Category Archives: Liverpool And Merseyside
Sefton Park, Liverpool: Winter Solstice 2006
Today is the Winter Solistice – the shortest day of the year, if by ‘day’ we mean daylight hours. Yet, in this so-far extraordinarily warm Winter, even at this point in the annual cycle of birth and rebirth there is much to see when we venture out into the great urban spaces such as Liverpool’s Sefton Park.
This is the Winter Solstice, a time when little is expected of an urban park, a time of anticipated bleakness and dank dark days. Yet in this month of nothingness Liverpool’s Sefton Park, just a mile or two from the city centre, has life in abundance. The small creatures of the secret places continue to roam their tracks, there are birds both of the water and of the air, and humans too, of every sort, take their ease with their companions, their children, their partners and their four legged friends.
A park for all
Here are young and older couples, parents and children, kids looking for a bit of fun by the lake, people exercising seriously and people intent on doing nothing. The short day offers no excuse for staying indoors, whether there be sunshine or showers. The opportunity to take the air remains, for so far this Winter there have not been many really wild or soakingly wet days when the only place to be is home. Even in this, the solstice week, walking in the park is what the people of Liverpool have been doing.
Mists and mellowness, not biting winds
This is still, in Winter 2006, the season of mists and shadowy silhouettes against the sky. It is not as yet the season of ice and snow, though doubtless this will prevail as the year turns on the coming Spring equinox, for a short while
covering everything in a shining blanket of white.
But for now the mildness of Autumn stays with us whilst the temperament of Winter fails to claim the expectations of the park. The days are short but the fierceness of wind and sleet which usually accompanies this brevity of light has not on the whole been forthcoming. We continue, urban ramblers at our leisure, unchallenged by the elements in the brief hours of light and even sunshine which this strange solstice is affording.
The sun, golden
Yes, we have seen rain – and on a few days much rain, though not bitingly cold and cutting – but we see also setting suns against the faded former glories of the bandstand, we watch that same sunset against the snowy-looking clouds behind the trees, and we gaze until it disappears at the liquid gold of the lake, reflecting the sky which illuminates all below it.
Waiting for Winter
This is a time of waiting. The solstice will very soon be forgotten as Christmas takes a hold on the park, the city and, it seems to us from where we stand, the entire world. Perhaps this year the many strollers who occupy Sefton Park on Christmas Day and Boxing Day will be sporting not their usual new, thick Winter 
scarves and woolly hats, but the lighter attire of Autumn and Spring. This year we may, it seems, be spared the cruel inclemencies of deep Winter, thereby
Liverpool Hope Street Farmers’ Market Gets Going
The regular calendar of Farmers’ Markets in Hope Street has at last begun. From now on the third Sunday every month is scheduled as Market Day for Hope Street Quarter. Farmers’ Markets are something different to look forward to: a great day out for adults and children alike, with fun opportunities to learn where our food comes from and who grows it.
After a false start in October, yesterday was the long-awaited commencement of the regular calendar [see schedule at the end of this article] of Hope Street Farmers’ Markets. At last, with luck, we have lift-off, and not a moment too soon.
And we were incredibly lucky with the weather, brilliant sunshine for the duration, not even really cold. The atmosphere of the event was cheerful and relaxed, just the right ambiance for a happy family Sunday outing – though I have to say I was surprised just how few children were actually around….
It’s really good to see the grown-ups enjoying themselves in such a time-honoured and positive way, but are we missing a bit of a trick here if we don’t bring the kids? Perhaps someone will begin now to think how this could be an occasion for them as well. It’s not often the opportunity arises naturally in the city centre for youngsters to meet people who have themselves grown the food and prepared the produce displayed before us.
Varied and fresh
Having said that, here was produce for everyone. Vegetable and fruit – including a variety of cauliflower (romanesca, a brassica with stunning tiny, spiral green florets) that I’d never seen before – plus cheeses, food of all sorts to eat right now, and much else, including candles and preserves for the coming festive season. Judging from the public response, everyone loves this sort of browsing and shopping.
One of the many attractions of farmers’ markets is that much of this produce had been grown or made by the actual people who were selling it – not a connection which is often so direct these days, when much of what we buy comes shrink-wrapped and complete with a fair number of attached food miles.
This was an opportunity for locally-based people to purvey their wares; hand-made goods and food which may well still have been in the field a few hours before.
