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Many BBC staff are reluctant to relocate to Salford. They don’t know what they’ll be missing Despite the lure of relocation packages worth £45,600 (or 50% of a nice two-bedroom flat in Swinton, at current prices), less than half the BBC staff asked to relocate to the corporation’s new facility at Media City, Salford, have agreed to move, while “faces” such as Bill Turnbull and Richard Bacon will rent and hotfoot it back to London every weekend. “I’m not going to steam in and buy a flat,” Bacon told the Daily Mirror. “I don’t even know Manchester very well.” Which is the problem. Not only do these BBC luvvies not know that Salford is a city in its own right – it neighbours, but is not part of, Manchester – but given the bad press that dogs the city, they will have no idea what it is actually like. Or what they’re missing. Yes, the city that inspired Ewan MacColl’s Dirty Old Town has its rough edges and its poverty. And, at times, Salford revels in its notoriety. But this is also the city that comprises leafy, well-to-do Worsley (home to Manchester United local lad, Ryan Giggs), the world-class Lowry arts centre, the Imperial War Museum North, the Working Class History Museum, and green spaces such as Peel Park on the banks of the River Irwell. It is a diverse, multifaceted place. BBC staff suffering a kind of cultural bends after surfacing in Salford will, for instance, find familiar luxury at the Corridor cocktail bar and the five-star Lowry hotel, while, in the Mark Addy and neighbourhood favourites Smith’s (Eccles) and Grenache (Walkden), Salford has several notable restaurants. This is a city with a fascinating social and political history, too. It is, variously, home to the first free public library, birthplace of Emmeline Pankhurst and where Friedrich Engels researched the Condition of the Working Class in England. For a modern day flavour of that radical spirit, pick up the Salford Star, a campaigning free sheet that keeps a sceptical eye on local urban regeneration projects, not least Media City. Indeed, in the art and music worlds, it is not the BBC’s arrival but a local DIY scene that is exciting people. Salford has never lacked creative talent. This is the city that produced Ben Kingsley and Christopher Eccleston, Tony Wilson and Shelagh Delaney, the Ting Tings and Happy Mondays, but around Chapel Street – in the artists’ workshops and event spaces – Salford is incubating a scene that could yet evolve into one of the north’s most significant cultural quarters. That Chapel Street scene may be hidden behind burned-out pubs and abandoned office blocks. But that’s Salford. Beneath the grime, a lot is going on. BBC Manchester Tony Naylor guardian.co.uk