‘Lady Gaga went to our chippy’: how Yorkshire became a cultural powerhouse

‘Some people think Yorkshire’s all cobbled streets and whippets,” says musician Corinne Bailey Rae, who was born, educated and lives in God’s own country. “It’s so condescending when people ask me, ‘Why do you still live in Leeds?’ It’s a really exciting city to be part of.”

Never mind “that London” – the northern region synonymous with rolling dales, puddings for roasts and a fine brew is undergoing a cultural renaissance. Three Yorkshire acts were on September’s Mercury music prize shortlist: Rae, Bradford’s Nia Archives (born Dehaney Nia Lishahn Hunt) and Leeds-based winners English Teacher, the first non-London-based band to win it in a decade. Hull comic Amy Gledhill and Huddersfield-born Joe Kent-Walters won best comedy show and best newcomer respectively at Edinburgh. Sheffield author Catherine Taylor recently picked up the TLS Ackerley prize for her South Yorkshire memoir The Stirrings. Tom Cruise has been filming in North Yorkshire, Shane Meadows in “Happy Valley” Calderdale and York Britpop veterans Shed Seven notched up a second No 1 album this year.

Is there something in the water? “Actually, there is,” chuckles Shanaz Gulzar, creative director at Bradford 2025 city of culture. “It flows down from the limestone cliffs, so it’s very fertile.” More seriously, Gulzar argues that Yorkshire has been a rich source of culture from the Brontës to Zayn Malik, reflecting an industrial heritage driven by innovation. “Our cities are edgy but beautiful,” she says. “The landscapes can give you a warm hug but there’s a brutality to them. The way the weather changes on the moors is almost science-fiction, and there’s a diversity that goes beyond multicultural. These things combined mean creativity and imagination is in our DNA.”

It’s a point echoed by multi-award-winning playwright Chris Bush, creator of South Yorkshire-themed smash Standing at the Sky’s Edge, boasting a Richard Hawley soundtrack. “The way big cities such as Sheffield and Leeds interact with historic places like York, fancy market towns like Harrogate or the tiny rural enclaves, is the magical fertiliser pouring on to Yorkshire culture.”

Related: ‘Richard Hawley gets it!’ Park Hill residents praise Sheffield musical

This explosion hasn’t happened overnight: it’s the culmination of long-term investment, cultivated relationships and sound infrastructure. “There’s an ecology that starts with music education in schools and goes to a mix of inspirational civic heads and community leaders that are dedicated to the arts,” says Pete Massey, the arts council’s northern director, pointing to how West Yorkshire mayor Tracy Brabin and South Yorkshire mayor Oliver Coppard see culture as a key economic driver.

“We’ve increased our funding into Yorkshire by £14.3m this year,” says Massey, keen to mention longer-term successes such as Huddersfield contemporary music festival, “where there’s stuff going on that you might see in Paris or New York”. Bailey Rae, who has just performed in China, owes much to the arts investment given to her school, something that has more recently been subject to huge cuts nationally. “I grew up in a working-class family,” she says, “but I learned to play violin, went to choir and got to be the leader of an orchestra. All of it free, which gave me so much confidence.”

Black Rainbows, her Mercury-nominated fourth studio album, was inspired by a black history exhibition in Chicago, but her musical DNA was shaped by her time in Helen, a noisy Leeds female guitar band; and, before that, by wild nights at the city’s Brighton Beach club, dancing to Britpop, funk and soul. “Then when I went to university, there was a real bohemian scene,” she says. “All these northern jazz kids sharing houses or driving cars that were falling apart.”

For singer James Smith, of 2022 Mercury nominees Yard Act, what’s happening in West Yorkshire now has been shaped by how the DIY scene “constantly nurtures itself. There’s a whole network of rehearsal rooms and small venues, and bands come through because they’re playing those places frequently”.

English Teacher formed at Leeds Conservatoire – the former Leeds College of Music, which also produced 2000 Mercury winner Badly Drawn Boy – but played some of their earliest shows in the small bohemian bar Hyde Park Book Club, just outside the city centre.

