celebrates its many communities. On the other hand, it is a place struggling with poverty, racism, and competition between various communities. It is as if the city is pulled between each identity, without any room (or very rarely) to accommodate both sides of the story.
As Greenhalf asks, “What was Bradford: the multi-cultural paradise as the image enthusiasts made out, or the deeply-divided series of cultural ghettos discovered by the Riot Commission Report and Lord Ouseley?” (2003: 110) Put this way, both stories seem to be mutually exclusive. But does it have to be either/or? Are both aspects of the city incompatible? And what is the relationship between each aspect? For instance, it seems that the problem the city faces in attracting investment hints at the self-fulfilling and perpetuating nature of certain stories that shape its identity. It may be that negative stories are more enduring and harder to dispel, and so it is not just a case of being pulled in two equal directions between a
“positive” and “negative” story, but that it is difficult to change perceptions that are so firmly rooted not just in local culture, but reinforced in public stories.
The second implication I would now like to explore is linked more particularly to the tourism campaigns. First, as I presented a range of successful campaigns (at least whilst they were running) in the first section, there were also some failures. The government helped fund a transport museum which closed after only eighteen months in 1997. Similarly, a project exploring religious faiths survived for only seven months before shutting down in 2001. There were talks of a branch of the V&A museum opening in Lister Mills, but that never materialised (Russell, 2003).
Moreover, whereas the aim of the tourism campaigns was to improve the city’s image and boost the economy, there was no tangible evidence that this had been the case (Greenhalf, 2003; Russell, 2003). Finally, Russell also suggests that some of the campaigns may have done more harm than good to the image of the city by
simply reinforcing some of the pre-existing stereotypes held nationally about it, and about the North of England. As the tourism campaigns attracted publicity to the city, they also exposed it to the scrutiny of the public gaze, which turned out to be a
“double-edged weapon.” (Russell, 2003: 50)
Chapter Conclusion
To conclude, we have seen in this chapter that there is evidence of a counter-story to the negative and reductive culturally dominant story of Bradford, articulated at a local level for both local and national audiences. In it, Bradford is a place of culture, heritage, enterprise and creativity. In contrast with the culturally dominant storyline and some of the more impersonal academic stories, the complex experiences of the city’s inhabitants are heard directly from them. However, the local historical context which serves as a backdrop for the local stories emphasises the challenges that the city and District have been facing over the last four decades.
Celebrations of the various cultures that can be found in the city have been going hand in hand with local political struggles over race relations, integration and community backlash. Concerted efforts to draw investment to the city and efforts at regeneration have also been hampered by persisting local unemployment, deprivation, and low skills levels of the workforce. As a result, from a local point of view, the identity of the city is pulled in two directions as neither facet leaves much room for the other one.