Abstract
From its initial inception as a focus for arts and culture within the Chinese community of Manchester and the Northwest, to its recent rebranding as the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, the Chinese Arts Centre’s history has intersected with a number of shifts and changes within the arts in the United Kingdom. Here we ask: What can looking at an institution such as the Chinese Arts Centre tell us about the shifting debates and arguments about the place and role of (Chinese) culture within society and the cultural geography of a city? What can such a case study tell us about what artists, styles, and taste formations are dominant at particular historical moments, and what insights can it offer into the political economy of arts funding at these junctures?
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Notes
- 1.
Huttson Lo worked as artists’ development officer at the Chinese Arts Centre from 1999 to 2001 and later as vice chair (voluntary) from 2001 to 2007.
- 2.
The early volumes of the Manchester Geographical Society journal, which ran from 1885 to 1960, meticulously accounts for Manchester’s trading activities with most countries across the world, including the Ottoman Empire, New Orleans, Tunis, and Shanghai.
- 3.
The City Art Gallery began as the Royal Manchester Institution in 1823 and is now known as the Manchester Art Gallery. The Whitworth Art Gallery was founded as the Whitworth Institute and Park in 1889.
- 4.
“N4” is used throughout the report as a shorthand for “Northern Quarter.”
- 5.
Confucius Institutes are Chinese cultural centres supported by the People’s Republic of China. They are primarily hosted at academic institutions around the world, prompting concerns about Beijing’s exertion of “soft power” and influence over China research that takes place at the host universities. See Paradise (2009).
- 6.
The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation is a charitable organization based in Portugal with international branches including the United Kingdom, whose mission is “to bring about long-term improvements in wellbeing, particularly for the most vulnerable, by creating connections across boundaries (national borders, communities, disciplines and sectors) which deliver social, cultural and environmental value.” https://gulbenkian.pt/uk-branch/about-us/
- 7.
The Black Arts Movement was an African American initiative, roughly spanning 1965 to 1975, that emerged out of the Black Power movement, in which Black poets, artists, writers, and musicians sought to create work that expressed and supported a “Black consciousness” and political activism. In Britain, the movement encompassed Black Britons of Afro-Caribbean and South Asian descent as well as, for a time, those of Chinese and East Asian origins. See lok (2005).
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Chan, F., Willis, A. (2018). Manchester’s Chinese Arts Centre: A Case Study in Strategic Cultural Intervention. In: Thorpe, A., Yeh, D. (eds) Contesting British Chinese Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71159-1_6
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