Category Archives: Arts, Culture And Heritage
No-Win Or Win-Win Gender And Babies Agenda?
Choosing if and when to have a baby has never been an easy decision, especially if both partners want to continue in employment. But the debate has shifted quite a lot in the past few years, and perhaps now a deeper understanding is emerging of what ‘work-life balance’ is really about.
Actually, of course, some folk would say it’s all-win for some, and never-win for others; but we do know, really, it’s not like that.
The question does however have to be asked, how can you get it right, if you’re a woman and a mum and a person who wants to make her way in the world?
History or Herstory?
Fact is, for the past fifty years it’s been even more complicated than for the years before then. Whatever is thought by those with shorter memories, the time from the end of World War II (1945) until the end of the sixties, and well into the seventies, was dreadful for women wanting to maintain their families and their careers.
The landmark equality legislation of the 1970’s certainly changed things for the better… but even I found myself in a situation, when ‘the family’ arrived, of having to resign my full-time post and then apply again for my job, as a part-timer. Maternity leave had never been taken by anyone at the college where I then taught, and anyway it was a mere four weeks or bust (which even after resigning was not much less than what I had, before I went back as a part-timer).
Strange then how, during WWII (I report here from the history books, not personal recollection), there was all sorts of support for ‘working women’, so it could be done when the will was there. But at that time of course, sadly, the men actually weren’t ‘there’ as well….
Improved, but still problematic
So I don’t go at all with the idea of some young women today that ‘it’s harder now than it was for our mums’ – who, it is I gather supposed, just had to work for ‘pin-money’, or else stayed at home supported by a bread-winning spouse who could earn for the family; for most of us I suspect that only happened on The Archers.
Nor of course do I believe that 1939-1945, with all its horrors, was a time when women always thrived. But classic films such as Rosie the Riveter (about a group of female engineering production workers in New York in the ’40s) demonstrate well the capability and willingness of women to take on ‘men’s jobs’ when they have to.
And nearer to home, I discovered in my own research in the 1970s that women who had entered academic science during the 1940s had a better chance of professional progression than younger ones, who had to compete with the men.
Complex judgements and issues
No, the issues now more complex than they were either when the need for skilled workers required women to take the job on, or indeed when the campaigns for basic rights (oh heady days!) were still to be won.
It’s rare for anyone today to announce their outright hostility to women – though there are many serious and shocking stories still to be told. The formal legal battles, if not the wage-related ones, have been quite largely secured. It’s beginning at last to cost those who don’t grasp equality a lot of money.
But that doesn’t resolve everything. We read daily of ‘reasons’ why women ‘should’ only have their children in a very narrow age-slot; and why they ‘must’ keep close physical contact with their babies for a considerable time. On a personal level these are harder things to deal with, than is straightforward sexist write-off. Psychological pressures can cause real personal pain; for fair-minded people sexism just causes anger.
Where’s the truth?
I don’t think there is a single truth in all this – except that no way is it ‘just’ a ‘women’s dilemma’. Whoever heard of a baby that didn’t have a dad somewhere along the line?
My recollection is that these psychological influences on decisions about having a family were always there, lurking in the scenes; but in previous decades we’ve had to concentrate on rights as such. Now young women (and their partners) have to make personal judgements, because genuine choice does at least to some extent exist.
It was never, ever, easy. But perhaps if real choices start to be made by women and men together, the climate might begin to change so that at least most folk understand and respect the dilemmas and decisions we all have to make, when we bring (or decide not to bring) babies into the world.
The expression ‘work-life balance‘ could be about to become genuinely meaningful at last.
A version of this article was first published in Diverse Liverpool: the gender issue, in March 2006, pp. 113-115.
Read more articles about Gender & Women, and see more of Hilary’s Publications, Lectures & Talks
Modern Civic Leadership Needs Gender Equity
Cities like Liverpool still seem to have a problem about ‘strong women’. On-going changes of civic leadership in the city offer an opportunity for the chaps to disprove suspicions that they continue to hold this antiquated attitude across all spheres of influence. Institutional sexism has no place in an adult and forward-looking city.
