Category Archives: Liverpool And Merseyside
Where Are Liverpool’s Parks And Open Spaces?
Liverpool has a number of fascinating green spaces, including Calderstones, Croxteth, Dovecot, Everton, Greenbank, Norris Green, Otterspool, Princes, Reynolds, St James’, Sefton, Stanley and Wavertree Parks, as well as other Gardens and Churchyards…. The contribution which follows is a direct invitation to readers to comment on these vital ‘lungs’ in this historic city.
Liverpool has a number of fascinating green spaces, including Calderstones, Croxteth, Dovecot, Everton, Greenbank, Newsham, Norris Green, Otterspool, Princes, Reynolds, St James’, Sefton, Stanley and Wavertree Parks, as well as other Gardens and Churchyards…. and no doubt others can add comment about, and more information immediately to, this list.
The City Council now has a draft strategy for developing some of these spaces, but there’s still a place for people to befriend their favourite parks.
So please do let us know about your Parks and their Friends.* Let’s make a list of the contacts for all these wonderful green spaces in our city.. Our parks and green spaces are important and people’s views and ideas need to be shared. You can add your information and comments below, or, as others have done, in for instance the Sefton Park ‘slot..
Friends’ Groups so far of which I am aware are:
Croxteth Hall & Park
St James’ Cemetery & Park
Newsham Park
Princes Park
Sefton Park
[*Note to contributors: You don’t need to display any more of your details than you wish when you give your name. This website only asks for your email address, privately, so that we can ban spammers, not you!!]
What Now For Liverpool’s Sefton Park? (A Monday Women Debate)
Plans for Sefton Park are taking shape rapidly – as are ideas for several of Liverpool’s other Parks. Monday Women decided to have a debate; points from our discussion follow. Your contributions on how Liverpool’s Parks should be developed are also most welcome.
Meeting up with other Monday Women this evening, one very hotly discussed topic of conversation was the merits or otherwise of plans for Sefton, Otterspool and Newsham Parks. Amongst the issues considered, of course, was the fate of the cherry trees by the middle lake.
It’s actually very heartening that so many people wanted to talk about these plans in detail, and to continue the discussion elsewhere. We therefore came up with the idea of making this topic a ‘main’ item on my website…. so here it is!
I’ll kick off with a few thoughts on plans for Sefton Park, in my own locality (years ago, this would have been Newsham Park, so I have something of a ‘compare and contrast’ perspective on developments).
The main issues in contention for Sefton Park currently seem to include:
* Do we want lighting, or bats? (Maybe we want both; how about ground-level lighting of the southern, presently non-lit, paths.. which would also remove any concerns about strollers being well-lit, and supposed potential assailants lurking invisibly in bushes ‘behind’ the lights) How will we ensure that the vibrant wild and bird life of the park is nurtured?
* Why are the only toilets in the Park in the Central Kiosk? (The Palm House has some, of course, but they are not open to the public.)
* Do people realise that the Park is far from ‘natural’? (Conservation is a managed process; many trees, bushes and supplings have just grown as they will, and some of these probably do need to be removed.)
* How will the intended new waterways be designed? And how will they be kept clean and clear?
* Has anyone realised that, if the attached allotments (apparently controlled not by Parks & Gardens, but by Recreation & Leisure…) are drained to remove waterlogging, there is a fear that the water will cascade across the Park?
* What sorts of performance space/s are intended for the Park? Will these be all-weather, and who will manage them?
* Is there any scope for a pleasant meeting place / restaurant at the south end of the Park, and what will become of the Central Kiosk? Will there be any public art?
* Where will young people be able safely to congregate in the evening and at weekends, whilst younger children, families and older people can continue to enjoy the quieter aspects of the facility?
There are lots of questions, some of them quite fundamental, in the issues being raised, so it’s good to be able to report that we can expect a Public Exhibition and Consultation on the Sefton Park proposals, cum December. Watch this space for details!
And, in the meantime, please do carry on the debate right here. (NB You don’t have to publish your details; the only check we make on this website is that you are not a spammer!) We all look forward to hearing your views, below…
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
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
HOPES Millennium Commission Presentation (London, 22 September 2000)
HOPES: The Hope Street Association (Liverpool) was honoured by being invited in September 2000 to give the ‘community festival’ perspective at a national meeting in London attended by the Secretary of State for Culture, Chris Smith M.P., the Millennium Commissioners and their special guests. The paper which follows was presented on this occasion by HOPES Hon. Chair, Hilary Burrage.