Trading busily
The people running the stalls were pleased to be there, trade was brisk. I suspect that over time the current size of the market will grow considerably, if the regulations allow – already it stretches all the way along the Hope Street wall of Blackburne House.
We know of course that, locals though some of the growers and sellers may be, Geraud Markets, the organisation behind the venture, is big business; but someone has to organise all the detailed arrangements which these events entail. It seems Geraud now have a contract with Liverpool Council to do just that on several sites around the city.
Knowing more and feeling good
That however is only part of the story. This is the sort of enjoyable meeting-friends event that offers, especially, young people in the city a chance to see that fruit and vegetables don’t of necessity arrive covered in plastic.
It gives us a feel, too, for seasonal food. It reminds us, walking out in the open air as we make our purchases, that there is a cycle to things; we can eat for a whole year without bringing produce from across the world, should we decide to do avoid doing so. We can be ‘eco-‘, and enjoy, at the same time.
The market reminds us about nutritional quality – seeing produce presented so directly perhaps also helps us to think more carefully about what we are actually eating. Of course, food sold in supermarkets can also be fresh and nutritious – canned can be as good as ‘fresh’ – but the connection with its production is less overt.
Encouraging a healthy life-style
By a strange co-incidence, just today there have been articles in the local Daily Post about vegetables and health -the local Primary Care Trust has a Taste for Health campaign -and The Guardian, which offers thoughts by Zoe Williams on <a href="‘Vegetables and how to survive them’).
Liverpool people have the worst health in England and we owe it to our children to make sure their diet is as good as it can possibly be, encouraging them to understand the connection between what they eat and where it comes from. How better could we do it than by bringing them to a farmers’ market where they can see for themselves what it’s all about?
Liverpool City Council have contracted with Geraud to provide farmers’ markets. Perhaps they can now follow the example of the authorities in continental Europe (where Geraud began) such as Valencia and Aix-en-Provence, where, as I have seen for myself, the local markets make children really welcome?
It would do us all good, in every sense of the word.
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Calendar of Geraud Farmers’ Markets in Liverpool [subject to change, please contact to check as below]:
Monument Place Farmers’ Market (Lord Street) ~ Every 1st & 3rd Saturday of the month
Lark Lane Farmers’ Market ~ Every 4th Saturday of the month
Hope Street Farmers’ Market (Blackburne House end) ~ Every 3rd Sunday of the month
Other Geraud Markets in Liverpool:
Broadway (Indoor) Monday ~ Saturday
Garston ~ Friday
Great Homer Street ~ Saturday
Monument Place ~ Thursday, Friday & Saturday
Speke ~ Thursday
St Johns’ (Indoor) Monday ~ Saturday
Tuebrook ~ Thursday & Saturday
Toxteth ~ Tuesday
For more information contact: 0151 233 2165 / info@geraudmarkets.co.uk
The Garston Christmas Camel
Garston is rather unfashionable part of Liverpool’s hinterland – which hasn’t stopped Alex Corina and others from campaigning for an arts village, complete with massive festive camel designed by local schoolchildren.
Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral Of Christ The King
Sometimes the sun seems to beam right along Liverpool’s Hope Street as though it had a special route to the heart of the city. When dark clouds lie behind the Cathedral, the effect of this noonday shaft of light is dazzling.
See more photos of Liverpool’s Cathedrals and celebrating communities on Hope Street href=”http://www.hilaryburrage.com/hope_street_liverpools_cultural_knowledge_quarter/liverpools_two_cathedrals/”>here [Liverpool’s Two Cathedrals] and below….
Read more about Hope Street Quarter.
Information on Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral is available here.
See also photgraphs at Calendar & Camera and Liverpool (Anglican) Cathedral.
Liverpool 2007 And 2008 – Different Emphases, Similar Opportunities?
Liverpool is excitedly preparing for its big years in 2007 (the city’s 800th anniversary) and 2008 (the European Capital of Culture year). With such a long and dramatic history of diaspora, who knows what the city will be like by the end of the celebrations? The scope for enterprise – both in Liverpool and by other cities and regions – to build relationships across Europe and beyond is enormous.
