Category Archives: Liverpool And Merseyside
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.
Mark Simpson – A Young Musician Beyond The Stereotype
Mark Simpson, BBC Young Musician of the Year, may be only seventeen but his musical achievements are breathtaking. Performer, composer and general enthusiast for all things musical, Mark demonstrates yet again that musical talent cannot be stereotyped. As ever, it will find its own way forward.
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.
Liverpool’s Sefton Park, Swans, Herons And Grebes
Sefton Park is as inner-city as it gets, but it’s large enough to be home to an amazing range of birdlife – swans, herons and grebes amongst them. So are we doing enough to ensure that these treasures are appreciated by the human beings who co-exist with them in this fascinating super-urban environment?
Once again Liverpool’s Sefton Park has come into its own.
This is an inner-city green space, with all the usual problems and challenges, but it’s nonetheless a wonderful place to be [*]. Even we, old hands at taking a stroll in our local oasis of calm, were thrilled by what we saw today.
The heron
First, in the early morning light, we again encountered the young heron which we first spotted in the rushes last week and which we think has just returned to its childhood haunts. On the previous occasion this bird had been close to invisible, silent and almost eerily still on the shaded bank of the island in the top lake. Now, just a few yards across the water from our path, it perched loftily, white feathers dramatically eye-catching in the sunlight, on the branch protruding from the middle lake which the terrapins usually claim as their own.
A family of grebes
Later in the day, as afternoon turned to evening, we returned to see a small group of quietly excited people with binoculars and cameras focused on the island at the top of the big lake – giving confirmation, by a nest with three very new babies (two of them actually sitting on their mother’s back) that we had indeed caught a glimpse of a grebe earlier in the week. This time there were two adult birds. One was sitting on the nest with the babies. The other was diving for fish before returning, his captive minnow held high, and trying (with only limited sucess – the babies were oh-so-tiny) to get his new family to feed from his beak.
Swans and cygnets
Adding to this our delight that the pair of nesting swans still have their seven cygnets several weeks after hatching – one mode of feeding in the initial weeks being the parents grasping upwards with their long necks literally to tear leaves from the central island’s bushes, before thrusting the mulched veggie delight (perhaps with attendant gnawed insects?) into their juniors’ open beaks – and it made for a pasturally perfect day.
One swallow does not a summer make; and nor does sighting one heron, two grebes and a family of swans consitute a full visit to countryside and woodland. But I can get to my local park any time, and it never ceases to fascinate, engage and refresh.
I just wish that others (in my more selfish moments, not too many others) would value it as do those of us ‘in the know’. Perhaps we could start by more (there is some) active involvement with local schools. If you don’t know that swans, herons and grebes are special, you can’t be excited by seeing them, can you?
[* For a detailed City of Liverpool colour leaflet click here.]
See also:
Sefton Park, Liverpool (collection of web postings)
Sefton Park’s Grebes And Swans
Sefton Park, Liverpool: Winter Solstice 2006
Cherry Blossom For May Day In Sefton Park, Liverpool
Friends Of Sefton Park
What Now For Liverpool’s Sefton Park?
Cherry Picking Liverpool’s Sefton Park Agenda
Liverpool’s Sefton Park Trees Under Threat – Unnecessarily?
Solar Lighting Could Solve The Parks Problem
Friends Of Sefton Park
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.
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.
Menage A Trois With A Violin
Musicians and their instruments often have a very particular relationship, almost ‘human’ in some respects. Here is an example of a three-way arrangement which offers even those on the side-line, in this case the notoriously long-suffering ‘orchestra wife’, something uniquely special and positive.
The Strad dropped through our post box this morning, arriving on cue for our monthly up-date of All Things Violinistic (or, as they say of themselves, as the ‘voice of the string music world since 1890’).
The magazine (journal?) carried the usual range of articles about performing styles, who’s the newest arrival on the block, current techniques for making instruments, the latest string recordings, and, in amongst the other inserts, a special poster of the exact dimensions of the Antonio Stradivari violin of 1721, the ‘Kruse’. Hardly the stuff of general reading, this, but that kind of specialist detail has been the backdrop to my life for the past four decades or so. In other words, I’m married to a professional violinist.
Three’s not always a crowd
There are no Stradivaris in our house, but there is a violin which has served very well for many years. It took some eighteen months to find – it had to ‘speak’ orchestrally and as a chamber instrument, whilst remaining within the stratosphere price-wise – and it caused us penury, but it’s been a very constant companion.