Recent turbulence in Liverpool’s civic leadership has set me thinking about what comes next. Do we want more of the same, or do we want something fresher and more responsive than the present arrangements?
This is a city with a tradition of behind-the-scenes chaps’ groups who met for luncheon and called themselves ‘The Big Four’ (or is it Super Six, or First Eleven, or Secret Seventeen?), and which has no, repeat no, really serious power-brokers outside Westminster who sometimes wear skirts. (There are some fine women out there doing excellent jobs, but they ain’t at the top of local government in Liverpool.)
Does Liverpool have a problem about women?
I’m certainly not of the view that women are necessarily ‘better’ than men in any respect, or that change necessarily means feminisation. But I do think, on the basis of many years’ experience, that this is a city which still has problems with welcoming the input of strong women. Maybe that’s not just a characteristic of Liverpool, but we are quite evidently trailing in the so-called Equal Opportunities stakes, as the Mersey Partnership Gender Agenda illustrates all too painfully.
Equality of opportunity is also best use of human resource
This isn’t just (though it is anyway) a matter of equity. This is a matter of the optimum use of resource, including talent, knowledge and understanding. In cities like Liverpool (I assume there are others too) problems seem to be ‘solved’ by top-down directives. Maybe that was necessary at one stage; but it won’t take us up to the next level – at least, not in my opinion a next level which in the long-run will do us any good.
Using human resources well means accommodating different styles and different perspectives. Even putting aside the compelling moral case, the fundamental reason that equal opportunities is critical is that any other way wastes potential to serve the best interests of everyone. (Has someone forgotten that over half the population is female?)
Sometimes men of influence are afraid of women who are strong
Men and women across the globe are in the end much the same; the variations within each gender are usually greater than the differences between the genders when it comes to work, decisions, personal choices and so forth. We (nearly) all want what’s best, we (nearly) all want decent, effective decision-making. So theoretically it doesn’t matter whether our leaders are men or women, as long as they’re able and of good faith.
But in one respect Liverpool at least hasn’t got there yet. The chaps who decide things – not all of them, but some – are not yet prepared to change their perceptions, to see individuals for what they can bring to the party, rather than what they wear (to be facetious, a skirt or a tie?). Whilst the city continues to be run by an unspoken convention about what sort of person is ‘appropriate’ for serious influence, leadership and decision-making – and challenge as you may, demonstrating this convention isn’t the case is very difficult – we are desperately missing a trick.
Influence and leadership across the board
Covert sexism in Liverpool applies whether we’re looking at the Town Hall, the local economy or community development and involvement. There is an inflexibility somewhere in ‘the system’ which results I suspect from insecurity and / or protectionism masquerading as traditional, definitive leadership. And this overall leadership, as we have seen, is hugely male-dominated.
Current civic changes offer a chance for those decision-makers who really do care about the best interests of us all now to deliver something more inclusive and thereby also more effective for the whole community.
We shall be a Grown Up City when, and only when, the Chaps are no longer afraid of Strong Women.
Intellectuals And The ‘Post-Its Culture’
Is it true that society is more ‘anti-intellectual’ than before? How are ideas encouraged or, alternatively, left disconnected and without impact? This is a question which can be asked about the situation of both ‘thinkers’ in the accepted sense, and of people who are invited to share their views in the now well-established process of ‘community consultation’.
There was a letter recently (18.Nov.05) in New Start about ‘playing with post-its’, which I happened to re-read today. In his communication Alan Leadbetter of Stoke-on-Trent commented how the “current ‘post-it-note’ culture… encourages citizens individually to ‘have a say’,” whilst not inviting them “to take part in constructing plans, or to debate alternative plans among themselves, or to vote on them.”
This view is very much about bottom-up, grounded experience – or not, as the case may be. But by one of those strange co-incidences I also today found myself reading Frank Furedi‘s essay, Where Have All The Intellectuals Gone? Confronting 21st Century Philistinism (continuum, 2004). And yes, I was reading it in Liverpool’s very own Left Bank hangout in the city centre, the famous Everyman Bistro.