HOPES: The Hope Street Association
Presentation to the Secretary of State for Culture, the Rt Hon Chris Smith MP, and the Millennium Commission
London, 22 September 2000
Maintaining the Momentum of Change: Making connections – building communities
THE HOPE STREET MILLENNIUM FESTIVAL (LIVERPOOL)
The Liverpool Hope Street Millennium Public Arts Route
Background
HOPES: The Hope Street Association came into being in 1994/5 as a result of the on-going campaign to support Liverpool’s Everyman and Playhouse Theatres and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, all of which were then under serious threat of financial calamity. Since 1991/2 The Campaign to Promote the Arts on Merseyside (CAMPAM – now amalgamated with HOPES) had proclaimed of these vital elements of Liverpool’s cultural life that ‘once lost, we will not get them back’.
The Hope Street Quarter is an area at the downtown edge of Liverpool City Centre which covers approximately a square kilometre. It is probably unique in the density of civic resources it offers, with an amazing number of cultural and educational institutions lined along and on either side of Hope Street itself.
Almost all of these institutions are members or partners of HOPES, including both Cathedrals and both Universities, several colleges and training centres in the area, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Hall, and the Everyman and Unity Theatres. Other HOPES members importantly include local traders, professional businesses, residents and private individuals.
HOPES’ Aims
From the very beginning, HOPES had a number of stated aims:
– to establish the area around Hope Street as a formal Quarter, thereby gaining for it and its constituent parts serious recognition as a springboard for appropriate, managed development;
– to establish formal liaison with decision-makers in the City of Liverpool in order to promote and develop the many aspects of Hope Street Quarter which put together would offer a striking synergy for renaissance of the area and the city as a whole;
– to establish a special identity as a not-for-profit body with links with national and other local bodies involved in regeneration and social entrepreneurship;
– to gain Millennium Commission recognition and support, especially for celebratory activities which brought together members of the local community and a wide range of artists and other professionals in the area.
It can be said in general terms that the year 2000 has seen a significant measure of success in all four of these objectives, and not least, in the first three cases, because of the impetus which Festival support from the Millennium Commission has provided.
Moving towards the Hope Street Millennium Festival
Hope Street’s Festival has been focused, although not exclusively, on the Midsummer period. We began earlier in the year with some ‘taster’ small concerts and children’s workshops in local community venues, and we will continue with these, and with other educational and arts projects, until the end of the year, and beyond. But the main focus has been Midsummer, following from a practice of running Midsummer Festivals which began in 1977, with the celebration of HM Queen’s Silver Jubilee and a pageant on Hope Street arising from Malcolm Arnold’s work, The Valley and the Hill. On that first occasion some 17,000 school children were involved, but from this grew a number of other Hope Street Midsummer Festivals which might be compared with, say, early Three Choirs Festivals in terms of content and delivery.
By the mid-1980s, however, this series of festivals had come to an end, and the first, tentative, festival of the current series was organised by the Hope Street Association in 1996. This first, modest venture was over one weekend only, but, encouraged by the interest it engendered, we have since developed annual programmes over longer periods, with the Millennium Midsummer Festival extending over the entire month of June.
Preparations for the Hope Street Millennium Festival have their roots in the very first decisions made by HOPES. We agreed at a well-attended public meeting to make an application to the Millennium Commission for a significant capital award to support the physical regeneration of the Hope Street Quarter – a bid, put together entirely on a volunteer / pro-bono basis, which was unsuccessful but which also drew considerable attention to the Quarter at a time when we were also seeking (ultimately successfully) to have the Quarter so designated by the city authorities. Several early rejections of economic development and arts-related bids, however, left us if anything more determined to succeed in a significant bid which would highlight the unique and exciting features of our Quarter. And so further work and public consultation led to the successful Millennium Festival Award which has now been delivered and employed with very real effect.
Facing the challenges
The Hope Street Association has however been seriously challenged in delivering such a festival. HOPES has almost no direct income (other than modest membership fees and occasional individual donations); but it does receive significant in-kind support from many sources, the most sustained of which has been provision of an office and facilities by the Liverpool Business School and, latterly, by the Liverpool Architecture and Design Trust. This generous support is matched by ‘staff’ who are young graduates on management-training placements from our Universities (mostly the Language Learning Centre of the University of Liverpool).
