Category Archives: Events And Notable Dates
A New Public Realm For Liverpool’s Hope Street
Liverpool’s Hope Street Quarter has just been refurbished, with an exciting and imaginative scheme of new public realm work secured by genuinely ‘bottom-up’ community engagement and local stakeholder buy-in. But this is only a beginning, for what could be one of the most important arts and cultural quarters in Europe.
Seasonal Food – Who Knows About It?
Over the past century our connection with basic food production has largely been lost. But now there are urgent environmental as well as direct health reasons to ensure everyone understands how food is produced. People as consumers (in both senses) need to know about food miles, short produce supply chains, nutritional value and the annual cycle of food production through the changing seasons.
One obvious starting point for this crucial ‘sustainability’ message is schools; and another is allotments.
The way that people find out about food seems to vary from generation to generation. This wasn’t always the case. For millennia you ate what you could grow and, if you were lucky, also what you could swap of your surfeit for someone else’s surfeit.
Then came the developing trade routes, some ancient and exotic (the Silk Road, also a route for spices and much else) and others, far more mundane to our modern minds, such as Salters Lane, the mediaeval travellers’ way which appears in British towns and villages as widely spread as Hastings, Redditch, Tamworth, Chester and Stockton-on-Tees, along with other similar reminders of trade in by-gone eras.
Also within Europe, for instance, were the horrors of such deprivation as the Irish potato famine of 1845-9 and more recently, for some within living memory, informal and formal food rationing (the World Wars of 1914-19 and 1939-45) – a deprivation it is now often considered was more of the palate than of essential nutritional substance.
Different expectations, the same basic understanding
In all these cases, however, fabulous or tragic, ancient or contemporary, people understood something about the genesis of their food. It was either from plants or from animals, nurtured intentionally or garnered whence it appeared. If you wanted to eat, you had to engage in some way in the production or location of your meal.
This, it could be argued, is what is different in times past from how things are today. It can certainly be said that although people must still find their food somewhere, it tends to come pre-prepared, in labelled packets, frozen or perhaps in tins, but not self-evidently from plants and animals.
In much of the western or ‘first’ world the conscious link with what is rather romantically referred to as ‘the soil’ has quite largely been lost. Most people now expect to be able to eat anything they can afford and that they take a liking to, any time they choose.
The downside of choice
Nobody would disagree with the general idea that variety in our diets is a good thing. But in practice it doesn’t seem to be like 
that. Our food arrives on the shop shelves (the only place now where most of us hunt and gather) processed and packaged, and often laden with things we don’t need as well as those we think we want….
For every interesting flavour and texture there are frequently too many empty calories, too much refined sugar and the ‘wrong sort‘ of fats, if not always too few vitamins and minerals. (Contrary to popular belief, frozen and tinned food can, we are told, be as nutritious in these respects as the ‘real thing’. Indeed, given that frozen and tinned foods are usually very fresh when they are processed, they may well have more nutritional value than the produce lying ‘fresh’ in the market.)
And herein lies the rub. There is a confusion in perceptions between ‘fresh’ and ‘well-preserved’ foods, between ‘produce’ and ‘ready meals’. And most people have only the vaguest of ideas about the essential differences between, say, strawberries or carrots flown in ‘fresh’ from California or South Africa, and those grown in glasshouses close to the point where they are sold…. which in turn means we cannot fully appreciate concerns around ‘food miles‘, local / short supply chains or, to return to our original theme, nutritional value-for-money.
Close to the land, close to the retailer
At last some retailers (including some of the biggest) are beginning to acknowledge some of these issues. They boast that they have short supply chains, that their produce are prepared immediately after cropping, that they are willing to promote sustainable ‘seasonal’ products; and they even sometimes offer nutritious recipes to cook from basic (and less basic) ingredients which are fresh and wholesome.
Now it is up to everyone to make sure they understand what is meant by all this.
For not the first time in this debate, much of the answer has to lie in education, in encouraging children to nurture living things; in making sure children know that food does not grow on supermarket shelves, and that they understand how the seasons can be harnessed to ensure a supply a healthy and varied diet.
The other obvious approach is helping people, wherever they live, sustain their own communities, to visit farmers’ markets, and grow at least some of their own food, in allotments or by sharing back garden space, or even just in pots.
