Today these creators are spread across the old city and its suburbs, working on their micro record labels, crafts, jewellery, fashion design, art and music, creating quietly and often alone—only occasionally coming together in a market, a back yard, a festival or a pub.

They have always been there and yet in the last few years something about them has changed. They have slowly—individually as much as collectively—been connecting with the wider world. In my time Newcastle lacked much in the way of options for finance or recognition. The new global cultures have begun to reconfigure that. Where once the best and brightest left or eventually gave in to the gravitational pull of the day job there are many paths now that recognise and even inspire small-scale initiative.

It is the defining feature of twenty-first-century culture that small niches of specialised work are finding an international audience. Today’s bedroom musicians are global musicians, our suburban handicrafts are international exports. There is a plethora of support networks from DIY guides to forums and global marketplaces such as Etsy.com. They have seeded not just a change in consumption but also of cultural production and initiative. Being creative in a small town or a regional city is no longer an isolating or eccentric activity. Anyone creative can now be connected to support networks, communities, appreciative fans and markets that reach well beyond the physical boundaries of any place. It is a culture of what I have come to call ‘initiativists’—those with the temperament to create, experiment and put the results out there. We often talk of capital as being the driver of innovation, but for creative communities it is often simply the price of it—and online marketplaces, international shipping and free information sharing have dramatically reduced that price. Online much of the innovation is motivated less by economic returns than by the economically irrational motivations of creativity and possibility.

For cities such as Newcastle—or indeed any city hollowed by the aftershocks of the global financial crisis—there are possibilities. This culture of initiative, experimentation and innovation is a potentially transformative force, both culturally and economically. The ability to make and export things from local spaces to global markets offers not only cultural exchange but also economic potential. The creative industries seeded and accelerated by the low barriers to entry online offer potential new patterns of development, activity and employment. The ability to channel them to and through struggling regional centres could mean the difference between vibrancy and decay.