Who may produce new ideas?
Furedi’s and Leadbetter’s publications are in many ways a million miles apart; but they do have one thing in common. Both are about the formulation of new ideas, who has ‘permission’ to undertake this, and who has ownership of these ideas when they have surfaced.
Alan Leadbetter was probably thinking about people who experience significant disadvantage and rarely have an opportunity to articulate fresh ideas to any evident effect. Frank Furedi considers in his book people with wide educational and professional advantages. But the underlying connection is there.
Ideas need fertile ground
For ideas to grow, whether or not they arise from places where advantage is tangible, there must be fertile ground and space to think ‘differently’.
As yet I haven’t made my mind up whether the current perception of ‘anti-intellectualism’ is actually just that there used to be less overtly acknowledged evidence of ordinary people having important ideas at all (so that those privileged few who did ‘shine’ in this respect were more visible), or whether there is a climate now which suppresses, even more than previously, ideas which are ‘of the other’.
Either way, I do know however that fresh ideas, open to democratic interrogation, are the basis of any progressive, healthy society. There are suggestions that Philosophy become part of the general curriculm. I suppose that’s what the old ‘General Studies’, now revamped and more focused, attempted to provide. Enabling and facilitating constructive and shared ideas at every level are what it’s fundamentally about.
Maybe there’s something here we all, as community development officers, academics, teachers, politicians, media pundits, parents and citizens alike, need to think about more?
Look Back With…. Relief
There is a nostalgia in the cultural calendar at present. Memories of the 50s and 60s are to be found in both drama (The Liverpool Playhouse) and museums (the national Theatre Museum). Interesting to look at, without doubt. But perhaps much less fun to have had to live in.
We’ve been to two very striking performing arts events in the past week or so. The first was the national Theatre Museum’s Unleashing Britain: 10 Years that Shaped the Nation 1955-1964 and the other one was the Liverpool Playhouse’s Billy Liar.
Both these cultural offerings remind us of how very much things have changed over the past fifty years.
Cultural change as well as economic
The period which followed World War II (and yes, my recollections before the swinging sixties are hazy) was stultifying for most people. There were many painful adaptations to be made in peacetime, alongside the relief that it was all over. Most people were simply intent on establishing a ‘proper’ homelife and on getting a civilian job. There was little scope for imagination and flair in the daily struggle to earn a crust and keep a roof over one’s head.
And of course there were all those children – the ‘bulge’ – who arrived as the soldiers came back home. The Welfare State could not have been more timely, but it was also pretty thinly spread.
So how did the shift to the so-called Swinging Sixties happen? Whilst for most of us this era was nowhere near as exciting as it’s now made out to be (living in Birmingham probably didn’t help…) it was certainly a time when great cultural shifts occurred.
More money, more young people, more education
By the mid-fifties rationing had finished, and schools and health systems were fully in place, as the peace-time economy settled down; and this meant that a decade later, by the mid-sixties, there were quite significant numbers of young people (though only a few percent of them all – maybe 5% maximum) who were relishing the freedom of student life.
For first generation grammar school children going to university was a huge breakthrough (just as, we must always remember, not going to grammar school and univesity was for some of their siblings and friends a huge heartbreak). I doubt many young people now could understand how important it was to save up for the big striped university scarf which denoted you a Proper Student.
Along with this came a new freedom – to do one’s own thing, to find new ways to be artistic, literary, creative. It isn’t surprising therefore that the ‘new reality’, the kitchen sink drama, came into being. For the first time there were significant numbers of young people with higher education who knew for themselves what working class life was like… and who produced, through theatre and writing and film, a record of realities which is now a legacy for us all.
A legacy we remember but didn’t enjoy
It’s salutory to look back, through the cultural events on offer now, and remember just how constraining and difficult those years were. Given the freedoms of today, or the restrictions of then, I don’t think many would turn the clock back.
Life isn’t easy for everyone even now, but the numbers of families where the frost has to be scraped off the inside of the bedroom window every chilly Winter morning is without doubt lower – and could indeed with proper organisation of support be reduced to none.
