‘Real Lives’ – Real Waste of Money?

I saw the ‘Real Lives in Wythenshawe’ exhibition at the Forum yesterday, after which I went to the indoor market at Civic to buy some local food from local traders - doing my bit for those ‘Real Life’ people that featured in the exhibition I’d just visited. I spoke to one of the traders there, who has been trading at the indoor market since it began over 30 years ago, and mentioned that I’d just seen the exhibition.

The trader told me that they had been involved with those who had organised the exhibition and the ‘Real Lives Wythenshawe’ Campaign and I was told that the campaign had cost £5M. Talking with other local traders there, I was told that some of their rents were going up, while trade was going down and one of the trading stalls had closed down completely and others, including the stalls outside, were struggling. The Market was almost empty, with more traders than customers, and this was on a Saturday afternoon when trade should have been buzzing.

When I got home I looked up the realliveswythenshawe.com website to see what the people of Wythenshawe were getting for this £5M PR exercise. Not much! What bit there was was very difficult to read and obviously the brainchild of some arty whiz-kid from the central Manchester based marketing company ‘Creative Concern’ that gets a big chunk of that five million quid!

I think that the money could have been better spent on Real 'Local' Lives.

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RE: ‘Real Lives’ – Real Waste of Money?

Not much on the site I could see, just waffle and 5 tiny 'case studies'.

Quote from the waffle: "Image is also important for investment – both the public agencies and *private companies* want to invest in places that can use this investment to flourish ..." = St. Modwen trying to get new traders for the Centre, when the underlying trade, as Real Lifer comments, ain't there.

Lots of Wythenshawe investment, b***** all increase in Wythies' monetary circumstances. Too much income (to staff these 'investments') going to other areas.

A: Put a block on outsiders in our jobs
B: shoot all the useless fancy consultants
C: and GET SOME MONEY TO THE ESTABLISHED PEOPLE, fer Pete's sake.

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RE: ‘Real Lives’ – Real Waste of Money?

I’m sorry ‘Real Lifer’ you have been very badly misinformed about the funding - so far the Real Life campaign has cost £30,000. This is a tiny amount when you consider it is being invested to support the £600 million investment in Wythenshawe, it is only 0.05% of the overall investment and has been funded through a partnership made up of Manchester City Council, Wythenshawe Forum Trust, Parkway Green Housing Trust, St Modwen and Marketing Manchester. Even though there has been lots of change and investment in Wythenshawe many people have an outdated picture of what Wythenshawe is like. If we don’t address this in the long-term it will undermine the success of the regeneration activity and the potential for future investment. If a place has a bad image it not only affects investment it affects the people who live here and the people of Wythenshawe deserve to have an image they can truly believe in.

The campaign has already generated positive press worth thousands of pounds for the area. The exhibition at the Forum is just the start of what we hope will be a long-term campaign which will become more visible over the coming months and years and will be about challenging the stereotypes people have about our area and share the pride and community spirit we have here.

The exhibition is on at the Forum throughout November - it is open to the public and there are feedback forms at the forum and online at realliveswythenshawe.com. If you have any other particular comments, please contact Mark Rainey at the Wythenshawe Regeneration Team on 0161 499 7778 who would be happy to discuss in more detail and/or meet.

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As Others Now See Us

Howzabout this then?
http://tinyurl.com/6kfllg

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RE: As Others WRONGLY See Us now

Curmudgeon's link was to the 'findaproperty' site. This is so littered with mistakes as to be useless — a classic example of superficiality perpetrated by careless outsiders.

For instance the dates of the houses are wrong (1930s for many, but not all, areas, not '1950s & 1960s'), areas such as Northern Moor, Brooklands, Baguley, Newall Green and Crossacres have been totally omitted and the picture of the semis for 'Northern Wythenshawe' (whose locational description makes no sense whatsoever) appears to show an obviously 1930s group of houses in a crescent, perhaps from Benchill-cum-Brownley Green.

It'd be more useful to refer to the pics on Flickr from people who live in, KNOW and understand/like the areas; myself (VenMSc) and 'Gene Hunt'.

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