BBC Radio 3 hosted a fascinating Free Thinking event in Liverpool’s FACT building last weekend, with presentations, discussions and performances by an impressively eclectic array of debaters and artists. And, perhaps appositely, the very next day the City launched its initial plans for the 2008 European Capital of Culture year.
One of the sessions at the BBC event focussed on the question, ‘Is Liverpool an English city?’. ‘Everyone in the country knows Liverpool is special – and unique,’ says the blurb, ‘but do they secretly mean it’s “unenglish”?’
Sadly, I couldn’t be at the debate, but it’s an interesting question – and one that, although I’ve lived in Liverpool for over three decades, I’d find difficult to answer. All of us have only one shot at life, so comparisons are difficult, but is it usual for people who have been resident in a place for over a third of a century still to be asked where they ‘come from’?
Ports are meeting places for the world
Working up the hill, away from the ports in the education and cultural sectors, it actually took me a while to realise that for some of my fellow citizens, Liverpool’s maritime history is the city’s autograph feature. Indeed, until the Heseltine interventions in the 1980s it was not even possible really to see much of that history. At least the reclamation of the southern docks for retail and leisure use (the Tate Gallery and Maritime Museum are situated there) helped us to see what an important port Liverpool was – and in fact still is, for freight rather than passengers.
So Liverpool is cosmopolitan in a particular way. In the mid-eighteenth century that one port was involved with 40% of the world’s trade. Liverpool is therefore home to many whose predecessors reached the city by sea, or who in some cases had intended to travel onwards, but halted when they got this far.
We have communities of several generations from the Caribbean and parts of Africa, from China (Liverpool’s China town is a large and important feature of the city) and the Indian sub-continent, who travelled from the West; and, from Eastern and Central Europe, reached us from the East. With these historic influxes has come of plethora of religious and cultural understandings – Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, Orthodox and many others.
Ireland and Continental Western Europe
What is less evident in our overt cultural mix is the direct influence of Southern Europe – though it is certainly there, especially in the sometimes overarching ethos of Roman Catholicism and Southern Ireland (Eire). And then there is the strongly Protestant Orange Order influence of Northern Ireland (Ulster), whose descendants in Liverpool, like their southern counterparts, have traditionally lived siloed in tight-knit communities with little knowledge or tolerance of other ways of seeing the world.
As is well known, the clash of Southern and Northern Irish influences (Catholics ‘versus’ Protestants) was only be resolved when, in the 1980s and ‘90s, the leaders of Liverpool’s two great cathedrals (Bishop David Sheppard and Archbishop Derek Worlock) by their personal example called time on this damaging friction.
Liverpool 2007 – 800 years and proud of it
Given the particular diasporas from which Liverpool has benefited historically, it will be fascinating to see what the city can make of its opportunity to shine on the world and European stage in 2007 and 2008. There are a number of factors here, even apart from the celebrations as such, which should enhance the opportunities for Liverpool at this time – amongst them, the massive privately funded Grosvenor ‘Liverpool 1’ commercial development (at £950 million reputedly the largest project of this kind in Europe) which is currently taking root in the heart of the city centre.
The 2007 event will celebrate Liverpool’s 800th Anniversary. (The city’s charter was signed in 1207.) This surely is the opportunity of a lifetime to acknowledge and embrace the rich and diverse cultures and traditions of the city, to look back at our past but also forward – not only to what follows in 2008, but also much further into the future.
This is in a very real sense ‘Liverpool’s year’, a ‘birthday’ (as the locals insist on calling it) worthy of pulling out the stops. 800 years as a city, even if others can also claim it (Leeds’ charter is also dated 1207), is an important milestone.
The birthday party will be for the people of Liverpool. Others will be very welcome to join us – what’s a party without honoured guests? – but the style, the scene itself, needs to be determined by those, the citizens of Liverpool, whose ‘birthday’ it is.
Liverpool 2008 – European Capital of Culture
But what does Liverpool’s history mean for its year as European Capital of Culture? It has consistently been said that it was ‘the people’, Liverpudlians themselves, who won this award. Is there a danger that 2008 could be ‘more of the same’, an extension of the scenario for 2007?
If we return to our first question, is Liverpool “unenglish”?, we need to note that, so it is said, some 60% of Liverpudlians have never even been to London (and I’d guess that maybe 90% of people living in England outside the North West have as yet never been to Liverpool).