These young people are mentored and supervised by HOPES’s Chair, a semi-retired lecturer who has hands-on involvement in the day-to-day running of the organisation. Without the enthusiasm and energy of HOPES’s ‘staff’ trainees the close community links and many activities of the Association and its Festival would not be possible – young people bring their own very valuable momentum to events!
Participating in the Hope Street Millennium Festival
A key aim of HOPES’ approach to the Millennium Festival has been community participation at every level. Our objective has been to deliver artistic and educational activities using highly-skilled professionals working with local people who have a close knowledge of the community – thereby, we hope, breaking down possible psychological and other barriers to collaboration in the renaissance of the Hope Street Quarter and helping where we can to bring about also the longed-for renaissance of Liverpool.
Over many months the following outline programme for the Hope Street Millennium Festival developed and has now been delivered:
Involvement of Merseyside schools in the Festival,, especially through
– an extended Banners project led by an Egyptian teacher, Nivien Mahmoud, who has come with her family to Liverpool whilst her husband studies at the University
– invitations to schools to involve their students in the now-established annual Hotfoot on Hope Street Midsummer concert at Philharmonic Hall
– poetry and arts / science ‘creativity’ projects led by HOPES graduate trainee Development Officer, Jo Doyle, with volunteer expert advice and support
Involvement of top-level artists and educationalists such as players from the Royal Liverpool Orchestra in a number of activities such as
– the Gala Midsummer Hotfoot on Hope Street concert at Philharmonic Hall, in which talented young amateur instrumentalists and singers performed music ranging from Peter and the Wolf to Beatles arrangements alongside players RLPO professionals
– informal chamber concerts by Live-A-Music, a group of RLPO players, at venues like St Bride’s Church, Toxteth (at the invitation of the Vicar) and Liverpool Town Hall (at the invitation, on BBC Music Live Day, of the Lord Mayor)
– music workshops for children (and their parents) run alongside these concerts by another Live-A-Music / RLPO player, Richard Gordon-Smith (also HOPES’ Composer-in-Residence) at community venues such as St Bride’s and The Blackie
– an emphasis on music by ‘minority’ composers and performers, eg: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (researched by Live-A-Music’s Director, Martin Anthony (Tony) Burrage) and the Saurang Orchestra, initiated by Surinder Sandhu, which brings together professional players from the Indian, Western and Jazz traditions – and which this time included performance of the international Ode to Joy, supported by Liverpool City Council Arts Unit and David Ellwand of Summer Music
– the creation overall of 60+ engagements in the city for professional performers, as well as encouragement for new composers via a competition offering opportunities for winning entries to be performed by a professional group of musicians
Involvement of the wider local and Merseyside community through
– widespread media coverage, local leafleting / newsletters, consultation meetings etc
– a longer-term commitment to establish a Hope Street Millennium Public Arts Route celebrating the activities of all who have been involved in our Millennium Festival
– maintaining contacts in local communities through friends and colleagues made whilst HOPES provided administrative support for the 1998 Liverpool Windrush activities (at the initial suggestion of Jeffrey Morris of BBC Television)
– development of an on-going website
– a dazzling pre-Launch performance at the Metropolitan (RC) Cathedral by Sicilian flag-throwers, arranged by Mrs Nunzia Bertali, Italian consul for Merseyside
– engagement of local people to provide voluntary advice and assistance in the development, marketing and promotion of all the Festival activities, through an informal network of Festival Committee members and helpers – including Arthur Bowling, a Millennium Fellow who was introduced to HOPES by the Commission
– concerts and free workshops over several months which had marketing campaigns targeted particularly at local communities around Hope Street, for which, in addition to wider promotional support from the RLPS, we delivered leaflets door-to-door
– producing and displaying the HOPES Banners all along Hope Street for the Midsummer weekend, in a collaboration with schools, Liverpool University Student Guild and their Organiser Emily Coombes, the Youth Service, the Probation Service (who provided community service probationers to actually mount the banners) – and, crucially, the owners of all the stretches of iron railing along the street
– a ‘Family Fun Day’ on Sunday 18 June, when we collaborated with the Dingle SALE (Southern Area Local Enterprise), the Police, Liverpool John Moores University and other authorities to close a stretch of Hope Street and offer free family entertainment (Brownies and local dance groups, young popular musicians, balloons, craft and activity stalls in the John Moores University car park on the corner of Hope Street, etc.) which many people enjoyed – in brilliant sunshine!
