Category Archives: Liverpool And Merseyside
Whose Liverpool Capital of Culture Year?
Is ‘high culture’ in reality only for ‘tourists’ in a city like Liverpool? Have civic leaders confused seeking excellence with its occasional and much less desirable adjunct, exculsivity? If the city is serious about opportunities to support the personal development of its citizens and the economic health of its communities, ‘high’ arts and culture surely have to integral to the experience of the many, not just of the few.
Liverpool City Council’s new Leader, Councillor Warren Bradley, has already given his opinion on the city’s current plans for the European Capital of Culture in 2008.
‘I want to raise the profile of Capital of Culture because many people feel it is not for them’, he says. ‘We will need high art for the city centre for tourists, but it must hold the hand of community art.’
Social inclusion
Well, what does this mean? Warren Bradley was before his elevation Executive Member for Culture in the city, so it’s good to see, if I’m reading him correctly, that he intends to bring the Capital of Culture programme to as many people in Liverpool as possible.
It’s quite true that not everyone in Liverpool will willingly pay to sit through a long performance of a play, concert or perhaps opera; and in that of course Liverpool is no different from any other city anywhere.
Community politics
But is it true that as things stand (almost?) no-one in the city would or does enjoy ‘high art’? I don’t think so. This has a feeling, albeit perhaps unintentional, of playing to the gallery.
It’s a strange world where it’s suggested that only ‘tourists’, presumably from elsewhere since that what tourists generally are, will appreciate or want to see ‘high art’. There significant numbers of people who live in Liverpool and Merseyside who enjoy and support ‘high art’ already – we have three universities, two famous cathedrals, well-known theatres, a very significant collection of museums and galleries, and a world-renown orchestra. And these instituitions were integral to the winning bid to take on the mantle of 2008 European Capital of Culture. So why are they by implication now perhaps for ‘tourists’?
Leadership in challenging cultural barriers
I’d like to see two things happen fairly quickly as far as Liverpool’s ‘high arts’ assets are concerned.
Firstly, it needs to be acknowledged absolutely without question that nearly everyone involved in ‘high art’ in this city strives very hard indeed to make what they have on offer more ‘accessible’; and even those who aren’t actively involved in this mission fully accept its imperative. And the same will apply to those additional visiting ‘high’ artists who come to Liverpool during 2008. So there is already a huge will to challenge the barrier which may be keeping some Liverpool people away from the excellent range of high art in their own city. ‘Community’ art in Liverpool is already a central plank in the ‘high art’ cultural offer.
Secondly, I believe very strongly that people should be helped to understand the role of high art in their communities. It can and should serve them directly, but it is also a significant factor in attracting and / or maintaining other highly skilled people within the local economy. Professional and many business people expect to be able to attend quality performances in their own city, they expect to be able to take potential investors and customers to good plays, opera, concerts and whatever. These high art commodities are not fluffy add-ons, they are essential to the developing local and regional economy. And they need to be presented in this light by our city leaders.
Cultural entitlement
But there’s also another thing we all need to keep in mind….. Like many other things which are worth doing, ‘high art’ takes a bit of effort and getting used to. Moving outside previous experience and comfort zones is not always an easy option, but that’s absolutely not a ‘reason’ why it would not be attractive to many so-called ‘ordinary’ people, if they were given genuine opportunities to enjoy it.
‘Community arts’ whilst essential, and indeed an excellent way to engage people in the artistic experience, are not a substitute for the ‘real thing’. Let’s not apologise for the fact that high art can be challenging or even difficult. There are plenty of massively accomplished performers and artists in Liverpool who came originally from less privileged backgrounds; what took them forward was the chance, often in unlikely circumstances, to discover that they had real talent in their specialist fields.
An exciting route to personal development
Music, drama and other arts can offer people amazing ways to expand their experience and lives. Everyone in Liverpool who cares about opportunities opening up for all our citizens must, as Councillor Bradley would surely if asked agree, say loud and clear that high art and community art alike are part of everyone’s cultural entitlement.
All the citizens of Liverpool should be encouraged by the active example of our leaders to try the whole cultural offer, not just (though this may come first) the ‘community’ part of it. ‘High art’ isn’t just for ‘tourists’, it adds meaning to the lives of many people of every background and experience; it’s for us all.
