Around the corner from the loft apartments that were once Manchester's fabled Hacienda club, hemmed in by railway arches on the site of an old gas and dye works, Britain's cultural economy is being rebalanced. Next spring, Home will open as the largest multi-arts complex to be built since the Brutalist concrete ramparts of the Barbican in London were breached by the public more than three decades ago.
Amid political talk of narrowing the economic divide between the rest of the country and London with promises of £15bn fleets of high speed trains, motorways and digital highways, Home has come to symbolise the determination of Britain's northern cities to close the artistic gap.