Involvement of HOPES members, regeneration professionals and other interested practitioners, students and citizens through
– displays, newspaper articles and radio / TV interviews about the Festival and regeneration of the Quarter
– a formal Festival Launch when Angela Heslop, Arts Editor of Radio Merseyside, gave the Annual HOPES State of the Arts on Merseyside address
– displays, newspaper articles and radio / TV interviews about the Festival etc
– a HOPES Millennium Gala Dinner, attended by Guests of Honour The Lord Mayor of Liverpool, Mrs Louise Ellman MP for Liverpool Riverside, Councillor Mike Storey as Leader of Liverpool City Council, and David Scougall, a Director of the British Urban Regeneration Association, as speaker, with many other significant figures in Liverpool’s regeneration alongside other members and supporters of HOPES
– liaison with bodies such as the Musicians’ Union and others, in an informal network
– a National Conference, Art at the Heart: The Role of Established Cultural Quarters in City Renaissance, which had as Keynote Speaker Chris Brown of the Urban Task Force, as well as a wide range of other development practitioners and academics
– production after this conference of a publication, The Hope Street Papers, which contains professional presentations from actual speakers and others, as well as responses from members of the public who attended the conference as participants.
HOPES’ current position
Whilst HOPES remains an organisation dependent almost entirely on volunteer activity and support, with many professionals and members of the community giving their services freely, our position has shifted very positively during our Millennium Festival year. Significant factors in this change include
– strengthening of community links, eg, through collaboration with Dingle SALE, the St Bride’s (Canning / Toxteth) community and the University of Liverpool Students’ Guild community volunteers
– greater involvement with the Universities and Colleges (eg: invitations to work with fifth year Architecture students at Liverpool and LJMU, to perform a community chamber concert at Liverpool Art School, to collaborate with the University of Liverpool and Liverpool Institute for Performing Art in a science theatre proposal, and to collaborate with music students at Liverpool Hope University College)
– agreement from the Charity Commission that HOPES can register in the near future as an arts, educational and conservation etc charity, expressly to benefit the City of Liverpool and the local community
– much strengthened links with the British Urban Regeneration Association, the North-West Regional Development Agency, the NW Arts Board, the Liverpool Architecture and Design Trust , Liverpool Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Local Agenda 21, Aurora, the Musicians’ Union and other significant organisations
– establishing working contact with the London-based School for Social Entrepreneurs, especially since this year our graduate trainee Development Officer, Jo Doyle, has at HOPES’ initial suggestion been studying there; she is currently developing a HOPES programme which will bring together professional musicians (eg: from the RLPO / Live-A-Music) and community-based practitioners to engage young popular musicians in a New Deal scheme addressing social exclusion
– development of a formal relationship with the City of Liverpool’s Youth (Life Long Learning) Service, which has agreed to offer financial support for Jo Doyle’s project
– making professional musical connections with the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Society (based in Croydon, where he lived) and members of the Saurang Orchestra (who visit Liverpool to play in it from India and the United States) – so providing proof positive that ‘classical’ music is not the preserve simply of a certain type of person
– increasingly strong connections with the innovative public-private partnership city-centre development agency, Liverpool Vision, and with the City of Liverpool’s new Regeneration Directorate (who very helpfully introduced us to the Youth Service)
– establishing as a priority consideration of mechanisms for graduate retention in Liverpool, beyond simply the post-graduate management training phase
– achieving the prime objective of the Association, which is to establish the need for acknowledgement and renaissance of the Hope Street Quarter – this was recently accomplished after submissions to and high-level discussions with the City’s Unitary Development Plan office and then with the new City Centre Development Company, Liverpool Vision, which in July revised its strategy to include Hope Street Quarter as a primary location for attention, having initially not done so at all.
The advantage of Millennium Funding
For all these developments the advantage of Festival funding from the Millennium Commission has been enormous. It allowed us to plan a Festival in confidence, knowing that we could pay at least essential bills; and, most importantly, it gave us credibility and a new and higher profile. That’s worth more than almost anything else.
