There’s more to our music than Oasis, says Manchester mayor

Bev Craig pledges £2m in funding to nurture local artists by improving access to rehearsal and production space

The Manchester mayor, Bev Craig, has said the city’s music scene is about more than just Oasis, as she announced funding to nurture a diverse range of local artists, be they “guitar bands or not”.

Craig pledged the £2m investment funding in Greater Manchester, as the city region hosted a conference for the creative industries at MediaCity in Salford.

She said there was a “real intentionality” to what Manchester was doing, in terms of growing its own music industry and attracting international events.

Earlier this year, Manchester’s Co-op Live arena hosted the Brit awards and the Mobos, Europe’s biggest and most influential celebration of Black music and culture.

“I wanted to have a major event that celebrated black music, culture and creativity,” Craig said, “and so that’s why we said, just after the Brits, we’d host their 30th anniversary, because we knew it would be the last one that the Mobos founder Kanya would be able to come to.”

“I think there’s a real intentionality around what we’re doing with our music scene,” she added. “We’re known, I think, over the world for the influence that some of our indie guitar bands have had on Greater Manchester music, but there’s more to Greater Manchester’s music scene than just Oasis.”

“I’m struck by the diversity, the creativity, the talent that we see,” Craig said. “And the job, as I see it, is making sure that that next generation of talent in an industry that’s becoming more and more middle-class, more and more London-centric, and a world where it’s more and more expensive to be able to break through, that we’re giving our local artists the hand up that they need to be able to be the next big thing, guitar band or not.”

Addressing Beyond the Music’s creative industries AI summit on Friday, Craig set out her plan for diversifying opportunities in the music industry. She also outlined commitments to support AI literacy for music professionals, and to monitor the impact of new technologies on employment, income and diversity in Greater Manchester’s music sector.

The festival that accompanied the summit featured performances from up-and-coming black and minority ethnic artists including Bawo, JayaHadADream and Alt Blk Era.

The final day of the conference was convened by the prime minister, Andy Burnham, whose love of Manchester guitar bands is well known.

The culture minister Ian Murray told the conference: “With a prime minister who picks up his guitar to murder Smiths tracks, we have a passion from the very top.

He added, joking: “That’s probably a career-limiting sentence for me.”

“We’re living and working at a time of considerable change, particularly with technology,” Murray said, “but the future of creativity will not be shaped by technology alone. It will be shaped by the choices we make today, and how we support talent, how we reward creativity and how we embrace that innovation.”

The £2m of funding Craig has set out is in addition to the £4m Culture Fund investment announced earlier this month, which will fund music projects from grassroots venues to world-renowned institutions.

The additional funding is aimed at improving access to rehearsal and production space across the city region, providing practical support and ensuring there are jobs for musicians in their communities.

Although the Manchester music scene may be about more than Oasis, the newly elected Manchester mayor did say she would be going to see the band on their sellout tour next year, which includes 11 nights at Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium.

“I will, and thankfully the price of pints are much too expensive and the clientele have aged [which] means that you’re not as cautious as to what’s travelling through the air as historically you once would [be],” she said.

But she added that “as somebody who loves all forms of music” she was “as excited about seeing [Merseyside band] the Ks at Beyond the Music as I am about seeing Oasis”.

“I’m a little bit more into my dance music than the previous mayor as well,” Craig added. “So maybe a bit more varied in my tastes, shall we say.”