There’s not much nostalgia in my mind for the good old days… they are a fascinating time to examine and learn about, but they weren’t I suspect that much fun for most folk to live in.
Read more articles on the National Theatre Museum.
Liverpool’s Princes Park Has Friends
The Friends of Princes Park is amongst an encouraging number of similar groups who are demanding that our green space be nurtured. Liverpool has a historical legacy of wonderful parks; and now its citizens are insisting more voluably that these are fit for the twenty first century city.
Today’s Liverpool Daily Post supplement has a long article by Peter Elson on the work of the Friends of Princes Park. The Friends have resurrected themselves after a fallow decade or three, and are making the same case for attention to their treasured space as are other groups in and around Liverpool. All power to Jean Grant, the Chair and leader of the developments! This is a park in Liverpol 8, adjacent to some of the least advantaged communities in the city. It needs nurturing.
Promising developments
There’s talk of involving local schools and of linking Hope Street to Sefton Park… a long discussed but so far not actioned development (but a route some of us take by way of a constitutional when time permits). There is an encouraging acknowledgement of the part the Park can play in sustaining social inclusion, health and an understanding of the history of our city.
Where’s the support?
One possible snag in all this however seems to be the continuing reluctance by the City Council to support, quietly and constructively, the citizens who care about this fabulous amenity. There are encouraging noises from that direction now – but the track record often isn’t good. Here’s an opportunity for the Council to play what (in my view) is its proper role…
Councils clearly have a formal duty to balance competing demands for support by citizens around the city; but they could also become facilitators, socially, financially and strategically of the people who want to see things improve. Now, that would be a new way to do things.
The Healthy Orchestra Challenge – At Last
The Association of British Orchestras today overtly acknowledged the health risks of orchestra playing. But for many orchestral musicians the reality of every day life is sparse professional support, low esteem, low pay and no say – exactly the conditions in which ill-health, stress and worry thrive.
It’s a puzzle that so many orchestral musicians have health-related problems, when there’s evidence that music, and perhaps especially classical music of some sorts, is ‘good’ for those who listen to it. A clue to this conundrum can be found in the conditions under which many players work.
The Association of British Orchestras, at their Annual Meeting in Newcastle, have today launched their Healthy Orchestra Charter. Now at last we see a formal acknowledgement by the organisations which employ them, that orchestral musicians experience significant health risks in the course of their professional work.
The list of risks is long – physical problems such as deafness and repetitive strain injury, bullying, burn-out and stage fright amongst them. Is it any wonder, with this level of risk, that so few players who enter orchestras – some of the best classical musicians we have – actually stay in that employment for the entirety of their professional lives?
Well-established research findings
Of course, it isn’t news that these significant risks occur. I attended the International Conference on Health and the Musician at York University in 1997, and even then the research literature was compelling. But it is encouraging that now the focus has moved from others pressing the point ‘in defence’ of the players, to the current position where, perhaps belatedly, employers themselves are addressing the problem directly.
From a formal health and safety perspective there’s no way round this in a modern employment situation, except to face the issues squarely; and the additional impetus of formal acknowledgement may also help the individuals at risk to feel more comfortable about coping. The problems have now been articulated where they need to be; which means those who experience them are more likely to get the proper support they require in the context of their employment instead of, as previously, only through informal arrangements such as the BAPAM scheme – life-saver though this can be, and hopefully will remain, for players with particular personal problems which they may not wish to share with their employers.
BAPAM is an excellent resource for musicians in genres across the board, but it can only address some of the issues for professional orchestral musicians. Orchestra players need (but usually don’t get) continuing professional development (CPD), at least outside ‘community education’ programmes. Occasional employer-sponsored consultation in instrumental technique from a really top-flight teacher would come in handy over the decades – as younger players slowly and often sadly discover. But this is rarely on offer. CPD of musician employees is a responsibility of orchestra managements, not of BAPAM doctors.
Isn’t it obvious that properly embedded individual instrumental technique support for orchestral musicians reduces the inevitable risk of small ‘bad habits’? And that in turn individual performance support increases personal confidence, and reduces the need for absence and / or medical intervention – thereby also reducing the overall costs, short and long term, both to the employer and to the individual? A virtuous circle indeed.