Given this situation, we must ask how many of the citizens of Liverpool so far have a real knowledge of Europe outside the influences we have already noted? How many are fluent in other European languages? How many have business or other formal connections across Europe? The answer is surely that here is a city at the start in every way of its journey into the twenty-first century.
Unique opportunity
Liverpool 2007 / 8 offers a unique opportunity to establish two-way connections with the city. The very next day after the BBC debate on Liverpool’s ‘englishness’ or otherwise, the city launched its initial programme for the 2008 year with a grand civic event in St. George’s Hall, and another one in London for the wider world. 2007 is for Liverpool; 2008 is intended for the world,
2008 offers business and cultural entrepreneurs from around Europe and beyond a real chance to establish themselves in the city, whilst Liverpool’s eyes are firmly fixed on the global stage – and, we hope, theirs on us.
The full extent of the outward-facing Liverpool ‘offer’ for 2007 and especially 2008 remains to be seen – there is increasing confidence that something interesting and worthwhile will be made of these unique opportunities.
The scope for inward investment, connection and synergy with elsewhere is however already established as truly enormous.
Here is a city ripe for growth of every kind, and increasingly ready to jump at the chance. This is a virtuous circle for anyone enterprising enough to recognise it.
Global players
Whether Liverpool is “unenglish” we must leave the BBC debaters to determine. Whether that same city is now positioned once again to take its place as a major player at the European and global levels we can answer for ourselves.
The answer is Yes.
And, in contrast to the last time Liverpool was a great trading city, when the odds were stacked against ‘outsiders’, this time Liverpool will be trading on an even playing field with its external partners.
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This article is also published (as Liverpool: Ripe For Growth in 2007 And 2008) on the European Renaissance website.
Where’s The Soul In Regeneration, Renewal And Renaissance?
Are ‘regeneration’, ‘renewal’ and ‘renaissance’ different? Perhaps they are. Regeneration is predominantly a physical thing, whilst ‘renewal’ and ‘renaissance’ are increasingly about the real meaning, the ‘soul’ of the regenerational process. The journey from one to the other is a transition from the literal to the artistic and cultural. But how best to get there?
How can regeneration work so that it is in the end more than just developing markets for investors, important though that financial interface is?
Experience of regeneration and renewal in the UK tells us that it is a mixture of positive and negative. As numerous reports (including Lord Rogers’) have shown, there are things which have been done well, and things which have had seriously unfortunate outcomes. Both sorts of experience need to be recognised for the valuable lessons they offer.
The different ‘voices’ of regeneration, renewal and renaissance
There are several perspectives here: those of the community activist, the politician, the business operator, the planner, the economic strategist. Only rarely however is the voice of the artist heard; and this is where it may be possible to make a difference. Arts and culture, ‘high’ or less so, can give people common cause, something in which, if presented positively, they can all share and become involved.
From that can arise also a common sense of purpose and direction. People who feel involved feel a stakehold and ownership. This is what makes regeneration into renewal, and then into renaissance. This is the essence of the journey from bricks and mortar to genuine community.
Hope Street Liverpool
An example of this approach is the renaissance of Liverpool’s Hope Street. This process, over more than a decade, evolved from a deeply held ‘grass-roots’ conviction that Hope Street deserved the very best of public realms, to give everyone a sense of pride in what was slowly estabished as the Hope Street Quarter. Hope Street is home of the city’s two great cathedrals, two universities and of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the Everyman Theatre, not to mention the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA), Blackburne House and much, much more.
Yet on first acquaintance Hope Street looked tired, dirty and possibly unsafe. Hardly an appropriate ambience for world-class cultural institutions which are found from one end to the other of this historic thoroughfare. HOPES: The Hope Street Association, a voluntary ‘arts and regeneration’ charity, was therefore formed to change this sad state of affairs.
Nonetheless, it took enormous focus and years of hard work by volunteers to move the authorities (and even some of the major institutions) to perceive what was evident to those with eyes to see: Hope Street is a place with soul, a place for creative and exciting people with ideas. In other words, it was and is the ideal place from which to nurture renaissance and renewal, to the benefit of both local people (more visitors and customers, more jobs, more fun, more sense of community…) and the city’s wider economy.
The soul of renewal
There has to be a way to get to the ‘soul’ of renewal, to its ownership by people in a way that enables economic benefit but does not preclude the human reality which lies behind the more formal contexts of the action.