‘Lifestyle’ Versus Value Creation In Merseyside’s Economy
Merseyside’s economy is often criticised for being too public-sector driven. And now the critque has extended to some sharp observations about the type of businesses which are here, as well as just how few of them there are. Maybe a bit of ‘experience swap’ would help us to get a wider picture?
There has been a lot of comment in recent years about the over-reliance of the Merseyside economy on the public sector, over the private one. It’s not so much, we are told, that there’s too much of the former, but rather that there’s not enough of the latter.
But now it seems even that defence is blown. At his quarterly report to the Liverpool Society of Chartered Accountants, corporate financier Steve Stuart has criticised Merseyside’s private sector for being ‘life-style’ at the expense of ‘value creation’.
This seems fair comment. Apparently, of 27,000 VAT-registered businesses in the area, 26,000 employed fewer than five people – and less than 700 had a turnover of more than £2m.
Too cosy or too costly?
The problem seems to be that most local businesses are averse to interference from outsiders, and like to do things their own way. This is a situation for which Mr Stuart holds local business advisers in part responsible.
Given the choice of external ‘interference’, or keeping things within the family, nearly all business people in these parts chooses to stay cosy. Not many want to take on the extra cost of private equity funding.
Well, I’m not surprised. Who around here has even heard of private equity funding? Of course, those in the world of banking are familiar on a day-to-day basis with this sort of arrangement; but you don’t bump into equity financiers on every corner in these parts.
This is, sadly, a part of the country where having A-levels is quite a considerable achievement for some folk… and where the difference between a pass degree and a doctorate is often seen – if it’s understood at all – as an irrelevant distinction. So not many of our home-grown entrepreneurs are bothered about the fancy stuff.
Who’s responsible for the Merseyside economy?
But before we ‘blame’ anyone too much for this unambitious state of affairs, for inhabiting such cosy comfort zones, it might be interesting to ask exactly who we think is ‘responsible’ for the health of our local economy. And my answer is, I’m not sure anyone really knows.
For my part, I regret that local people seem to need to be so cosy; but I don’t think it reasonable, given the claustrophobic and stultifying circumstances in which they survived until quite recently, to expect everyone in Merseyside who owns a business to want to go Big Time.
Before we see too much progress here I suspect we shall have to shake things up a bit – and one way might, dare I say it, be to bring in business ‘advisers’ from other parts of the country… and invite our home grown ones to work in differently-challenged business environments elsewhere, for the experience this would bring of other ways of doing things.
Then we’d all get a view of how green the grass is (or, depending, isn’t) on the other side of the fence. And that might really make some of us take ownership of pushing our local economy forward.
Friends Of Sefton Park
The Friends of Sefton Park (in Liverpool) have been making excellent progress in taking forward their work for the city….
The initative to promote Sefton Park seems to be going on apace.
The Friends of Sefton Park now have a new e-group which people associated with the Friends can join; and the plans for the future of the Park are developing and being debated quite rapidly. (Anyone who wants to join the Friends of Sefton Park Group could contact me directly via ‘Email Hilary’ on my home page, and I will send the expression of interest on to the Group.)
One thing which I find fascinating is how many of us with serious involvement in the environment are also e-contactable and so forth. Obviously, e-technology is a low-energy activity, once it’s all set up – and we don’t have to use petrol and paper to be in touch!
See also: Sefton Park’s Grebes And Swans
Liverpool’s Sefton Park, Swans, Herons And Grebes
Sefton Park, Liverpool: Winter Solstice 2006
Cherry Blossom For May Day In Sefton Park, Liverpool
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
The Eco-Community is All of Us
Building sustainability into community life will take a real shift in how we do things; but, just like weight-loss diets, it will only work for most of us if it’s something we find enjoyable and actually want to do.
It’s been very interesting to see how everyone has responded (on- and off-line) to recent postings here on Eco issues.
I started with a piece on ‘allotments for all’, wandered through some thoughts on Tesco and the other superstores, and have so far ended up with ideas around building communities in which sustainable living becomes part of the common, shared experience. (All these postings are listed below, if you want to have another look.)