Liverpool School Of Tropical Medicine Teams Up With Bill Gates
The Bill and Melinda Gates award to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine is testimony to the excellence of that institution; and it is also a huge endorsement of investment in the future of science in the North of England and beyond.
Congratulations to Professor Janet Hemingway and her team on their award from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation!
As a Member (and previously a Trustee) of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine I have watched over the past three or four years as the School’s ambitious plans have progressed from the drawing board to the Gates Foundation Boardroom. Everyone has been very focused on success, and building the ‘package’ which has brought this about was painstaking work. It has involved careful co-ordination between governmental funders, national and local politicians, academics at the highest level, and many others.
People like Bill Gates don’t give their money unless they are convinced it will be well matched by other funds, and will be extremely well spent.
This is extremely good news not only for the LSTM and the University of Liverpool, but also for the city and the Northwest of England – not to mention for the prestige of British science itself. The research is of the highest standard and the outcome, in terms of impact on people at risk of malaria, will be massive.
Regional synergies
Slowly but surely the connections between science institutions in the North of England are being made. The synergies of collaboration are beginning to be visible beyond the largely ignored ivory towers.
If these new developments are genuinely welcomed and nurtured by our city and regional leaders for what they can bring, the impact on parts of the UK could be almost as significant, in their own way, as the impact of the research in the locations where the medical risks being studied are to be found.
Liverpool 2007: 800 And Enterprising
This proposal, on the theme of Liverpool 2007: Enterprise City of the Future, was first circulated publicly (and very widely) in December 2001, It concerns the need for Liverpool to be forward-looking and engaging as the city progresses through the key years towards 2007 and 2008.
We can – and do! – all hope that Liverpool will become European Capital of Culture in 2008; we can with justification expect that the Manchester-led Commonwealth games in 2002 will benefit everyone in the North West; but of one thing we can be absolutely certain – that in 2007 the City of Liverpool will celebrate its 800th anniversary. No crystal-gazing required there.
So what are we all doing about this? Perhaps not too much yet; but we need to get going.
The lessons of the Millennium are there for all to see: aim high, plan early, and stick at it. In Liverpool even such relatively modest projects as the Hope Street Millennium Festival were first mooted some four or five years before they actually took place.
And another lesson which experience offers, unsurprisingly, is that clear objectives and step-by-step planning lead to success.
Objectives first: What can we celebrate especially in Liverpool’s 800th year? I’d suggest four ‘strands’ to start with: Liverpool’s rich history of international and inter-continental links; its undisputed inventiveness (from George Stephenson onwards); its tradition of grand architecture, landscaping and culture; and its diversity and creativeness, in bad times and good.
Sounds familiar? Perhaps you’re thinking of the admirable themes behind Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture bid. But that, we all hope, will happen the year after the Big Birthday; and plans for it have to be developed in the knowledge that, despite the strengths of Liverpool’s bid, this wonderful European accolade could in the end go to anywhere in the UK.
2007 by contrast is definitely Liverpool’s for the taking. One of the UK’s premier cities – ours – already has 2007 in the bag; so now let’s make sure everyone knows about it.
Back then to objectives. Surely a theme which arises from all the ‘strands’ mentioned is ENTERPRISE? Liverpudlians, through thick and thin, are inventive. They innovate, they find ways round; they are, in short, entrepreneurial. And more and more, they are becoming entrepreneurial in the ways their businesses are developing – big businesses or small, social or straight commercial, imagination and innovation abound.
So I’d say, let’s make 2007 the year to promote LIVERPOOL: ENTERPRISE CITY OF THE FUTURE. Let’s celebrate the past and present, achievements by our diverse communities of every sort, but let’s also determinedly set our sights on the future and what we must make it hold for ourselves and generations to come.
Which takes us back to the need for a step-by-step approach. We must see 2007 as ‘lift-off’ for our futures, not an end point, and we must build up to it carefully, perhaps via annual milestones.
The year 2002 sees not only the NW Commonwealth games, but the Queen’s Golden Jubilee – many will remember the 17,000 children who celebrated with music and drama when Her Majesty visited Hope Street in 1977; perhaps we can celebrate our communities in this way again next year. Then, 2004 is the centenary of Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral. And so we could continue. Already, I know many will be thinking, ‘Yes, my organisation has something big to celebrate in the years 2002-2007’.