Here is an almost ageless piece of ‘equipment’, already over a century old, which carries without doubt a fascinating history. (Anyone who saw the film The Red Violin, with such an impressively reflective performance by Joshua Bell of
John Corigliano’s score, will want to know more… but we’ve been acquainted with this instrument – oddly, also red – only since the era of that very different cultural phenomenon, the age of Flower Power.)
A voice with a mind of its own
I’ve lost count of the number of violins which come and go in this household – tiny (‘quarter’ and ‘half’) ones for little beginner student violinists, tough relatively modern Mittenwald instruments for open air use, intriguing painted ones for amusement, most recently a genuine rock electric model – but ‘the’ violin remains aloof from these passing visitors, a trusted and constant companion to its owner, to his partner musicians and indeed to me.
This violin met its match in a beautiful bow, and it stays here, 
serenely assured of its incumbency. It has seen joy and sadness, comings together and partings, sickness and health. It has travelled the world and explored the local neighbourhoods.
A welcome guest
Often, I suspect, this instrument tells its owner more about inner thoughts and feelings than could any words.
In a very different way, the film Un Coeur en Hiver, with its haunting music from Ravel’s Piano Trio, also explored the enigmas of this violinistic inner voice. For me too, though much more happily, our musical domestic ‘trio’ has offered a partnership which crosses from what can be articulated in normal ways to what cannot.
Inevitably, there are times when the violin takes first call – though I doubt any real examples of the stereotypically self-denying ‘orchestra wife’ now exist, not least because so many current players are women (and in any case, what orchestral salary supports a whole family?). When the music plays I go about my business contentedly alone, taking the distant musical role simply of involuntary audience whilst I work.
But to know so well the relationship between an instrument, a player and that person’s music – to have heard almost as though performing them wonderful works such as the Brahms’ Quintet for Piano and Strings – is a gift well beyond any singular demands of this particular menage a trois.
Graduates Into Employment….
Many young people want to remain in cities like Liverpool after their higher education, but opportunities to develop professionally if they do so are still often quite limited. So what exactly is a ‘graduate job’? And how do graduate jobs fit in with local economies?
There’s a brand new ‘Met Quarter’ shopping arcade in Liverpool city centre which looks quite interesting, so that was where we headed in search of some coffee, after a meeting in town this morning.
The new arcade is indeed worth a good look – all shiny steel and glass and smart labels – but there was one aspect of it that certainly wasn’t new to us. Our friendly and welcoming waitress was someone we already know because she’s a recent graduate. Like several others of her graduating year, she is employed in a capacity which gives her an income, but doesn’t really use her formal skills.
A conundrum for cities on the edge
This is a familiar problem for cities like Liverpool, perceived by bright young people to have excitement and ‘edge’, but with relatively weak economies.
The question which always arises in this context is, how long will a recent graduate stay in employment which doesn’t fit their recently acquired formal skills? Is it right to encourage young people to stay? Or should we be encouraging them to fly the civic nest, with a promise that we’ll keep in touch?
Liverpool has plenty of graduate incubators and ‘Graduates into Work’ programmes. Both have very important functions in the local economy. The former helps proto-type entrepreneurs to take their ideas forward; the latter, of course amongst other things, is often especially helpful for local graduates who already have their homes and families in Merseyside and need to stay.
The initial post-graduate years are critical
Is there an issue when young graduates remain in Liverpool in low-skill jobs, just at the time when they should be busily extending their experience and applying thier newly acquired knowledge?
Figures on graduate retention beyond a year or two are notoriously difficult to find for given locations. These are however crucial to our understanding of how the high skills agenda should be developed in an emerging economy such as Merseyside’s.
What some graduates and those with second degrees actually do after graduation remains a mystery, but the suspicion is that if they stay in a city like Liverpool they do not always fully use their new skills. Maybe we need to be honest enough on occasion to help them get experience elsewhere which, we all hope, they will later come back to Liverpool to use.
A fair exchange?
That young graduates want to stay and enjoy the vitality of a city such as Liverpool is excellent. Their enthusiasm and determination to make something of their lives here is something everyone warmly welcomes. But if we want these young people to develop their potential properly, we need to think of ways to establish a freeflow of skills and experience between our own backyard and other places.
Then, when the local economy really does come up to speed, we’ll have plenty of skilled and experienced people waiting, who already know us and want to be part of it.
Liverpool Botanic Garden, Edge Lane
The long-delayed Edge Lane developments, constructing an Eastern Gateway to Liverpool by 2007 / 8, are about to start. What a pity, then, that the historic Wavertree Botanic Gardens located just by the intended new route (and initiated in 1803 by no less a person than William Roscoe) are in such a state of neglect.
Dreaming Realist 