The theme which is emerging for me is that we (literally) can’t afford to make sustainability into a ‘do it because it’s good for you’ exercise. It’s too important for that. And evidence elsewhere (e.g. with weight-loss diets) shows that people simply won’t carry on doing what they should unless they really believe it’s for the best and, critically, it fits into their pattern/s of living.
So, we can get a little way with house-to-house collections (Liverpool does these too; and it still has almost the lowest recycling turnover of any place around), and we can indeed troop up to Tesco or wherever with our recycle bags, when we go shopping (one lot of petrol, two missions). But some people don’t have cars, though they may have babies, or no job, or boring, isolated days…..
Fitting the practice to the people
This is why the ‘little but often’ approach might work for certain folk. It’s nice to have places to go, especially if in a good cause (i.e. recycling and community-building, in this case); and it’s nice to have things to grow, as people would if they had back-yard allotments – which is of course also where the green waste would be composted.
I strongly suspect – though we’d need much more evidence to be sure – that giving people reasons to get out and about, even if only to recycle stuff and meet up with neighbours (see Eco-Inclusion), would help to develop local relationships, and thus the community as a whole. In some ways, it’s like parents waiting at the school gates – but in this case it can be everyone, not just carers of small children.
And, if previous experience serves me right, meeting up informally but for a purpose also gives everyone in a locality reason to become more invoved in their community, and to make this more of a reality in terms of common interests and ambitions for the future.
A new sort of community?
Get people to relax and talk to each other, and you never know where it will take them (or you). Giving them an excellent reason to do this (recycling) adds impetus to the process.
I’m trying to think out new ways to connect, which also take account of eco-considerations – without adding further rules and constraints to people’s everyday lives.
It would be impossible to persuade everyone to give up cars and all the other things we’ve grown to think of as essential for our lives; but adding a bit of community spirit might ‘include in’ more, and more varied, people of all kinds to the very necessary task of tryng to sustain the eco-communities in which we, everyone of us, have to live.
Eco-Inclusive?
Why is recycling so often seen as something to be conducted only in grim carparks? Why can’t it (at least in the case of small amounts of material) be viewed as an opportunity for people actually to get together in their communities?
There have been some very interesting debates buzzing around this week. Not only have we (some of us, anyway) been hearing about Enterprise in all its manifectations, social and otherwise, but there have been big debates about how we should get a grip on environmental issues such as emissions and sustainability.
Mulling these things over, I also happened to come across some stuff on how difficult things currently are for towns and ports dependent on farming and fisheries. It strikes me that’s not really too much different from some of the issues in the disadvanatged areas I sometimes work in. They all need ‘new’ ways to build their economies, and to enhance their social and business connectivities.
Which led me to think more about the Eco- aspects of Enterprise.
Let me ask, why do we make our domestic recycling facilities so grim? Do they really all have to look like blots on the landscape? Isn’t there some way that at least some local recycling facilities could be part of the community ‘offer’?
The joined-up alternative
What would it look like if some recycling became a feature of community connection? Somewhere where people could pop in as they pass to the shops or park, and where you could at the same time join friends for a coffee, let the kids play, or visit the library?
In the past few years bookshops have at least twigged that people who buy books also like tea and cakes; it’s proved to be good for custom. Why isn’t the same applied to the idea of recycling? (I’m not talking here of the mega-visit with the car full of all sorts; that’s still a superstore carpark job.)
If the theme were ‘little and often’, and the facilities alongside recycling permitted, recycling points could become community hubs which local people visited becaue it’s a good place to go – recycling to one side (preferably covered), playspace and coffee shop / library / community facility / adult education venue of whatever sort at the other…. with the feelgood factor guaranteed, as we do our eco-duty.
The imaginative entrepreneur
Maybe the ‘problem’ is that eco- / recycling is perceived as a green wellie activity; not something for entrepreneurs, unless they’re of the ‘social’ sort. Let’s move from the vague notion that only Environmental Officers – who might be thought of (doubtless unfairly) as a pretty puritan lot – should have a remit for recycling.
