Just do it: the experience economy and how we turned our backs on ‘stuff’

New figures show we are continuing to spend less money on buying things, and more on doing things – and telling the world about it online afterwards, of course. From theatres to pubs to shops, businesses are scrambling to adapt to this shiftIt was an audacious plan for an unloved bit of Manchester. A £25m arts centre to be built on a derelict plot that had not felt a cultural pulse since the closure, 15 years earlier, of the legendary Haçienda nightclub. It would be called Hom