From little acorns do great oak trees grow, just as from modest ideas about strawberry pots or rows of peas and potatoes can the notion of seasonal food once again take its place in our understanding of a sustainable world.
Dreamspace – A Wonderful Idea And A Tragic Event
The Dreamspace concept has become a nightmare for those involved in the tragedy today, which is so far from the intended outcome of the people who created it and sought to bring us happiness and enlightenment.
The news earlier today that two people have died whilst visiting the Dreamspace installation is almost unbearable for anyone who experienced it as intended. For those who grieve it will be far beyond that sentiment – as, in a different way, it will be for those who created the idea and brought it to fruition.
Here was a wonderful idea, intended to bring happiness and a sense of well-being to those who came to experience it. I saw it whilst it was installed in Liverpool, right on the first day, before the deep unpleasantness of the incident with the young men who sought to damage it. Dreamspace is a huge concept, intended to mix beautiful light with music in an ever-changing interconnection with visitors who enter it, robed and shoe-less to increase the sense of unity with the idea itself. It is horrific to think that such a gentle sculpture could become so easily and mistakenly a place of disaster.
Art can never take priority over health and safety. It can never have priority over basic requirements for well-being. And nothing can be said to relieve the heartbreak and nightmare that for some Dreamspace has so unintentionally become. Perhaps however in the midst of this tragedy we will still know that there are artists, those who created Dreamspace amongst them, who seek sincerely to bring happiness and enlightment in their various ways to as many people as possible.
Innovation Rewarded
The 2006 Merseyside Innovation Awards gave some fascinating insights into current eco-product, bio-tech and uninhabited air vehicle developments; and they also offered food for thought about how innovators actually come to be practising their craft.
Some events are well worth the effort of turning up. The 2006 Final of the Merseyside Innovation Awards this week (on Thursday 13 July) was one of them.
The event was buzzing, with expectations high that we would all learn something of interest. And so it was, with three shortlisted Finalists from very different parts of the emerging techno-science markets.
Ecological products for the future
The first presentation was from Delphis Industries Limited, a local Liverpool company. They have identified a strong market niche for eco- cleaning products (for masonry, stone etc.) which will not harm people or the environment, and which will meet the increasingly specific requirements of new health and safety legislation.
The talent in this company is very much ‘home grown’ and the ideas arose in the serendipity way that sometimes happens when business associates or friends meet up. Here, for all to see, were a small team of people who had spotted an opportunity which arose out of the blue, and had gone for it, combining their enthusiasm for ethical and environmental products and their ability to see an emerging market when one appeared.
The big bio-tech development
Next to make their presentation were Genial Genetic Solutions Limited (GGS). This is a rapidly growing company, employing staff at graduate level and beyond and at the sharp end of cytogenetics and related disciplines. Amongst the applications of the technology which they are developing is a much speedier response to the analysis of, for instance, cancer cell samples, so that appropriate medical treatments can be delivered as soon as possible.
We were told that orders are already coming in for the newly developed equipment, small enough to be housed in a normal laboratory, which will enable genetic assessments to be conducted much more quickly than in the past. At about £100,000 each these items are serious investments in the future of medical technology, and that is the part of the market which GGS is looking to.
An ‘uninhabited air vehicle’ idea from the 1930s
The fianl presentation was by Hoverwing Ltd. This is a prototype small, lightweight flying machine whcih can carry a camera to places normal airborne vehicals can’t even attempt to reach. Apparently the idea has arisen from the lightweigt one-person aircraft developed in the 1930s (which, in the words of our presenter, had a nasty habit of seeing off their pilots) with a double wing which allows the aircraft to fly very slowly or even almost not at all, simply hovering above its intended viewing point.
This time round, however, there is no risk to the operator – who is safely ground-based with just a box to ‘steer’ the machine by; and because there are no chopper blades or other big and dangerous parts the camera can be taken much nearer to the action – people, animals, unsafe sites, inaccessible routes, film sets etc – than could previous air cameras. The scope for this in the media industry alone is said to be enormous.
