Yvette Livesey
Livesey/Wilson Associates
View from Pendle Hill; Trough of Bowland; Stocks reservoir, Gisburn Forest (view from Hole House Lane); Yvette at Ye Old Sparrow Hawk Inn, Fence, Pendle.
…it’s really beautiful up here. It always has been, it’s just that people haven’t shouted about it.
With a modelling career that has taken her all over the world, Yvette Livesey is back in her home county of Lancashire. Alongside her late partner, music mogul Anthony H Wilson, Yvette is now better known for her work on ‘In The City’, Manchester’s music convention and, more recently, their vision for the area in ‘Dreaming of Pennine Lancashire’.
The greenery that is all around, the cycle trails, the walking routes, the canals, it’s really beautiful up here. It always has been, it’s just that people haven’t shouted about it.
When Tony and I started working here and were looking at the different projects that could be done in the region, we didn’t go and download ideas from other places. Things like the football history, the food industry, the landscape, the textile heritage, they were already here. We’re not trying to force or promote something that doesn’t exist. If this was America, you’d drive into this region and it would be all singing, all dancing and signs saying ‘we changed the world’… which we did really, this place was the centre of the industrial revolution, which changed so much about the way we live.
We spent the last four years working up here before Tony died and he just utterly fell in love with this place. He adored what he was doing. I think for regeneration partnership Elevate to bring Tony and me in was a really brave decision. We had lived through the regeneration of Manchester and we came up with loads of ideas for Lancashire… ideas that I’m now working through. Elevate and its local authority partners have been really enthusiastic and supportive. They have realised that rebuilding a place is about much more than housing market renewal, it’s about a quality of life. The two things sit naturally next to each other.
These towns were all manufacturing towns and now they’re developing new identities, whether that’s a centre for hi-tech manufacturing, tourism, shopping, education or whatever. There’s an entrepreneurial culture being built. And all the towns have the added bonus that the countryside – the rivers, canals and green spaces – are right on the doorstep. All these towns have a real vision of what their future is.
You really do get the best of both worlds up here. If you want to live here and commute that’s really easy to do; you’ve got the people who can live and work here at the same time; and then you’ve got people that come from Manchester and use this as their green playground. Whatever the reason, there really is something to suit everyone. You get a lifestyle up here that is hard to imagine getting anywhere else, you certainly can’t get it in South Manchester. You’ve got the countryside on your doorstep and Manchester just down the motorway. It’s pretty stunning.
My career meant I had to move away but to be able to make the decision to come back is just great and I now wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. I lead a perfectly international lifestyle and live in a small village in Pennine Lancashire at the same time. If I’ve got the day off, I can go and have lunch at the Inn at Whitewell, go for a walk in the Trough of Bowland and then I go home again. That is very often my day out and I just love it.
The other day I drove up the A59 to Nelson, I turned right at Gisburn and it’s pure beautiful greenery. There was a guy who was fell running, someone out cycling, people walking, just on my way to Nelson. The idea of Nelson is of mills and terraced housing but the journey there is actually very beautiful. Even when you live here you still come across unexpected beauty. For people who are here it’s about building on their pride and that belief in themselves that they’ve got something. For people who don’t live here it’s about telling them what an amazing place this is, we’re not selling anything that isn’t here.
Livesey/Wilson Associates
Deva Centre, Salford
