2014: even more jam packed with culture and heritage!

2013 was a great year for Peterborough, filled with events of international standing. It also saw original drama that celebrated the city’s own heritage. Created by theatre company Eastern Angles as part of the city’s Forty Years On project, a partnership between Eastern Angles and Vivacity, it drew on thousands of local archive records and personal reminiscences

In May this year an even more ambitious community production is to be performed: River Lane, which covers 1,000 years of Peterborough’s history. We talked to Eastern Angles’ artistic director Ivan Cutting about the background to the project, and how it provides a unique perspective on Peterborough’s cultural scene – past, present and future.

So how and why did you come to be involved with Peterborough’s Forty Years On project?
We were asked by the Arts Council to look at getting involved in one of the region’s growth areas, and we looked at Peterborough and instantly felt it would work. Actually I was fascinated by the story as soon as we arrived – a city with all this heritage, which I love, but also these new communities and massive growth. Fundamentally you have to have new towns, but here was this old city that was becoming a new town, which is kind of a crazy idea! I thought the question that posed was a really interesting one. And I wanted to become part of the answer.

‘Peterborough is kind of unique, because it has all this heritage…’

In April 2013 Eastern Angles produced the ‘documentary musical’ Parkway Dreams, and for that you delved deep into the archives of the Peterborough Development Corporation. What was their vision for the city back in the 60s?
There were a number of visions. One of them was to make it a green city, and the fact that there was this green artery coming into it from the west was a fantastic idea. That’s the first thing to say. The next vision was to create homes for literally thousands of people, and I think they partially achieved that. One of the great things they did was they didn’t go down the high-rise route. They did make good homes, and they got better at it. The problem there was that all the people who moved in then hit a big recession, and the vision wasn’t carried through They missed a few tricks, too. Talk to anyone from the Development Corporation and they say: ‘We didn’t get a university, and we should’ve got one…’ That would have helped ignite the potential for the city, and bring in different kinds of people – as well as preventing its talent from moving away.

Also, Peterborough is kind of unique, because it has all this heritage, and I’m not sure the Development Corporation really took that on board – they concentrated on the new bits. Matching these up with the old bits was one of the things that didn’t quite work. But we can make it work, because it’s still there! It’s not like a mistake that can never be rectified. It is being rectified, and it’s just a case of Peterborough waking up to that heritage.

‘Actually, it’s an exciting place to live, and you want to invite people to come and visit’

Did they consider the arts an important part of that mix?
I think they were slightly swayed by the 60s thing where you just stick an arts centre in the middle of a council estate and think that’ll solve it. But of course it didn’t, and it wasn’t invested in for a long time afterwards. The interesting thing is that the 60s itself was a time of utopian vision, and it’s exciting to look at these people with these huge ambitions. It was a hugely ambitious thing – doubling the population in 15, 20 years, which is probably something that ought to happen organically over 60 or 70 years. Maybe the ambition was just too big.

Everyone’s got a different theory about that. But I do think that it’s going down a route at the moment that is going to bring it out the other side. It’s shifting from kind of a culture of moaning to the local newspaper about how everything goes wrong in Peterborough, to having a sense of how things can go right in Peterborough. And actually how it’s an exciting place to live, and how you want to invite people to come and visit.

You’re not from Peterborough yourself, and Eastern Angles is Suffolk-based. Do you think that sometimes an outside perspective is needed to bring all this into focus?
It is, but the trouble with that is that you then start sounding like a missionary, or that you think you’ve got a better perspective. I just think Peterborough needs to feel proud of what it’s got. Sometimes that’s been quite difficult, when it hasn’t had a lot. It’s got Arts Council funded organisations now, and we’re starting to make a difference, I think. The Development Corporation was an exciting thing – love it or loathe it, it was an exciting time and things happened, but that rhythm was lost for a time. It’s now getting it back, and there are things like universities, city centre culture, restaurants coming back, arts organisations moving in. There’s also a whole heritage environment developing – Flag Fen, the Must Farm boats and… [cont]