Success by a head for the high-tech, high investment people
Any of these three companies would have been a worthy winner, but the eventual outcome favoured Genial Genetic Solutions Limited. Both the judging panel (which included Dr Sarah Tasker, Chief Executive of the new Liverpool Science Park and Edge Lane facility) and the audience chose GGS to win the cash prize of £10,000, with another £4,000 worth of legal, business and other consultancy and support. In some respects this was the most advanced and complex of the proposals on offer – no-one could claim the science was simple – so it was good to see this complexity and excellence acknowledged so publicly.
And the other two Finalists also gained considerable encouragement and solace, with 30% each of the audience vote at least.
These were three great ideas, all delivered to the judges and audience with directness and enthusiasm. They each addressed real commercial opportunities, by developing cutting edge technology for general benefit alongside business aims. All had required perseverance and much investment on the part of everyone involved.
Some sound advice for innovators
To my mind, however, the last word must come from the presenter for Hoverwing. Do not, he advised, imagine, because an idea seems good, that ‘they’ have already tried and tested it and perhaps found it lacking. However long the idea may have been around, ‘they’ may not have done anything about it at all.
There often is no ‘they’, there may well be only ‘you’. So just keep going….
Which in itself is not a bad idea to take away from an Innovation Award event.
Robyn Archer Departs Liverpool’s Culture Company
Robyn Archer’s resignation, announced today, as artistic director of Liverpool’s Culture Company leaves many questions about what the 2007 and 2008 celebrations are actually intended to achieve. Acknowledging this simple reality would help a great deal in making progress.
So the first question everyone’s asking is, Why? Why has Robyn Archer, after in reality such a brief sojourn in Liverpool, decided that Liverpool’s 2007 & 2008 events are not for her?
Only Ms Archer can answer that, of course, and she is unlikely to add much to her media statement that it’s for ‘personal reasons’. (Well, yes, but that could mean many things to many people.)
In the meantime, the question I would still really like to see a proper response to – and which I asked Robyn Archer directly on one of the very few occasions when I actually encountered her – is this:
By what criteria will we know that Liverpool’s 2007 and 2008 celebrations have been a success?
The fundamental question for Capital of Culture
There may well be more than one sensible response, but perhaps – who knows? – it was partly a lack of clarity in various quarters about this fundamental question which provoked the latest departure. (Some of us recall that the very first 2008 lead director also departed Liverpool, almost before he’d unpacked his bags.) Perhaps there are multiple possible answers – to renew and regenerate our city, to promote and celebrate communities, even, just maybe, to bolster ‘cultural’ activities as such – but no-one seems able to offer a definitive and widely agreed response.
Whether or not it bothered Robyn Archer, this question continues very much to worry me. There still seems to be a confusion in the minds of some local people about the difference between Excellence and Elitism, between the absolutely correct requirement that Liverpool’s cultural celebrations include as many local citizens from as many different communities as possible, and the frankly silly idea that anything which is, as they say, ‘artistically challenging’ is also somehow inappropriate in this city.
The real cultural challenge
How are we as citizens together to grow in our understanding of art, music, dance, drama, or anything else, if we are afraid to take it to people who haven’t encountered it much as yet?
Of course people should be offered and involved in artistic activities which engage them directly – ‘community education’ projects and so forth – but somehow we also have to encourage them to see that there is much more than that too.
The courage to offer leadership
At present, it feels as though those – and there certainly are several, on the Culture Company Board amongst other places – who are willing and able to promote the idea that we gain more from cultural experience when we permit it to challenge us – are being outnumbered by those who, to use the old metaphor, play to the gallery of small town politics.
The real issue is cultural and civic leadership. Liverpool will be a city fit for the 21st century when the local powers-that-be are ready to acknowledge not only how far we have already travelled, but also how much further there is to go before we can really call ourselves a Capital of Culture in the sense that most other European cities understand that term.
Then, perhaps, we won’t have to rely on the wonderful goodwill of just those seasoned artistic directors who show a commitment to Liverpool well beyond the call of professional duty. Only then will the lure of Liverpool to the international cultural community be irresistible.
A Wedding And A Coming of Age, Japanese-style
All societies celebrate marriage and acknowledge it officially in one way or another. But how many acknowledge equally officially the coming of age of their young people? Conversation with young Japanese guests at a wedding today has set me thinking….