And all these anniversaries have arisen because people in this amazing city of ours Did Something Special. They built a cathedral (or two); they formed a football club (or two); they founded a university (or two or three); they founded many businesses; they developed rich and diverse communities; they built theatres and organised festivals; they achieved things at the very frontiers of science and knowledge.
By all means let’s work hard, very hard, to make Liverpool European Capital of Culture in 2008; but let’s do it in the context of what we already know without a shadow of a doubt will be ours in 2007. And let’s take this wonderful opportunity to celebrate and show-case all that is most exciting and entrepreneurial in our very own Pool of Life.
Here’s a unique opportunity for lift-off, for communities and businesses to come together to make Liverpool’s future. Perhaps, in fact, this is an opportunity which can only be led from the front, by Liverpool’s entrepreneurs of all sorts, to make a better future for everyone. Informal discussions suggest that people from the arts, business, communities, education and science are all incredibly keen to move our city on. Who, I wonder, will join in taking the first steps forward to 2007, to make Liverpool Eight Hundred and vibrantly Enterprising?
And then we really would have something extra which is Liverpool’s alone to add to our European Capital of Culture celebrations in 2008.
This proposal, written by Hilary Burrage, was first circulated on 6 December 2001.
2012 London Olympics: An Opportunity For Liverpool?
Already, some people in Liverpool believe the 2012 Olympics will be ‘bad’ for Merseyside. Having already won the accolade of 2008 European Capital of Culture, – and bearing in mind also the City’s 800th Anniversary in 2007 – surely we in Liverpool are actually very well placed to benefit greatly from the 2012 Olympics, if we start to plan now? The glass is decidedly half full, not half empty. The next challenge for Liverpool is to recognise this and act on it.
The news on Merseyside today is that a survey shows more local business people think the 2012 Olympics will be bad for the Liverpool area than good for it.
They argue that benefit will probably be directly in relation to proximity to London; and indeed that finance for the Olympics will take any available monies, leaving not much for the rest of us.
This is a particularly puzzling view in Merseyside, where we are about to benefit from our 800th Anniversary in 2007, and then the 2008 European Capital of Culture – events brim-full of business opportunities and visitors, alongside the city’s current enthusiasm for regeneration.
Call me naive, but I see here a chance to build on whatever success we in Liverpool can make of our 2007 / 2008 events. The city’s leaders have consistently said they want the celebrations and developments kicked-started by the 2008 Culture Year (and the city’s 2007 800th Anniversary celebrations) to continue longer term, with a programme which has horizons well beyond those dates.
These forthcoming events are surely the way to make sure we’re on the ball for the Olympics, a position which is unique to Liverpool in the UK . By 2012 we will have put in place all the infrastructure and tourism facilities you could possibly wish for, and we will have learned a lot during our 2007/8 years in the limelight.
It’s up to all of us outside the capital to make sure that our Olympics ‘offer’ for 2012 is up to scratch. I don’t want to ask people now if they are worried about 2012. I’d prefer to ask how, already, they are engaging their imaginations to make 2012 a year when the whole country makes the most of chances to work together to show what we can do.
This is definitely one scenario where the glass is not half empty, but already half full – especially for Liverpool, 2008 European Capital of Culture. Let’s make sure the 2012 opportunity is relished, not rejected.
Liverpool’s Newsham Park needs to be conserved
Newsham Park in Liverpool is a Listed Historic Park; yet it has on its perimeter distressingly neglected vintage houses owned, it is said, by the City Council and local Housing Associations. Some concerned locals want the City of Liverpool to take action against itself on this matter. This situation, as some residents understand it, hardly suggests positive re-inforcement of active citizenship in one of the most deprived inner-city localities of the UK.
The very first place we ever lived in Liverpool was, literally, a garret in Fairfield Crescent, off Newsham Park. Still a student, I thought this quite exotic, a place of our own even though the downside was three very steep flights of stairs.
Since my time there many years ago Newsham Park has suffered considerable neglect. The local bank has disappeared, many more people seem to be unemployed, and despite some new retail outlets and the efforts of Kensington New Deal there is widespread visible decay in some parts of the area.
Nonetheless the area is blessed with numbers of residents who are fighting energetically for their patch. Newsham Park is in its design an elegant green space surrounded by large Vistorian houses and wide carriage ways. It was, and still has the potential to be, an urban gem for those who live in the north of the city.