Let’s see if this whole activity can become a central part of community life. If it gives people with their small bags of recyclable material, their pushchairs and their shopping an opportunity to enjoy half an hour’s chat, that would be really great.
Then maybe people can find out more about how they all connect and what in common they have or would like…. never underestimate the importance of actual person-to-person encounters when thinking about capacity building in communities!
And if local entrepreneurs can use any of this to develop or tempt business, that’s better still.
Social Enterprise Day – Today!
Social Enterprise is a bit of a mystery to some people… so today is a chance to find out more.
Today is Social Enterprise Day. Perhaps you knew that already, or perhaps you didn’t; but it’s also Social Enterprise Week, focusing primarily on young people, so there is bound to be a bit of media activity.
So what is Social Enterprise?
The Government’s definition of it is ‘a business with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose inthe business or the community, rather than being driven by the need to maximise profit for shareholders and owners.’
In other words, social businesses are set up to ‘make a difference’ for society or the environment.
More of them than you think…
Recent research has shown that there are some 15,000 UK businesses which are social enterprises. That’s about £18 billion per year generated in the economy, and around 475,000 jobs. This includes activities as varied as Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant, Cafedirect, and the Eden Project, or Liverpool’s own Furniture Resource Centre.
You can find out more about all this from the Social Enterprise Coalition or from the Enterprise Week website.
Stakeholders In Liverpool’s Hope Street
There are exciting things happening in Liverpool’s Hope Street. After more than a decade of consistent lobbying by HOPES: The Hope Street Association, it looks as though real, beneficial change is about to occur….
The past few weeks have seen a lot of activity in the Hope Street community; and it’s all good stuff.
We in HOPES: The Hope Street Association, a charity bringing together community and stakeholder interests, have been collaborating with Liverpool Vision and other partners for quite a while now to bring about improvements in the public realm – we recently obtained almost £3m. for this after a ten-year campaign!
Physical developments can lead economic ones
As I’d always believed would happen, evidence actually on the street of visible improvements has provided the impetus required to take forward the economic and business developments which the Hope Street Quarter so badly needs.
So today some of us sat down as representatives of the Hope Street Stakeholders and made plans which will have real impact on the Quarter and, with luck, well beyond. This has been HOPES’ intention for some long while, and it’s genuinely exciting to see it happening, with people from various organisations (arts, community, education and faith) and private enterprise sharing discussions to make substantive progress.
What happens next?
There are a few months to go before the public realm work will be completed and then we shall start to think about public art to ‘represent’ the communities of the Quarter, and so forth.
In the meantime, we’ve got the Hope Street Festivals group going with a view to next year, and now we’re planning some public and private enterprise moves – more about which I hope to report later.
So, watch this space. In quite a short time we will I hope have proof positive that bottom-up campaigns to benefit quite varied communities really can produce results!
The Tesco Effect
It may not be fashionable to say so, but maybe Tesco has a point when it says it can work to help develop local trading and communities. The evidence is not conclusive, but neither have all the arguments as yet been fully explored.
The debate about Tesco is all around us in Liverpool just now. There are strongly vocal groups, some of them just local people and traders, and some of them I suspect part of larger national campaigns, who are implacably opposed to any further development of Tesco anywhere near our patch.
Others, far more quietly, would actually rather like a bigger, brighter Tesco (or any other large supermarket) not far from home, where they can pop in, parking assured, 24 / 7.
It seems however that whilst one of Tesco’s applications, to the north of the city, has now been approved, there will be a big fight over the south city bid. Officers have recommended agreement, politicians mostly oppose it; so who knows what will happen when it all goes to appeal?
Reasons for unease
As far as I can gather, opposition to Tesco and other supermarkest falls into some four categories:
1. we live nearby, and shoppers will block our street parking, and maybe make a noise;
2. green space is at risk;
3. local traders will suffer;
4. we are opposed to any big business which may be getting the upper hand.
Reasons for quietly hoping plans will go ahead, however, tend simply to be that it’s convenient, open long hours and the range of merchandise is good.
Mixed messages
Maybe I’ve missed something, but it feels to me as if a number of mesages are coming over here, not very coherently.