We had a very happy time today. A lovely friend from Japan, Minako (who is our HOPES volunteer) married her art-enthusiast Ian right here in Liverpool. Rarely have I seen a more cosmpolitan and relaxed gathering, as we all celebrated with the beaming couple. There were friends and family from Japan, Hong Kong, Spain, Italy, Canada, Romania, Turkey, Malaysia, Germany and many other places, alongside an impressive diversity of home-grown Scousers and other Brits.
It was a great day for us all to share – the sort of occasion where one makes new friends with amazing ease – and, as always at such celebrations, there were plenty of nice surprises as well as the treats we had hoped for and looked forward to.
Chatting with young visitors
For me one of these treats was the opportunity to talk with young guests from several corners of the globe, amongst them a Japanese student who told me about the ceremony she next hoped to be part of – the Seijin Shiki or Japanese Coming of Age ceremony.
This was a surprise, the first I’d ever heard of such an event. I gather it is eagerly anticipated by the participants, all young people in each town who will reach the age of twenty in the current school year (April – March). The date used always to be 15 January, but since 1999 it has been on the second Monday of January. Twenty was set as the age of adulthood in 1948; before that age young people may not now smoke, drink or vote.
A civic event
Seijin Shiki is an event organised by the officials of each town. All eligible young people are invited to a morning ceremony where they are welcomed to adulthood and reminded of their new rights and responsibilities.
Many young men I gather now wear ‘normal’ day suits, but the women still often choose traditional dress for the occasion, the furisode, which is a style of kimono, sometimes passed from mother to daughter and often worn only for this event and on their wedding day (as Minako did today, looking wonderful).
Siejin Shiki is a special day and is marked by most young people as just that, before finishing in celebrations of a less civic sort, in the style of young people at a party the world over.
Different meanings for different people
Like every other formally marked celebration anywhere, I gather this event has different meanings for different people. For some it is simply a way to have a good chat, all dressed up, with old school friends; for others it apparently sometimes offers an opportunity to make a point about how they think the new voters should position themselves politically; and no doubt for another group it’s just an excuse for a party, regardless.
Whatever, and of course with safeguards, it’s in principle a very positive idea.
Perhaps few of us in Britain do enough to make young people feel they are partners in our social fabric, people with an entitlement and an obligation to take a stakehold in society. We criticise and carp, but do we welcome young people as they enter adulthood? I think we could, and very probably should, do better.
Celebrating people
The way I found out about this was that I went to a lovely wedding and thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was really nice to share the celebration with so many and varied friends old and new, and we all wish Minako and Ian the very best for their future together in Liverpool.
In Britain we do seem to know how to acknowledge and celebrate marriage, and I hope that our visitors from Japan and elsewhere would agree about that, though our style may be very different from how it’s done in their own countries.
But what I’m far less sure about is that we know as a society how to celebrate young people and the meanings attached to their coming of age. As families and friends of course we do it well; as a civic and democratic society we perhaps have a lot we could learn from our friends in Japan.
Love Parks Week!
This week sees the first Love Parks Week, each day with a theme to encourage everyone to think about their parks and green spaces. So how will this excellent idea be followed up in each town and city, and by whom? Here’s something really worth sustaining all year round!
This week, with the Summer Solstice, sees the first ever Love Parks Week. It’s been organised by Greenspace, the charity (formerly known as the Urban Parks Forum) dedicated to planning, maintaining and the use of parks.
One very good idea about the Love Parks Week event is that each day after Sunday 18th (the Launch, with a huge picnic in Manchester’s Platt Fields Park) to Sunday 25th has been allocated a different theme. Monday is Skills and education, Tuesday, Climate change, then follow Culture and community, Children and young people, Sport and recreation, Health and wellbeing and, finally on Sunday 25th, The nature of parks and green spaces.
An ambitious agenda
This is an ambitious and timely agenda. Many parks and open spaces across the country are involved (including Liverpool’s own Sefton Park, with Africa Oye, and Calderstones, with its International Tennis Tournament, as well as a Summer Solstice evening at our historic Otterspool Promenade and Park).
Perhaps an initiative like this will see more families enjoying our parks, come the Summer break. Making our parks more visible in this image-led age can only be a good thing for everyone.
So the next question has to be, how will Love Parks Week be followed up, and by whom, in each town and city? Here is an opportunity to promote the use and enjoyment of our essential green spaces for the whole year which should be grasped with both hands, not just by Greenspace but by all of us.