Again, Hope Street offers a (cautionary) example. The Summer of 2006 at last saw the completion of the long-sought £3 m. public realm works programme. Everyone was delighted and, after delays on the part of some authorities, eventually there was the opportunity to celebrate in the biggest street festival since the Silver Jubilee visit of H.M. the Queen in 1977. But at the very same time those who had worked so hard as volunteers to bring the transformation about found they had in many ways been displaced by new commercial and corporate interests who now at last saw the potential of the Hope Street Quarter.
The immediate parallel which springs to mind here is with Hoxton and Shoreditch in London, where many creative people say they have been driven out, ‘displaced‘ by high prices. The parallel, though valid, is not however exact. In this instance it is those who who give their activities voluntarily who are at risk of displacement, perhaps at least as much as individual artists and non-corporate creative professionals.
Regeneration for whom?
The jury remains out on the extent to which those grass-roots visionaries who dreamed of a great future for Hope Street Quarter will continue to be central to the area’s destiny. What sort of ‘community’ involvement there will be in years to come remains to be seen.
How often do regeneration proposals move beyond the physically visible in any real way, to what it actually means to everyone concerned – whether those who live in the area, those who work or visit there, those who invest there, or those who are concerned for its conservation, historically or environmentally?
And, if the claim is made that getting to the real soul of renewal does happen, why are the people entrusted to do it so often the same team who draw up the physical plans? This is a hugely different task.
Is it business-like?
But the question of soul alone is not enough. It is also necessary to demonstrate actually to those who invest large amounts in regeneration (a) that ‘soul’ is critical to meaningful renewal, (b) that it makes business sense in the best meaning of the term, and (c) that it is of itself business-like, that it can create value for the people who talk about ‘soul’, as well as for others.
Without evidence of these things, it is difficult to ensure this deeper aspect of renewal will ever happen at all.
For this is a far cry from the way that most regeneration and renewal is conducted, and it requires a constructively critical approach of a kind only rarely encountered, the courage to articulate vision and show leadership in facing up to difficulties and opportunities openly.
Case studies, honesty and imagination
One challenge for those who believe in this wider vision, collaboratively, is to find a way to nurture such a new emphasis, probably through a combination of case studies, disarming honesty and imaginative leaps. Perhaps this is most importantly where that artistic voice is needed.
What certainly won’t work on its own in sharing this ‘message’ is the conventional conference, addressing the usual suspects…. But neither perhaps would suddenly challenging everyone’s expectations in too dramatic a way.
The next question is therefore, what balance in the greater scheme of things can be made between strictly ‘regenerational’ activities and more meaningful, longer term, ‘renewal and renaissance’ ones?
And should we expect that balance to change over time?
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This article is also published (as Regeneration, Renewal And Renaissance: Where’s The Soul Of The Enterprise?), with Jim Greenhalf’s response, on the European Renaissance website.
Will Merseyside Miss Out? The Gormley Statues And The Theatre Museum Are Must-Haves.
Sefton Council says Antony Gormley’s Iron Men may soon leave Crosby Beach. The national Theatre Museum, which it has been mooted should come to Liverpool, has yet even to be considered by the City Council. Where’s the cultural leadership and vision which could mark Merseyside as a fascinating place to visit?
Here we go again. The cultural drag, if I may call it that, which afflicts so many places is once more theatening to relegate our sub-region to the ‘might have beens’, a place which could have been braver and better.
In just one evening last week (on Wednesday 18th October ’06) Liverpool City Council took the extraordinary decision not even to discuss a motion about how the city might acquire the national Theatre Museum, whilst on the same evening Sefton Council voted not to keep Antony Gormley‘s one hundred Iron Men on Crosby Beach.
There is a real danger that we on Merseyside will end up looking as though the last thing we want is to support culture, just at the time when the mantle of European Capital of Culture is about to be ours.
Time is short
The Daily Post and others have already started a campaign to reverse the Gormley statues decision, with some success already. It is now necessary for others to ensure that Liverpool Council does the same, and makes a real effort to bring the national Theatre Museum to Merseyside …. of, if they can’t, for someone esle to do so The benefits of doing this are clear and have already been discussed on this website.
The reputation of Liverpool and Merseyside in 2007/8 rests on imaginative and forward-looking leadership and real vision in culture and the arts. It’s time everyone in Merseyside pulled together on this.
