Public funding for Higher Education and the arts is under threat unless we better articulate our higher purpose and raison d’etre.  Could the North, with its established partnership culture, be the best place to start, and what might it look like?

This symposium session explored how we can make connections between the cultural agenda and the research agenda coming out of the northern powerhouse to create both discourse and tangible outcomes.

Session hosts: Dominic Gray, Projects Director Opera North; Professor Frank Finlay, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Leeds.

There were definitely some interesting ideas and suggestions emerging, including:

• Exploring the role of ‘the North’ in a European context
• Exploiting the advocacy potential of the Forum and its membership toward infrastructural projects eg transport and communications in the north (“HS3 rather than HS2”)
• Actively expressing place-making, rather than merely reflecting things that are going on already
• Talent identification as well as talent retention, particularly in regard to diversity
• Expressing a spirit of co-operation, rather than competition, between cities and places (e.g. around the idea of the Great Exhibition of the North)