Magna Carta Day (15 June)
The Magna Carta story of 1215 is dramatic, with its dissenting Barons, overbearing Pope, double-dealing King and, finally, wise boy Monarch. Good really does win out in this one. So why not indeed have June 15, the actual date of the signing of the Charter, as a Bank Holiday to celebrate ‘Britishness’? Inviting everyone to remember how their liberty was first won – whilst also enjoying a ‘free’ day – could do a lot for democratic involvement in these apparently non-political times.
Today is Magna Carta Day. On June 15th 1215, the Magna Carta was signed by King John as a way of resolving a dispute between his Barons and himself.
I’m no historian, but I think we can all grasp the essentials of this occasion, why it was so momentous. For the first time ever (in English history at least?) a limit was put on the power of the King. At that time, when the authority of the Monarch was perceived as absolute and God-given, this must have seemed an outrageously daring, if not downright dangerous, thing to do. (What if God had objected?)
Indeed, the Pope (Innocent III) – who had actually also been in dispute with John about who could tell whom what to do – was deeply affronted by the idea of regal power being limited (except by the Pope himself as God’s representative on earth) and immediately ‘released’ John from his agreement with the Barons, saying that the deal was ‘shaming and demeaning’. This suited John very well, as he had had no intention of observing the agreement, especially as it had been forced upon him by the Barons – who, as relative moderates not wishing to embark on civil war, had taken London by force on June 10th in order to ensure that John had no option but to sign.
Clause 61
Like some public documents in our much more immediate past, the real devil was in the detail of particular clauses of the Magna Carta. One really big issue was Clause 61, in which the concept of distraint was for the first time applied to the King.
The ‘agreement’ was that if 25 Barons, having renewed their oath of fealty, later decided it was imperative to overrule the King, they could do so if necessary by force, seizing his castles and possessions if need be. Distraint was not a new idea, but applying it to the King certainly was!
Clause 39
Another Clause, 39, was also a breakthrough for the idea that the law stood above anyone’s individual authority, even the King’s. It required that No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.
With rules like this, it was little wonder that John felt no compunction about renouncing the Magna Carta as soon as his Barons had left London. And thus commenced the First Barons’ War. But for once in those troubled times things worked out for the better. Just a year later John was unfortunate enough to die, on 18 October 1216, in the middle of his war, simply from dysentery.
Henry III takes over at age nine
Thus it came about that John’s son Henry was crowned King, aged just nine. The royalists believed correctly that Henry, still a child, would be a more acceptable as Monarch than had his father, and that the war would then cease.
Once Henry had been crowned a weakened version of the Magna Carta was re-issued by his regent, minus Clause 61 and some others; and in 1225, as soon as he came of age, Henry himself reissued it in a generally similar abbreviated form.
And finally, in another stroke of good fortune for those who followed, Henry was the longest-serving English Monarch of the Mediaeval period, so that by the time he died, in 1272, the Magna Carta had become firmly established in legal precedent.
A great story
Here is by any standards a dramatic tale – a staged challenge to the highest authority in the land, and indeed to that of the Pope himself; a kidnapping and enforced treaty; immediate reneging on the deal; and salvation through the crowning of a boy king, who in his adulthood shows himself to be fair and strategically wise in his judgement. All with a bit, but not by the standards of the day really an excess, of swashbuckling action and contest.
What more could any History, Politics or Civics teacher ask for?
A Bank Holiday on 15 June?
A recent survey showed that large numbers of people think we in Britain should have an extra Bank Holiday – and that the best day to have it would be Magna Carta Day, 15 June. This perhaps indicates a greater degree of political consciousness than some give us all credit for, and it would, it has been suggested, provide us an excellent opportunity to celebrate ‘Britishness’.
That date’s pretty close to our last Bank Holiday, at the end of May (and it still leaves a yawning gap in the grim stretch between September and Christmas), but this suggestion has a point. The story of King John the Bad, the Good Barons and the Wise Boy Monarch is stirring stuff, and if it could capture the imagination of British citizens of all ages and beliefs, that’s a big plus.
The more we can celebrate sound politics, democracy and fairness as the overt hallmarks of our nation, the better.