Firstly, concerns about street parking are persuasive for local councillors dependent on electoral support – let the people park – but they are not otherwise very convincing. Mechanisms exist and are easily put in plaxce to prevent parking altogether, or allocate resients’ priority, etc; and in any case most Tesco stores have quite adequate parking facilities of their own, if they are permitted to establish these.
The concern about green space of course follows from this – more Tesco space, less green space; but Section 106 arrangements (which basically require developers to ‘give’ something to the local community in return for ‘taking’ a local footprint) can be brought to bear by Council Officers, so that alternative facilities will be part of the package. Perhaps not everyone from the Council for the Protection of Rural England will be happy with the end result; but, to be frank, cities are not rural.
The argument that local traders will suffer is more difficult; the jury is still out on this, because the evidence is generally unconclusive. Organisations such as the New Economics Foundation suggest that the effect on local traders may be damaging; this is therefore an issue to be taken seriously. It is probably however less clear that at least some of these local traders would have done well even if the lcaol supermarket had not been built.
And finally, the question of market share needs to be considered. Tesco, for instance, has about 30% of this in Britain, almost twice as much as its nearest competitor. But whether Tesco should be constrained is a matter in the hands of the Office of Fair Trading, not something which can be resolved at local level in a narrow context.
The counter-argument
The issues so far discussed are perhaps only part of the story.
Let us put aside matters of investment, when building large supermarkets, in local infrastructure and construction and so forth. These are usually acknowledged at least in part at some level.
But only rarely is it also noted that Tesco, like its main competitors, offers well-defined and nationally led staff training and development; the pay to start with is not especially good, but the opportunity to move up the ladder (or across to another one) is certainly there. In some communities, there are few other opportunities of this sort; but where these opportunities are on offer, specially in otherwise less advantaged areas, they are surely of value.
And, finally, we have to ask ourselves why local traders, if they really do want to keep going, are not forming liaisons at the professional as well as the protectionist level. Are they sharing responsibilities such as staff training, local environmental improvements and the like? What, if anything, is the collective deal, with or without the supermarket in their midst?
Maybe Tesco is right to carry on growing, or just maybe it should be restrained; but the basis of the debate so far does not explore all the issues at stake. If the simple demand to ‘stop!’ were replaced by a dialogue on how to develop, with or without large supermarkets, local people and politicians might discover that there are more ways forward than they think.
Art In Whose Context? (Private ‘Versus’ Public)
Art and culture are often dismissed as peripheral to public life; but private investment in the arts is serious business. There is a strong case for the position that what’s good enough for private investment, is also good enough for investment in the public sphere.
Looks like we’re all a bit muddled about what the arts are ‘for’…. Revent news stories have revealed that a Cheshire Member of Parliament is up in arms because the North West Development Agency has over the past few years spent a seven figure sum on (mostly very large-scale) public art; and there’s another rumpus about money being ‘wasted’ on engaging professional artists to do work in hospitals (see Is Art good for your Health?); and the list could go on….
Conflicting perceptions
If ever there was confusion, you can find it when people debate the arts. That is, if they debate at all. For some, there’s no need to debate, they just know – usually, that it’s all a waste of time and money.
And, perhaps even more worryingly, often the arts are not even considered when people look at plans for the future. Arts and culture are add-ons which can happen later, if someone remembers to get around to it. Certainly no need to seek professional advice or make sure there’s an outline arts strategy in place from the beginning.
Yet the same folk who berate public art often have no objection to the private sort. To parody, maybe a little unkindly, old masters in oak drawing (or international corporate board) rooms are one thing; vibrant work on accessible public display is another.
The cost factor
An underlying theme in this seems to be that arts and culture are O.K. as long as nobody publicly accountable has to shell out for them now. Perhaps this is why Museums seem to be able to make their case more easily than the Performing Arts – the less unrelentlessly labour intensive, and the more thematically linked to ‘tourism’, i.e. ‘business’, the better.
Ideally, we gather, the arts should be delivered by volunteers (amateurs) who ‘give something back’ – whatever that means – whilst people who are paid should concentrate on careers in the basics, treatments, training, tarmac, tills and the like; and of course everyone understands these are all essentials of modern living. But would that life were so simple…. though I wouldn’t like it to be so boring.
