“The typical cliché of tour guiding filled me with despair”

Jonathan Schofield sees booming demand from tourists and locals reflect Mancunian identity and pride

The guided tour scene in Manchester has changed dramatically over the last 20 years, and even more so in the last five. Not only are there more tours in general, but there’s a huge range of themed and specialist tours appearing. I currently do the highest and oldest tours, Manchester Town Hall Clock Tower and Chetham’s Library respectively, but everyone is trying to go bigger and better in some way, or just do something different. It keeps you on your toes, but quality will win out.

Of course, this is all in response to a massive growth in demand. We do the Clock Tower tour every day now, and Chetham’s every week. When I started up in 1996, it would have been absolute folly to even think about a daily heritage tour. I think there’s a few reasons behind the growing demand. First, the Manchester demographic has changed over that time, particularly with professionals moving into the city centre. At the same time there has been a large increase in cultural amenities, museums, galleries, food and drink, events, which in turn has boosted tourism. The growth of the internet and independent travel is a big factor too. It allows people to diversify from the norm and look outside of the classic London/Stratford/Lake District/Edinburgh milk run for heritage experiences.

I think there’s also been a real growth in the sense of Mancunian identity and pride. For a long time that kind of thing was very obvious in Liverpool, and its bookshops always had huge sections dedicated to local history; Manchester had at best a third of the titles. Last year, my guide book was the best-selling book in the Manchester branch of Waterstones. You can see this change with the vast numbers of local people coming on tours as well. In terms of tours, Manchester guides provide at least twice as many public tours as Liverpool guides and perhaps 10 times more than Leeds. Manchester is ahead of all the post-industrial English cities by a long way.

I started the guiding because it suits my mentality to be doing something different every day, meeting different people and spending time in extraordinary buildings and places, but also because the tours on offer at the time all seemed dry as dust, stuffy and inaccessible. Nobody seemed to be doing anything around history that was engaging and witty and personable, which is after all the Manchester way. But my vision was also to bring out the grandeur of the Manchester story, its frequently nationally and internationally significant contribution. The typical cliché of tour guiding, the aged academic, cautious and contained, filled me with despair and I wanted to make guiding more urgent and vital.

Audiences have become more knowledgeable and sophisticated, but my principle — in guiding and with Manchester Confidential — has always been to respect the readership and audiences as intelligent and capable people, in the knowledge that they will consume quality history and heritage with relish.

I’m not convinced that that respect is extended to people as citizens when it comes to decisions around planning and development. I think there’s a limited understanding amongst some of the civic leadership across the UK as to just how much a coherent heritage policy that protects and promotes the extraordinary heritage assets we have could bring to cities, not just short-term economic benefit, but in supporting and sustaining economic growth.

The key has got to be getting our children and young people engaged, enthused and participating in local heritage, strengthening both their own identities and sense of identity and building connectivity with the place, and pride. Why doesn’t every kid have an entertaining tour across the city first, at primary school, and then again at secondary level so they are aware of what their city has to offer? Why aren’t our schools teaching their politics lessons at the People’s History Museum, science lessons at Museum of Science and Industry and art at the Whitworth?

Jonathan Schofield is an author and Blue Badge Guide who has been leading walking tours of Manchester, and the wider North West region, for twenty years. A prolific writer, public speaker, broadcaster and commentator on Manchester’s heritage, identity, architecture and history, he is Editor at Large of ‘Manchester Confidential’, and in recent years has published two books about the city: ‘Manchester: The Complete Guide’ and ‘Lost & Imagined Manchester’.