Defra Is Five – And Has A Special Blog
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has been going now for full five years, and it’s showing an impressively modern approach to public engagement, with its very own personal Blog, inviting public involvement, by the new Defra Secretary of State, David Miliband.
I was really pleased when, a few months ago, I heard that I was to be appointed Lay Member of the Defra Science Advisory Council , which is the scientific advisory body to Ministers in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
I can’t think of much which is more important than trying to get environment and food right. I have a lot to learn as yet about the inner-workings of a large Government Department, but I certainly found my first meeting, in April, quite fascinating. Here is a group of people, the actual Members of SAC and the secretariat and advisers within Defra itself who have hugely impressive credentials and take environment and all that goes with it very seriously indeed.
New Secretary of State, new Blog
Defra is quite a new Department, with an even newer Secretary of State, David Miliband, who was appointed just five weeks ago. The Department came into being on 8 May 2001, very soon after the 2001 General Election, in response to a recognised need to bring together various aspects of what is now its remit. That makes it five years old today.
So Defra may be just a youngster, but it’s a youngster with admirable attitude: the new Secretary of State has begun his very own Blog, under strict non-partisan rules, which is his attempt to reach out to more people and to encourage them to engage in the issues around environment and government.
David Miliband’s blog is being evaluated by the independent parliamentary body, The Hansard Society, to see how his attempt to ‘reach out’ is working. I very much hope that well before Defra is ten all Government Departments will have been following the Defra Secretary of State’s example for some time.
Downtown Liverpool Week
Downtown Week (11-18 June 2006) is unique in the U.K. to Liverpool. Perhaps it’s a sign of a new independence of mind in our citizens that people in the city are developing this entrepreneurial event for themselves, and not because of some outside or official imperative?
‘Downtown’ is, in the words of the organisers of Liverpool’s Downtown Week 2006, ‘the beating heart of our great city, a celebration of the culture, the creativeity, the business, the new downtown living renaissance; indeed all the activities that are bringing our downtown back to life…. and, what’s more, it’s unique to Liverpool! There’s only one downtown in the UK and it’s at the heart our great metropolis!’
With enthusiasm like that, how could I deny myself the opportunity to be a part of this imaginative enterprise?
We all know about the entrepreneurial drive which moves some of the great downtown cities of the USA; here’s one Stateside bug which I really don’t mind reaching British shores.
Enthusiasm begets energy; energy begets engagement
There is a fundamental truth in the claims of downtowners:- there’s much more going on than we can ever know, but it’s both essential and fun to explore and find out as much as we possibly can. It’s a lesson also being learned, slowly and sometimes painfully, by other communities in other places.
This rich diversity, the result of centuries of ebb and flow, of enterprise and migration, is both a challenge and an enormous opportunity. It’s what Downtown Week is really about.
Scheduled events for Downtown Week include guided walks, visits to special places, commercial and retail opportunities, cultural events and whatever more various people can come up with. In the end, however, what we’re being offered is a chance to open our eyes and see what’s right before us.
Social glue
As ever, it boils down to finding ways to get people to communicate and, from that, to collaborate to mutually beneficial ends. It’s an engaging and enterprising technique which many of us find valuable (c.f. Arts Based Community Development), not least because it encourages people to explore areas of possible mutual interest.
Perhaps the point is that we need Downtown Week (and other civic and cultural celebrations) precisely because otherwise, in the concrete jungle, it’s difficult to find occasions to share and jointly to develop the sorts of relationships which make life better for everyone. This is recognised in one way or another by, amongst others, the Civic Trust and my own organisation, HOPES: The Hope Street Association.
A commonality of meaning
The old-style village way of life most surely had its shortcomings, but it also had established cycles of events with meanings common to all. It is perhaps a sign of a maturing metropolis that, after many years of invisibility, Downtown is now once more coming to the fore through community programmes and celebrations.
There’s so much still to be done, but at last there are signs it’s understood people have to do it for themselves.
Liverpool’s Downtown Week is still in its infancy. Before long however the infant will be a teenager and, like all teenagers, will doubtless seek to spread its wings elsewhere. As other parts of the UK also take up the idea of celebrating the heart of their civic communities, just remember where you heard about it first – from the real thing, the cutting edge of Liverpool’s city centre, from people who actually live, work and play in Downtown Liverpool.
Dreaming Realist 