Read more articles on the National Theatre Museum.
‘Catching’ The Train – If You Can
The rhetoric of train travel is that it removes the worry from travel, providing an efficient and comfortable way to get around. This may well be true once one’s actually aboard; but first you have to get a ticket. And then you have to be sure you can get to the station on time. These tasks can be daunting.
For reasons various it wasn’t possible for me to order my train tickets on-line a few days ago. So I made the mistake of thinking the easiest thing would be to call in at Liverpool’s Lime Street Station Advance Bookings Office.
It’s one way to pass half an hour …..
Long queues and few staff
The queue in the (rather grey) booking office had about thirty people in it, and probably a third of the ticket booths were open. The intending passengers, representing a pretty wide range of the British population, included folk with elderly relatives and folk with small children. All stood resignedly awaiting their turn, the queue they
formed slowly weaving up and down between the barrier ropes.
One small girl, possibly four years old, started the wait happily dancing around the booking office, and ended it outside in the main concourse, sobbing under the silent care of her grim-faced young father, whilst her mother battled at the ticket kiosk with the baby, the pushchair and the arrangements for their travel.
Nowhere was there any seating, let alone any corner with play equipment for younger children, or perhaps a water dispenser.
No access?
At last however I was able to procure my (oh-so-expensive) tickets and, deeply grateful that I don’t have to work there, to escape the depressing ‘facility’ whereby one secures train bookings in Liverpool Lime Street.
But that turned out not to be the end of the story. The station has
been surrounded by the Big Dig for several weeks now – and things are getting worse. The local papers that afternoon were full of messages from the Powers That Be to the effect that we should not drive to Lime Street because of the continuing snarl-ups. The evidence that day of the chaos around the station added serious substance to this advice.
Don’t let the train take the strain
So there we have it. Those without the internet are faced with a long and uncomfortable wait to book their tickets, and in any case people may not be able to approach the station by car / cab to be dropped off.
We have mentioned the perils of local train travel in Merseyside before. And it hasn’t got any better as a customer experience. (Not encouraging for Liverpool’s 2008
celebrations, is it?)
No wonder that carbon emissions are still going up, whilst the Mersey economy at least remains challenged. Has no-one here seen the connection between ‘good’ train-related experiences and ‘good’ economic and environmental impacts?
John Belchem’s ‘Liverpool 800: Culture, Character & History’ (1207-2007)
For three years Professor John Belchem and his University of Liverpool colleagues worked on a scholarly publication to record Liverpool’s eight hundred years as a city (1207 – 2007). Academically impressive, the book offers vibrant testimony to the human actions and achievements behind the dry facts – just as those attending made the official launch of this publication, in the setting of Liverpool’s splendid Town Hall, such a warm and memorable occasion.
Liverpool Town Hall is always a spectacular venue in which to celebrate a special occasion. It reminds us vividly of what the City of Liverpool must have been like in its prime, and what indeed it could still be again.
Nowhere, then, could have been more appropriate as a location for the formal launch on 18th October 2006 of Liverpool 800: Culture, Character & History, the University of Liverpool Press book edited by Professor John Belchem about the first eight hundred years of this sometimes infuriating and always fascinating city. Liverpool is on the verge of another momentous era in its long history, as 2007 and 2008 approach. (You can see just some of the many special aspects of Liverpool life and legacy in the books listed immediately below this article.)
Liverpool 800 is an impressive publication which charts as honestly and openly as it can the ways in which Liverpool has progressed over the past eight centuries, from its ‘small beginnings’ in 1207. As the book’s back cover reminds us, Liverpool rose, not always by admirable means, to become one of the world’s greatest seaports, so that by 1907 it was the second city of the empire. But what happened thereafter resulted in a vastly different prospect for this enigmatic city. John Belchem’s book, in charting the rise, fall and we trust rise again of Liverpool, will I know be a big hit; and I hope it will also offer a focus for just how we can now move forward to a second period of success and (this time, benign) global influence.
New friends and old
<img alt="Peter Brown Img0151.JPG" src="http://www.dreamingrealist.co.uk/Peter%20Brown%20Img0151.JPG" width="104" height="120" /
Not withstanding the importance of the occasion, one of the nicest things about the Liverpool 800 launch was much simpler than all this. It was, as on other similar occasions, an excellent opportunity to catch up with friends old and new.