Continuing individual professional development for performers, supported by a serious orchestral management cheque book, is well overdue. ‘Our people,’ as every management everywhere insists, ‘are our prime resource…’
Other stress factors
Excellent though the Healthy Orchestras initiative is, it does then seem on first reading that not all the issues identified formally and informally at the 1997 York conference are being equally acknowledged. Stress factors which many musicians themselves identified included not only the obvious physical and psychological strains of the job, but also extraordinarily low pay and a sense in which they felt as though they were still ‘at school’ – you can be in an orchestra for many years and still have no acknowledgement of seniority of any kind, invisible in the scheme of things with not even your own place in the actual seating arrangements.
And that’s before we get to the issues (above) around keeping up personal performance skills – probably the most anxiety-making part of any professional musician’s day-to-day existence.
Plus, in some orchestras the managerial urge to present a youthful image has overtaken any respect for experience and what that brings to the particular ‘sound’ for which a given ensemble is known. Not only could this be a threat to the individuality of the great orchestras, but it’s personally distressing for those have who carried the tradition of their orchestra over the years.
Add to this the ingrained belief of many players that ‘you’re only as good as your last performance’ (no latitude for being human there), and the conviction that it’s possible for any player to be destroyed by constant criticism (Will I be the next to be bullied?) and the situation becomes a personal time bomb, buried deep in the collective psyche of the musicians on stage.
Music is good for you – mostly
So perhaps here’s the rub. Classical music offers those who listen to it enjoyment, solace and stimulation. And so in comfortable circumstances it does to those who perform it. I doubt any orchestral player enters a major symphony orchestra expecting less. This is a vocation which demands and promises much of and for those who aspire to it.
But, at least for all except the most highly ranked members (and perhaps for them too?), there’s something quite disturbing in more than one sense about the contexts of orchestral life.
Maybe it’s this:
You sit on whatever platform you’ve been dispatched to, a performer at the top of your profession under the relentless public scrutiny of the punters, your employers and (hardest of all) your equally stressed peers, without any discernible artistic or personal say in what happens – and dressed in a ‘uniform’ which your (often socially well-advantaged) audience understands to represent wealth and authority…. but you know differently. A silent cognitive dissonance abounds.
And you worry – about your playing, about your pay, about how you will fit your family and other external commitments into your irregular and unsocial performance schedule, about what could happen next.
No-one now disputes that stress affects most severely those who have least power and influence. Here’s a textbook ‘classical’ case of that happening.
See also: Orchestral Salaries In The U.K.
Life In A Professional Orchestra: A Sustainable Career?
Musicians in Many Guises
British Orchestras On The Brink
Where’s The Classical Music In The Summer? An Idea…
Modern Cities Need History And Style – So Let’s All Find Out How It’s Done
The strongly held views on Liverpool’s World Heritage Site and the Museum of Liverpool proposals have something to tell us about how we sometimes need to look beyond our own patch, to see what could or should be done. Perhaps ‘cultural exchange’ programmes within our own shores might be a start, so helping citizens to know each other’s towns and cities across the nation?
Lots of debate as usual about architecture and design, following the Heritage Lottery decision not to fund the Museum of Liverpool…. The views about the World Heritage Site and so forth have been interesting – as ever!
The last few days I’ve been in London with my family and, as it happens, doing the ‘visitor’ bit around the Tate Modern, the City, Covent Garden and Westminster. What strikes me so strongly is that most people in London don’t seem to have a huge problem about Big Buildings and Little Buildings, old ones and new.
The mix of old and new
Of course, ‘new’ buildings adjacent to ‘old’ ones (and they don’t get much more historic than some in the parts of London I was seeing) are often designed very well in a style which merges… but then you get the Gherkin. What an amazing construction! There’s St. Paul’s being done up, and behind it what you can only term a huge conical mirror. But I really don’t think it looks ‘wrong’.