“There’s a collegiality to the Leeds music scene,” says the venue’s co-founder Jack Simpson. “A lot of us have known each other for over 20 years. There are some frictions but generally everyone’s on the same side, which I’ve not experienced in other cities. So once a band like English Teacher start drawing 300 people you’ll say, ‘You’re ready for the Brudenell.’” That’s the seminal social club, linchpin of the city’s indie scene.

Artists can remain under the radar for ages because, as Bush points out, “Yorkshire doesn’t shout about itself. There’s a sort of Yorkshire reserve.” However, Smith, who fronted Post War Glamour Girls for years before Yard Act, sees an upside in that. “You have the space and venues to be shocking – or to get it wrong. I spent a lot of time playing gigs to half-full rooms, just with my mates – but do that for long enough and you can get really good.”

Gulzar, the Keighley-born visual artist and city of culture creative director, was the first of her family to go to university, studying fine art at Leeds Met (formerly the polytechnic), the very course where Soft Cell met in 1978. She says Yorkshire is particularly tenacious and resourceful – because it has to be. “The Brontës couldn’t get published as women,” she says, “so they adopted male pseudonyms. David Hockney used to push his art materials round in a pram.”

More recently, Bradford poet and playwright Kirsty Taylor, unable to get into a theatre, simply staged her first musical in a former frozen food shop. “We mocked it up as a pawnbroker’s,” she laughs. “It was so convincing that people kept coming in to sell stuff.” Also the first of her family into higher education, Taylor was never exposed to poetry growing up and didn’t start writing until her early 20s. “When I came back from uni,” she says, “I saw Bradford in a new light and it just poured out of me.” The current recipient of the Kay Mellor Fellowship, she remains inspired by the late Leeds-born creator of Band of Gold and The Syndicate, who “really advocated for working-class voices and women writers”.

“You’ve got to be bloody-minded,” argues Bush, who had to spend years supplementing play-writing with minimum-wage jobs just to get by. “I’d never have been able to do that in London, because it’s so expensive.” She studied at York university and got a big break when York’s Theatre Royal premiered TONY! The Blair Musical.

“It was probably more because of the title than any great faith in me,” she laughs. “But we opened a fortnight after he stepped down as prime minister and got this tidal wave of publicity.” The show was a sensation and ended up in Edinburgh. “I thought I had it made,” she sighs. “But in fact I had almost no paid theatre work for about five years after that. Everyone remembered the title, but not the writer. It wasn’t until my 30s that I was finally able to quit my day job.”

Bush explains that, from class to gentrification, the “hyper-local” themes of her Sheffield-set plays, which include Steel and Rock/Paper/Scissors, easily translate nationally. Also, success breeds success. English Teacher recently told me how the ascent of Pulp and Arctic Monkeys convinced them successful acts didn’t have to be based in London. Still, Bush did reluctantly move to the capital – because of her partner’s job and the “sheer volume” of theatre work there. However, when we talk, she’s back in Sheffield for the opening of her latest production, A Doll’s House, at the Crucible. “Regional theatre,” she says, “is as good as anything in London.”

EMI and Channel 4 now have offices in Leeds. Production Park, near Wakefield, is a vast space in a former mining community where international artists – from the Rolling Stones to Beyoncé – secretly prepare for arena-sized world tours. “They’ve hosted Glastonbury headliners and all sorts,” says Massey. With a laugh, he adds: “There’s a great story about Lady Gaga going to the chippy.” Meanwhile, Hull is looking to become a Unesco City of Music, and the Brit performing arts school is opening a 500-place outlet in Bradford. All of this reflects an increasingly evident truth: the region is, quite simply, a lovely place to live and work.

“There’s a humble nature to Yorkshire life,” says Yard Act’s James Smith. “It’s very different, very defined and unique.” The singer moved to Yorkshire from Lancashire to study and stayed. “I consider myself a Yorkshireman now,” he says.

• Details of Bradford 2025 city of culture are at bradford2025.co.uk