In the course of the evening I chatted with many people, including the Lord Mayor, Councillor Joan Lang, with whom years ago I sat on the City Arts Festival Committee, as well as those stalwarts of Liverpool’s civic history, such as John Vaughan, a local historian, now retired from the University of Liverpool Libraries, Christina Clarke JP, a ceaseless advocate for the preservation of our built heritage, Dr Peter Brown, chairman of the Merseyside Civic Society, and Andrew Pearce, at one time an MEP for Merseyside and now chairman of the Liverpool Heritage Forum. Others with an impressive knowledge of our civic heritage whom I know from the Liverpool Echo Stop the Rot campaign were there too.
In the same room, also chatting happily with everyone assembled, were people such as Rodney Holmes of Grosvenor,
who is in charge of our huge new Paradise Project ‘Liverpool One’ commercial development, and others from the University of Liverpool, the Liverpool Culture Company and the City Council, all in their day jobs busily engaged in promoting our future prospects as a city.
And then there were folk ‘from the community’ such as Tom Calderbank and his wife, who have worked so hard to raise the profile of places like Toxteth Town Hall and The Belvedere.
In all, a richly diverse assembly of people, with their varied focuses on the past and the future, to celebrate the richly diverse history of our city.
A history which brings us together
I could go on, but lists are never complete and after a while inadvertent omissions start to become obvious. However one looks at it, this book launch was an event which brought together people from many parts of Liverpool.
But of course the main person on this occasion was the man who with his co-authors has seen it through from beginning to end, linking all these varied threads into one cohesive whole. John Belchem spoke to us about his book without notes and with much passion. It was good to see him so delighted with the interest in, and support for, his finally completed project.
A welcome message
John’s theme when he addressed us was one to which we can all subscribe: History tells us, he said, that Liverpool has always thrived on celebration. The city’s fortunes prosper when, whatever the reason, there are parties and festivities to be had! The launch of Liverpool 800: Culture, Character & History, in our fabulous Town Hall, was an excellent practice run for what we all hope will also be an outstandingly excellent couple of years for Liverpool, in 2007 and 2008.
Will The National Theatre Museum Come To Liverpool?
Sometimes things move quickly. The proposal to bring the national Theatre Museum to Liverpool when it closes in London seems to be one of these times. Just ten days after being mooted on this website, a proposal to take action will be debated tonight by City Councillors in Liverpool Town Hall.
The idea of the national Theatre Museum (the National Museum of the Performing Arts) coming to Liverpool took a step forward this morning, when the proposal first posted here ten days ago appeared as an article in today’s Daily Post.
Liverpool City Councillors Joe Anderson, Paul Brant and Steve Munby (Labour) will this evening put a motion entitled NATIONAL THEATRE MUSEUM to full Council, proposing that:
Council notes that the national collection of performing arts memorabilia, at the Theatre Museum in London, part of the Victoria and Albert Museum, is to be dispersed when the Theatre is closed in January 2007.
Council calls on the Leader to explore the possibility of bringing it to Liverpool to develop as a special national element of our celebrations in 2007 and 2008? Liverpool has a great tradition of theatre, opera and the performing arts in this city, and the V&A could open the revived exhibition as a ‘V&A in the North’, as the Tate has done with Tate Liverpool.
To the national exhibition we could explore adding the archives of our own theatres, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society’s archive and the history of Hope Street, Liverpool’s performing arts quarter.
Progress indeed
I am very hopeful that the motion will be carried with cross-party agreement, since Cllr Mike Storey (Liberal Democrat), Liverpool’s executive member for special initiatives, has told the Daily Post that he would support examining such a move for the Theatre Museum collection, and Cllr Steve Radford (Liberal Party) has also indicated his general support to me.
This is how we in Liverpool should all be working when it comes to the arts and culture. HOPES has produced, and the politicians have made progress with, a potentially good idea which would enhance parts of our civic ‘cultural offer’ in a very positive way. Just as with the development of the Hope Street Public Realm works, I hope we can deliver here something which involves both public and community voices in a virtuous circle, and so secures added value locally, regionally and even nationally.
We await the outcome of this evening’s Council Meeting with interest….
Read more articles on the National Theatre Museum.
Dreaming Realist 
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