Missing links
There are two immediate snags with the ‘do arts for pleasure not pay’ argument.
The first is that, if no-one takes a proefssional role in the arts, there will soon be no-one left to show the next generation how to do it. The arts demand high levels of skill which take a long time to acquire – if anyone is to invest this amount of energy and time, they need a reasonable assurance that there will be a professional pay-back later, whether this be as a painter, a performer or even, say, a public parks and open spaces artist and animateur.
Secondly, art in all its forms can be the ‘glue’ which attaches a community to its various and infomal formal structures. The arts offer opportunities for local pride (think of Newcastle’s Angel in the North, or Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall), they can involve people directly (street theatre, music, film projects etc) and they provide ‘real’ reasons for communities at every level to come together and to share a common interest and identity.
Private or public?
Maybe the context/s of art and culture are what define how we perceive it all. Perhaps if we recognised the various posturings and positions from an underlying ‘private vs. public’ perspective we can begin to make sense of them. The confusion then drops away, for me at least. If art and culture are good enough for private settings, they are good enough for public contexts too.
Why The Merseyside Economy Needs More SciTech Research & Development
A recent meeting of the North West Business Leadership Forum and The Mersey Partnership has focused minds on how to engage the Knowledge Economy at its highest levels. Reseach and Development are universally understood to enhance economies. The challenge now for Merseyside entrepreneurs and businesses is therefore to grasp the exciting opportunities emerging via our growing high-tech knowledge base.
On Thursday (10 November) this week I went to a joint North West Business Leadership Forum / Mersey Partnership forum in Liverpool. Attendance was high, this being the first opportunity for some of us to hear the views of Robert Crawford, the new Chief Executive of The Mersey Partnership.
Robert’s analysis of where Merseyside ‘is at’ was of course worth hearing. In just six weeks he has obviously seen and digested a great deal, and he shared some of his initial thoughts with us during his talk. What particularly encouraged me, however, was his emphasis on the Knowledge Economy at the highest levels: his questions around retention of post-grads as well as first degree graduates, and his challenge to our three local universities to increase ‘Reach In’ – the term used by States-side colleges for close alignment with local businesses, especially at a time when private corporates have to some extent reduced their own in-house research and development.
Nations don’t compete; businesses compete
Innovation, productivity and skills development, as MIT and other studies have told us, are globally the key to enterprise success. It follows therefore research and development are at least as important in Merseyside as anywhere else. Our sub-regional productivity is lower than elsewhere, but our higher education base is robust. The task is to bring the potential for R&D into play to increase productivity, as has happened dramatically in parts of China and elsewhere. Knowledge inevitably traverses continents freely, but it is up to businesses to engage it for their own use.
Places as far apart as Bangalore, North Carolina and Ireland have found ways to bolster their economies using very high skills. We in the North West of England now have the opportunity to do the same. Fortunately we have just secured a huge advantage via the new-found confidence in North West science at Daresbury and in Liverpool’s own university science base. It needs to be said, however, that this work is in every sense regional and (inter)national, as well as sub-regional. Merseyside will get nowhere in this vast emerging network of science and technology without collaboration with our erstwhile city-region competitors. None of us is big enough to do it on our own.
Moving forward
For the Merseyside economy and its people to flourish in this new context, as Robert Crawford said in his address, we need mechanisms in place to define our own sub-regional partnerships, and to identify and remove local impediments to progress. For this to happen we also need to map our baseline/s and to have confidence that public sector intervention will be carefully considered, timely and appropriate.
One part of this positive partnership development will be the increasing involvement of high-achieving people who have links with our city and sub-region; they may not all live here, but there are many other ways in which win-win synergies can be developed.
For me, such synergies clearly include the huge numbers of high-skills liaisons which occur virtually and person-to-person in the North West’s world-class science programmes. But whilst there can be huge benefits for Merseyside which arise from these endeavours, we must never escape forget that the science itself is funded internationally, and its potential impact is global. Only if Merseyside’s local entrepreneurs take the time to grasp the opportunities to hand will we benefit particularly. The next challenge is to persuade enough of them that such apparently esoteric activity actually has relevance for their bottom line.
Dreaming Realist 