In fact, one of the things that strikes me is how vibrant this miscellany of buildings, mile upon mile of them, is. Some young people I know who have moved to the Capital have actually chosen large drawings and (v dramatic) photographs of the Foster building and similar as the artwork for their own home…. and they’re exactly the sort of young professionals Liverpool would dearly have liked to keep here. But London offers so much more.
I definitely don’t think that all ‘modern’ architecture is appropriate wherever it’s put. It has to be excellent and well-positioned to earn its footprint. But I’d guess the folk in London are lucky in being (literally) more cosmopolitan in their approach; they’ve seen more of the world – in general, not all of them of course – than folk in Liverpool (again, in general). Expecting exciting and perhaps controversial architecture alongside a proper respect for the historic, and off-set by wide-open green spaces, probably goes with that wider mindset.
Where’s the wider experience and context?
When are we going to start to try to ensure that as many Liverpool people as possible have a wider context in which to judge their city? Isn’t it time actively to encourage people, young and older, to visit other places and experience (not just ‘look at’) other contexts, so that they can have a more broadly informed view of what goes on here, as well? It’s difficult to have a positive, balanced position when the basis of it is often so narrow, even perhaps parochial.
And is there something here for everyone? Would it be a good thing if we all tried to experience parts of the country outside our own patch? Never mind ‘foreign’ exchanges, worthy though these can be. What about learning more about where we actually live, as well?
Women, Ladies Or Girls? What’s In A Name?
The English language is rich in many respects; but it’s inadequate, perhaps for very important reasons, when it comes to naming and addressing mature female people. For the foreseeable future polite society will probably continue to constrain women by the words we may properly use here. Men can also be ‘Chaps’ and ‘Guys’, whilst for women until now there’s been no equivalent set of terms…. which may explain why younger people of both sexes, often themselves more consciously gender-equal, have begun to claim these names, Guys and Chaps, as inclusive terms for everyone.
Names meaning everything and nothing. The old adage about ‘sticks and stones’ but ‘names can hurt me never…’ has some truth, but it’s not the whole story.
So here’s a question: how does one properly address a group of mature female people whom one may not know well?
Women, Ladies of Girls?
Is there any other term than these which one can use for such a group as the one above?
* ‘Women’ is a strange form of spoken or formal address; the word refers to a type of person, but it’s not really a collective noun in the formal naming sense;
* ‘Ladies’ is a term which offends some because of its patriarchal and other class overtones (though the Concise Oxford notes it is a “courteous or formal synonym for ‘women'”); and
* ‘Girls’ is obviously not appropriate as a formal term for any group of female people over the age of about 16.
So what are we women to be addressed as? Frankly, I don’t know.
Forms of address for men
This is easier! Men can be ‘Gentlemen’ (formal); ‘Chaps’ (the friendly noun for a group of posibly more mature men), ‘Guys’ (friendly, for younger men, or for Chaps with a more modern outlook?) or even ‘Boys’ (though usually only as a form of gentle teasing between peers, or in families).
Rarely do we hear complaint about any of these collective nouns. There’s something for everyone – at least as long as you’re male. But then of course men don’t feel marginalised or at risk of being demeaned by terms of reference in the same way as some women may, not infrequently with reason.
The new Chaps ‘n’ Guys
Talking with younger women and men, there seems to be a move towards an understanding that Chaps and Guys can be male or female. ‘Okay you guys..’ is the start of a sentence which can be addressed to anyone (collectively) by anyone, male or female, in informal situations. And ‘Chaps’ has become a term which, again informally, refers to any group of people.
Perhaps this is the way forward. In formal situations there seems little option but to use the ‘polite’ forms ‘Ladies and Gentlemen…’; this doesn’t always sound good, but how else does one start? At least it’s equally constraining for both men and women.
Hermaphrodising the naming
Informally perhaps we women can move towards a more hermaphrodite nomenclature. We’re ‘Guys’ and ‘Chaps’ when it suts. This doesn’t, to me at least, feel like the awful legal precedent of announcing that ‘all references to ‘he’ shall also apply to ‘she’…’ and so on. That legal precedent was made by men. We, women, are choosing to be, and to call ourselves, ‘You Guys’ in a rather different way.
