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It was sleek, fast, graceful and luxurious. Concorde was the epitome of style and ambition. So some might be surprised that the Concorde hangar at Manchester Airport was chosen as the place to celebrate Wythenshawe and its people.

Wythenshawe is nothing if not down to earth. You can't get much earthier: the area has 300 allotments and twice as much tree cover as the average English town.

Perhaps Concorde was chosen to celebrate the heights of Wythenshawe's ambition. But the irony was that while Concorde is now seen as a historic icon, its heyday has been and gone - while the people of Wythenshawe have a future to look forward to.

Down to earth they may be, but Wythenshawe's 70,000 residents are determined to show their mettle. They did so not long ago when the publicity-seeking Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, descended to offer her own solutions to the caricature of 'broken Britain' offered by some sections of the media. She and her TV producers were left in no doubt that local people were proud of who they were and the estates where they lived.

The band Gorillaz had a better understanding of this, working with a choir from Newall Green High School for their Demon Days show at Manchester Opera House - helping to give the kids a sense of confidence in their own abilities and talent. That talent was on show again last night when they performed at the Concorde hangar to celebrate the anniversary of Real Lives Wythenshawe, a campaign to counter the negative press the area has received by showcasing the work of local communities and Manchester's plans to invest in the area.

And investment is the word. The city council isn't throwing money at Wythenshawe because it's a basket case and ticks all the deprivation 'ugly contest' boxes, although it certainly has suffered from unemployment, disadvantage and neglect in the past. When I spoke to Angela Harrington, regeneration manager for the south of Manchester, what she stressed was the potential for new jobs, the huge investment in rebuilt schools, the plans to remodel the town centre and the proposed Metrolink extension, connecting Manchester Airport with Wythenshawe and on to the city centre.

If Wythenshawe was a basket case, you wouldn't see 65 employees of Manchester Airport volunteering as local school governors. As Mike Davies, chair of Manchester Airport Group, pointed out, 'spending one day in Wythenshawe transformed my view'.

Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council, said the Real Lives campaign was about redressing the balance and 'mythbusting'. And so it was, but there's more to it than that.

Not just the big numbers - £600m invested over then years, another £152m on its way, a £20m refurbishment of the local hospital. The small actions, too, are what makes Wythenshawe what it is - the kind of help 18-year-old Jade's family found at a local community centre when they arrived in Wythenshawe fleeing domestic violence; the persistence of community centre manager Brenda Grixti, whose volunteering has run from fostering to organising trips to Manchester for children who were victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Brenda, typically, didn't know what to do when she was awarded an MBE. 'The first thing I felt was guilt and embarrassment - why me and not anyone else, as there are so many people involved in helping our community.'

Talk to Wythenshawe people and they'll accept it has its problems. But they'll also talk about their open spaces, the community spirit and their pride in the place they call home.

Is Wythenshawe unique? Not really. There are other areas where local people have come together to challenge negative images and to stand up for the things they value. Wythenshawe is fortunate in having a huge potential workforce on the doorstep of major employment opportunities; other estates aren't so lucky. And there are places where the pride has taken a battering and much more help and support is needed.

What the Real Lives campaign has grasped, though, is that you don't need to reinvent an area to change its image. It doesn't need to become the gateway to this or the heart of that. Rebranding is cosmetic; what matters is to recognise the resources of a community and through them generate a sense of pride.