It is shocking therefore to hear that some of the most delapidated housing around Newsham Park is actually owned by the City Council and local Housing Associations. And this, in a Listed Historic Park and within a Conservation Area.
The news is apparently that Newsham Park residents have decided to ask the City to take enforcement action against the owners – sometimes one gathers themselves – of the most neglected properties. Whether this comes about, and what the official response might be, we shall see.
But it does leave us to wonder exactly how one of the most deprived localities of the UK can bring about much needed change for the better, if those who live in and care about it it apparently have to ask their own city to remedy disgraceful neglect on their very doorsteps.
Should it transpire that the City Council, as an example and encouragement to concerned local people, can’t find ways to look after its own property, what hope is there for the rest?
Why Do Farmers’ Markets Cheer Us Up So Much?
Farmers’ Markets have a special place in city life. They encourage us to feel part of a community, yet when we go to these markets we also feel that as individuals we are attending to our health and leisure needs. Farmers’ Markets may indeed sometimes in reality be big business, but they fill a gap in our fragmented urban lives.
Farmers’ Markets seem to be all the rage in Liverpool at the moment. They started in the ciy centre (by the Victoria Monument), and recently sprouted up in Lark Lane to the South of the city. Now, this Sunday, there is at last to be one in Hope Street, the cultural quarter. All the recent evidence suggests that, weather permitting, this too will be a big success.
So why is everyone in the city so enthusiastic about Farmers’ Markets? Several possible answers to this question come to mind:
Farmers’ Markets make us feel healthy. Whether the produce is actually fresher and more nutritious (or beneficial in other ways, if not edible) than produce we can buy in supermarkets, we willingly go along with the idea that it must be.
Farmers’ Markets make us feel part of a community; we throng around, perhaps sharing comments with perfect strangers about what’s on offer, and aware of the shared purpose in our being there. Yet we also feel like individuals – not for us the pre-packaged routinised stuff of the big stores. We are making a positive, personal choice to buy, or perhaps just to consider buying, produce which feels, against supermarket standards, just a bit exotic.
Farmers’ Markets take us back in time. We imagine, more or less accurately, that this until quite recently is how people have always conducted their financial transactions. There’s a rusticness about what we’re doing which harks back to a supposed golden age which is in contemporary times usually only seen on Christmas cards.
Farmers’ Markets are ecological. If we can, we walk to them (or at least park the car a distance away), clutching cane baskets and imagining, correctly or otherwise, that what we intend to buy is organic.
Farmers’ Markets let us feel authentic. We can actually talk, and maybe even negotiate our purchase, with the people who are seling their own goods – which we naturally suppose they have also themselves carefully crafted. The goods are authentic. The person-to-person transaction is authentic. We must be authentic.
And Farmers’ Markets are interesting. We are often not sure what we’ll find when we get there. Who will turn up this time? What will they have to sell? We attend trustingly, purses speculatively at the ready in our pockets; not for us on this occasion the usual boring shopping list!
It might be surmised from this list that I have a problem with Farmers’ Markets. Not so at all. They have a real part to play in the lives of many city people, just as they always have had in more rural contexts.
It’s the function these markets perform in our splintered urban communities which fascinates me. They may in fact sometimes be the visible parts of very large business operations, but they are perceived as ‘small’, micro-enterprises undertaken by real people. They make us feel special, they spark our imaginations and they activiate our interest in important aspects of health and community.
Don’t miss the next Liverpool Farmers’ Markets. Be sure to be in Lark Lane on Saturday, or in Hope Street on Sunday!
Is Enterprise Funding effective, and how should it be evaluated?
The returns on Merseyside Special Investment Fund investments are under scrutiny in a particularly challenging local economy. But do we know whether MSIF, or any other public investment bodies, are actually doing a good job? The answer is probably, ‘Pass….’. Unless there is directly comparable information about enterprise programmes where funding was unasked or declined, there is actually nothing meaningful against which to make evaluations of the adequacy of the funding decision-making process for programmes which do receive public investment.
The debate about whether MSIF (Merseyside Special Investment Fund) is effective continues. Their performance in the past year is for some unconvincing – today’s Daily Post Business Week reports an MSIF £10m venture fund, of which £9.6m has been written off. There is discussion about whether such funding is given in the right sort of way – it’s ‘given’ as loans at strictly commercial rates – and whether it’s an appropriate form of investment at all in a challenging economy such as Merseyside’s, which is indeed a fair question.
