"Fucking madness but in a really creative way"

A welcome novelty: an article about Manchester's musical and cultural heritage that isn't focused on Joy Division, Factory and the Hacienda (though some of those do get a mention). To mark the opening of an exhibition by photographer Richard Davis, whose work I've been enjoying via the British Culture Archive account on Twitter, Daniel Dylan Wray has written about how the failed housing project Hulme Crescents became a "rent-free creative mecca for young people who shaped the future of Manchester".

A late-night club, gig venues, studio spaces, darkrooms, a growing queer community, "a performance collective using the entire estate as a pyrotechnic playground" - it was all going on, as a cast of interviewees including Davis himself and A Certain Ratio's Martin Moscrop told Wray.

Of course, there's a risk of romanticising, of viewing the period through rose-tinted glasses, and Wray does row back on his initial comment about everyone co-existing in "chaotic harmony" by acknowledging that the estate's lawlessness brought danger as well as freedom. As with the Hacienda and the rave scene in general, harder drugs and gang culture spelled the end of the party.

Overall, though, the piece is (rightly) a celebration of a time and place that evidently proved a cultural catalyst in numerous different ways. And it doesn't just dwell on the past, instead illustrating the sharp contrast to today. As DJ Luke Una is quoted as saying, "One of the reasons you get such incredible art, effervescent culture and creativity is because of a low or no rent situation. Rent is biblically expensive in Manchester and there are no areas where counterculture can be allowed to grow naturally and develop. Hulme was a haven for that."

Maybe that's too pessimistic a perspective on the city - after all, not so very long ago Islington Mill and the run-down post-industrial surrounding area seemed to be performing a similar function (and perhaps still is?). Counterculture will usually, or even always, find a way. It's absolutely true, though, that for creativity to flourish, the conditions have to be right. Gentrification and corporate development seem to be making those conditions increasingly scarce - in Manchester and elsewhere, too.