Behind its imposing town hall is a 19th-century stone building that many in Barnsley believe points the way to a brighter future.
Soon, it could be home to a core of youngsters who have beaten all the odds to become one of the best in the world. More broadly, the hope is that by providing a permanent base for its 560 young performers, it will serve as a catalyst for further ambition and inject confidence into a city struggling to transcend its post-industrial malaise. A third of Barnsley’s children live in poverty.
“It’s about creating equality of opportunity. The reality is that a child born in Barnsley has very different opportunities to a child born in Guildford,” said Mat Wright, artistic director of Barnsley Youth Choir, gesturing enthusiastically towards the building.
On Thursday, Jeremy Hunt will make his autumn statement along with the expected confirmation that certain leveling bids have succeeded. Among the chancellor’s big trays is a £3.5m application to turn the building into an internationally recognized Northern Academy for vocal excellence.
But optimism in the city is muted. Although the upgrade, the ‘defining mission’ of Boris Johnson’s government, was surely designed for the likes of Barnsley, the town has yet to receive a penny. Apparently winning bids have been rejected in early funding rounds.
To make matters worse, the government chose to exclude the former mining town from the top tier of places most in need of help. It has not gone unnoticed that Richmond, Premier Rishi Sunak’s relatively prosperous rural Yorkshire constituency, achieved top priority status.
Mat Wright MBE, Artistic Director of Barnsley Youth Choir, outside the academy building. Photograph: Richard Saker/The Observer
The feeling of bitterness is palpable throughout the village. “It’s hard not to conclude that leveling up is about providing relatively small amounts of money to newly elected Tory MPs to give them something to point to in their election leaflets,” Barnsley Central Labor MP Dan Jarvis told his constituency office friday morning
“Regardless of the political color of the government, they need to be a little bigger and be big,” he added, shrugging as if struggling to comprehend Whitehall’s enduring dismissal of one of the country’s most disadvantaged communities .
Across town, Steve Houghton, leader of Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council, is in a similarly combative mood. “Barnsley have been ignored; deprivation is here, need is here. What are we doing wrong? Our offers are for young people, it is for their future”.
This Thursday is being seen by some as deciding whether leveling up will be remembered as little more than a catchphrase. It’s been ten months since a white paper was published, with the grand promise that it would ensure “all parts of the country share equally in our nation’s success”.
Jarvis asks how this fits in with the legacy of Barnsley’s failed bids. In 2021 it tried to use the level rise to improve its bus network, a move rejected without an “informed response”. Another much-needed bus improvement project was attempted six months ago.
“The government initially said there was £3.6 billion available, a massive boost to the regional economy. We didn’t take a pound. They switched between saying it wasn’t ambitious enough and too ambitious,” Jarvis said , a former mayor of South Yorkshire.
Barnsley’s connectivity, vital to investment, is poor. Northern Powerhouse Rail, the package of regional improvements billed as a means “to support the transformation of the northern economy” is now in jeopardy and under review. No details have been given of the commitment to improve the network between Sheffield and Leeds, which is crucial for Barnsley as it lies between them.
The latest blow is the recent closure of nearby Doncaster Sheffield Airport. Jarvis says they submitted a free port proposal for the site and that, despite the Treasury’s own analysis rating it better than some of the successful bids, it had been rejected.
The deepening cost of living crisis amplifies the pain of each rejection. The lack of public transport improvements is forcing residents to take cars at a time of rising fuel costs. Much of Barnsley’s housing stock is drafty and requires more energy to heat. The cumulative impact helps explain why inflation stands at 10.8% in the City, compared to 9.1% in London.
Barnsley council chief executive Sarah Norman says Whitehall’s repeated rejection of her proposals is all the more puzzling when the town has shown it can make investment thrive. A shopping centre, Glass Works, has revitalized the town centre; a focus on their schools has seen them rise from second lowest in the league table to above the national average.
However, students at their sixth form college say that despite the rise in standards, around half of their peers were resigned to staying in Barnsley and entering a low-wage economy.
“You can work at McDonald’s for minimum wage, but there are no good jobs here,” said Mason Goldsworthy, 17, who wants to go to college and forge a career in cybersecurity.
Norman said: “It’s about how we encourage young people in Barnsley to really think about the kind of future that young people born in wealthier places think is normal.”
The aspiration to build in Barnsley faces a myriad of challenges. The Center for Cities think tank ranks the health of 63 urban centres. It puts Barnsley near the bottom in a number of categories.
The municipality has practically the smallest working-age population with a high qualification, markedly low productivity and a low level of innovation and startups.
Paul Swinney, director of policy and research at the thinktank, said the lack of start-ups was a trait seen in other former mining towns and suggested the mindset of working for an employer could be hard-wired into their psyche. .
With the UK braced for further austerity measures from the chancellor, Swinney pointed out that Barnsley had been particularly brutalized by previous rounds of cuts. “Between 2011 and 2017/18, our research shows that local government was the most affected of all government departments. Within this, urban local government in the North of England was the most affected and, within ‘this, two places were most affected: Barnsley and Liverpool”.
Town center regeneration: Glass Works Square in Barnsley. Photograph: John Morrison/Alamy
Leveling up was meant to help repair scars. The high rhetoric of the government’s white paper of February this year has meant, according to experts, very little.
“Ultimately, the ultimate goal must be to put policies in place to make a difference. Unfortunately, there is very little evidence that this has happened since publication in February,” Swinney added.
Brexit has also deepened Barnsley’s pain. If the UK had remained in the EU, South Yorkshire would have received £900 million in aid, a sum which the government pledged to honor. Jarvis’ analysis indicates that only £38m has been received.
Also frustrating many in the region is that the government does not understand the argument that leveling the north would generate greater prosperity for the whole of the UK.
“Look at it from a hard business perspective; you have to do something up north. We have a poor economic performance and we need to intervene. We don’t want to be a beneficiary city,” Houghton said.
For now, all eyes are on whether Whitehall will back the vocal academy bid. What began as a social experiment in 2009, confirming that global excellence can be forged in Barnsley, has become a test of the government’s faltering commitment to northern aspirations.