Similar discussion of course is frequently heard about other funding and loans. Is the type right for the need? Why is there so much apparent failure?
There is however a question which is rarely if ever asked, but which could tell us a lot: How do the enterrpises (of whatever sort, commercial or social) which are refused support actually fare, compared to those that receive it?
This would be a basic question in any respectable ‘proper reseach’ programme, whatever the subject under scrutiny. There has to be information against which to evaluate the outcomes of intervention.
For instance, if we were conducting clinical research we might expect a ‘double-blind trial’; in other disciplines the ‘null hypothesis’ might be involved – essentially the assumption that there is no difference or effect until one is clearly demonstrated. But no equivalent comparator information seems to be forthcoming when the subject is the use of the public purse for enterprise investment.
Probably this is because business investors tend only to look at their own and similar portfolios; and most senior people involved in funding enterprise have in their previous lives been business investors. Not many social science or economic researchers are directly engaged at operational level in decisions about the distribution of large investment cheques from the public purse.
Perhaps investment specialists are better at business advice than they are likely to be at research? Probably so; but we don’t actually know, because we don’t have the comparative data by which to tell if their advice and guidance, or indeed their cheques, are effective: Few (if any) public funding bodies provide comparator information about investment proposals which were developed without public funding, or were turned down when they asked.
It may seem a strange idea; but there could be a case for obligatory induction courses in research methods for investment bankers who see a future for themselves in expending public monies on enterprise on our behalf. Perhaps it’s time to re-write the job spec?
Or maybe the real issue is, do those who scrutinise public investments of this sort understand the difference between Outcomes (what happens at the end of the process) and Evaluation (whether specific outcomes have actually been changed – and, if so how? – by the intervention/s)?
If the difference between outcome and evaluation is understood, it’s only a short step to seeing that what public investment programmes really need is benchmarking by external research, to show whether funding intervention really does in general improve outcome. Then we’ll know whether they’re value for money – which by common agreement must in the end be what it’s all about.
When in a Hole… Dig Faster! (Liverpool’s ‘Big Dig’)
Liverpool’s Big Dig is supposed to be the way forward for investment in the city centre. In theory this is great. In practice the abject failure to insist on ’24 hour’ operation is a serious threat even to those businesses (and workers) already here. Edict No.1 in the ‘Regeneration Rulebook’ must surely be: when effecting to make progress, don’t put at unnecessary risk what you’ve already got.
‘How else is Liverpool going to resume its rightful place as a city meaning business?’, asks Matt Johnson in today’s Business Post of the city centre’s Big Dig.
Well, the Big Dig is supposed to be a route to increased business in the city centre; and at the moment it’s exactly the opposite.
Clearly, the intended outcome is that there should be more commercial and other enterprise activity within the city, but they’re going about it a very strange way. If we’re not very careful, there will in fact be less such economic activity in the immediate follow-on from the Big Dig, not more. Footfall is already dropping alarmingly, and not all the cries of ‘Wolf!’ from traders are sham – as of course Matt Johnson readily confirms.
Yesterday I was in the city centre mid-morning and later in the afternoon. On both occasions diversion signs and cones out-numbered visible Big Dig workers by a huge ratio. Not much sign of urgent activity to be seen even in the middle of the working day – and of course none at all that I have observed in the evening or during the night.
The City Council may be saving money for itself (and thus it would argue for its rate payers) by not engaging people to work at night – or even it appears particulary energetically during the day – but this will cost us all dear.
Reduced trading will mean fewer jobs; so some people will go out of work as a result of this – hardly a cost saving for them as individuals.
The whole Big Dig strategy, from what I can see, has developed without appreciating the most fundamental – and most unobserved – regeneration rule of all…… Don’t damage (more than absolutely essentially) what you already have in the attempt to ‘improve’ things for the future.
If the city powers-that-be can require commercial deliveries to be made in the centre outside business hours, why can’t they apply the same logic, only more so, to the diligence with which they deliver the Big Dig? Come on chaps, this is supposed to be a 24 hour city!
Yet again, we must ask: Who’s in charge? and who is answerable to the citizens and businesses of Liverpool and their by now doubtless deeply puzzled potential future investors?
Dreaming Realist 