The ultimate test for person-to-person, face-to-face, naming has to be that person’s choice, and the type of context in which the choice is made. We can decide in the general sense to use what collective nouns we like, but respect for the individual and his / her ease should take prioity over our own preference when we address another.
If we want real communication, putting the other at ease is important; and if that includes using formal terms because these are the only ones we have, in my book, so be it. Convention, however inperfect, help us here.
Hallo people!
Nonetheless, the English language does leave us a bit high and dry, with ‘he’ and ‘she’ as the third person nouns, and no ungendered noun for individuals except for the words ‘person’ and ‘people’. Maybe we women willl have arrived when the formal way to address groups of either / mixed gender is to begin, ‘Good morning people…’.
But that may take a while, Guys.
How Will We Know That Liverpool 2007 & 2008 Were Successful?
The 800th Anniversary of Liverpool in 2007, and the Liverpool European Capital of Culture Year in 2008, are hugely important milestones for the city. So how are we, citizens of the city or of Europe and the world, going to measure the success of these years, once we reach 2009?
Your suggested responses and answers to this question are most welcome….
Much has already been written, on this weblog and elsewhere, about Liverpool’s 800th Anniversary in 2007, and the 2008 European Capital of Culture Year.
I don’t intend just now to extend that debate – it seems to be developing all on its own… and please do continue to add your contributions on this weblog. But I would like to ask one special question, to which I would also really appreciate answers (please use the Response space below):
By what criteria will, or should, we be able to evaluate the success of Liverpool 2007 / 8?
I’m sure many people will have many ideas on the criteria we should use – or perhaps are already using?
Indeed, it would be helpful to know whether there actually are already sol
Liverpool, Capital Of Culture 2008? Or Of Chaos 2006?
Liverpool as a city is claiming much for the forthcoming celebratory years of 2007 and 2008, but concerns exist on many fronts about the present. There is more to serious development of cultural involvement than simply ‘community programmes’, admirable though that is. So what sorts of models of citizen and ‘stakeholder’ integration are being developed, building on the experience of other cities which have managed to engage people at all levels? And will these work?
Oh dear. We don’t seem to have got off to a very good start in Liverpool this year.
The end of 2005 saw the demise of several large-scale Liverpool projects, such as the trams project, and before that, in 2004, the embarrassment of the so-called ‘Fourth Grace’ (possibly a vainglorious misnomer? nobody I know thought there were even three ‘Graces’ until someone made that name up, not long ago). And in the Summer we had the debacle of the Mersey River Festival, only now being reported…
Then, to round off 2005, there was the extraordinary fuss over the shifts at the top of our political and administrative power base.
Capital of Culture 2008 now under scrutiny
And now questions are being asked about our preparations for Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture celebrations in 2008. These have been becoming more urgent over the past few weeks – there were concerns expressed when Liam Fogarty decided to raise the issue of an elected mayor once more – but since the New Year the story hasn’t really been off the front page.
Well, that there are questions is unsurprising, both for particular reasons and because there is always a period before these huge events, as far as I can see, when Questions Are Asked. What is more worrying, however, is the difficulty some actual citizens and ‘stakeholders’ have experienced in learning what’s happening and / or in getting answers.
Who takes day-to-day responsibilty for ‘stakeholders’?
I leave it to others to pursue the specifics of this alarming situation; my own concerns are quite complex, though I do have to say it would be helpful if they were being addressed at the practical day-to-day level… one problem seems to be identifying anyone who can take on issues of normal operational accountability. But there you go.
For me, and I suspect numbers of others, the real issue is, where do we go from here? As a long-time resident of Liverpool with strong roots in the city I know it’s really important that we make a big success of 2007 and 2008, the 800th anniversary of our City Charter, and then our European Capital of Culture Year.
What some people haven’t the foggiest inkling about, however, even after serious attempts to find out, is how they can bring their ideas to bear to help this to happen. And that perhaps has occured also in other European Capital of Culture locations, which begs a question about what models of social and artistic inclusion work best, and where.
Dreaming Realist 