Slow Start at Schiphol
Today our expedition begins! We are all packed and ready to find out what’s up with Liverpool – the European Capital of Culture of 2008. What kind of events are there? What are the people’s responses like? How can the city of Utrecht learn from what we come across?

Unfortunatelly, we have to deal with a slow start at Schiphol Airport Amsterdam. Because of the heavy fog,

our flight is delayed. Over 3.5 hours later than scheduled, we’re in the air on our way to Liverpool.

First Impressions
At John Lennon Airport, we see the well-known Liverpool ‘08-logo here and there. But apart from that, nothing really indicates that we just arrived at the European Capital of Culture.

A friendly bus steward guides us to the right bus (’take the 86, it’s quicker!’ and – to the bus driver – ‘please take these fine lads to the Nightingale Lodge, would ya!’). Friendly, helpful people out here?
On our way to the city centre we gaze upon Livepool’s outskirts. We see industry buildings, brickstone houses side by side, to too many people on the streets. We pass a Tesco’s, and slowly, more and more shops pop up. The bus gets filled with all kinds of people.

Our stay, The Nightingale Lodge, is loaded with enthusiastic Spanish football fans, because of the game tonight (Liverpool vs. Atletico Madrid). Because of our delay, we drop our stuff and are immediately off to our promised hotdesk at ACME Merseyside.

ACME Merseyside: warm welcome by Cathy and Ian

After a while we manage to find the ACME Merseyside hotdesk at Fleet Street. It’s based in the Vanilla Factory, actually a former vanilla warehouse, but now stylishly renovated. Today, the Vanilla Factory houses all kinds of creative entrepreneurs, but it’s also used by other sorts of professions, such as accountants.

We are warmly welcomed by Cathy, who presents us our hotdesk. To her opinion the computers and printers available are a bit old-fashioned – but have brought our own macbooks anyway. The attic-based office is large and neatly-decorated. The T-Shirt and Suits stripe pattern used in David Parrish’s book is everywhere. Even the pillows on the couch are striped!

Later on the very helpful Ian enters. He’s helping us out with prints of our Google Maps and Addresses. Kevin McManus, director of ACME Merseyside, is not at the office. We might do an interview with him later on.

Cathy tells us about how she at first  was kind of cynical about the whole idea of Liverpool being Capital of Culture, but that later on slightly changed her mind. She believes in the positive effects of the vast number of cultural events that are going on, and also stresses out that benefits for the Liverpool communities will turn out on the long term.

Meet up with Mercy Design and Matt Wardle
Besides our investigation, we also find it very interesting to meet up with colleagues. Some pre-inverstigations leads us to graphic design agency Mercy Design. Joe, Doug and Gemma are, self-claimed, the ‘best design office in Liverpool”, and in our opinion they are quite right! Mercy Design is a key example of a young and enthousiastic group of cultural entrepeneurs showing that Liverpool has great possibilties (although later Gemma claims that ‘you can’t stick to Liverpool assignments, it’s just to enough to make a business.’)

We also meet up with Matt, a photographer from Liverpool who is not afraid to spread his opinion. Both Mercy Design as well as Matt have their own visions on the phenomenon of Capital of Culture. They are the people who feed us with ‘real stories’ on the Capital of Culture.

Matt is a keen, but realistic critic on the topic. In the clip below he stated that although there are several projects in different districts, this is mostly set up for image building and not for the people of those very areas. The whole phenomenon is actually meant for a small cultural elite.

Matt lives in a district called Garston, in the southern part of Liverpool: a part where the real Scousers live. From the perspective of his profession he is an ideal Liverpool’08 visitor, but from a geographical perspective, he - and many with him - he is left out from the party.

He mentions a part of Liverpool, where 60 percent (!) of the population has never been in the centre of Liverpool, ever. Matt agrees with the description of the Capital of Culture as a top-down event.

A few minutes later he drops some more interesting notes on the consequences for decision makers when placing critical remarks:

Besides that, the communication canals of the organisation of Liverpool’08, came to subject: how do the people not yet involved in the cultural world, get to know about the Capital of Culture? It seemed there hasn’t been any communication, like leaflets stating ‘Liverpool’08 is coming!’. The event just appeared and besides that, there was regular broadcasting on television and newspapers.

So how could those  districts, Matt was talking about, ever be involved in the party? He suggest that they were never ment to be invited anyway.

So besides an animating meeting with collegues, a close view on some pride cultural entrepreneurs, a reflection of three inhabitants of Liverpool on the Capital of Culture, we als got some new insights to continue our research this week:

- a contact of Mercy Design is a first generation Chinese with a network inside Chinatown.

- Matt knows about a cafe with some real Scousers

- The story of Liverpool One: a shopping mall, erected with a lot of many: on one hand a solution for an area with a lot of problem youth, but on the other hand a disaster for a lot of small shopkeepers, who lose a lot of customers to Liverpool1.

Street interviews
For our first experiences with our street interviews, we decide to go for the red and green balls tubes. Basically, we ask all kinds of passengers whether they consider the Cultural Caiptal title of Liverpool to be a bless (green ball) or a bore (red ball).

Liverpool One is a brand new shopping centre, erected especially for this year – though it’s here to stay of course. While construction workers are still walking on and off to finish off new buildings, the Liverpool inhabitants shop till they drop.

In the middle of all this, we try to gather all the opinons of the people passing us by. Most people’s reactions are quite positive. Why? Because the Cultural Capital creates a lot of new jobs. Most pro arguments are about the economics anyway. We even talked to a guy who just started working in one of the new shops.

Eventually, it’s ten green balls to one red ball… what kind of reactions would we have received in the former shopping centre at Bold Street?

Meet up with David Parrish and Mike Carney
At FACT cafe, we meet up with David Parrish and – later on – Mike Carney. Actually, David invited us to come by and visit LIverpool in the first place. Mike is a Liverpool based graphic designer and did the book design of David’s book called ‘T-shirts and Suits’.

Here’s a short clip in which David tells us something about the legacy of Liverpool as Capital of Culture. Mind that he points out that being the Capital of Culture is no the same as being Capital of Regeneration.

-video coming soon-

After lunch and some questions about what the course of Liverpool is and what it should be, we take a trip down to Bold Street, the Bluecoat and the Albert Dock (where Tate Liverpool is situated).

As we continue…
After the nice scenery at the Albert Dock, we returned to the centre. On our way over, we came across a small warehouse in which there was a great exhibition, initiated by the Liverpool Biennial.

This warehouse was abanoned and just stood empty for a long time. The Liverpool Biennial contacted the owner and they managed to rent the place for a short time to organise this exhibition. The hole wasn’t big, but some of the artworks on display were quite amazing. Especially the installation done by a Japanese artist was very impressive. It was a dark room with mirrors and colourful lights int it: her interpretation of hallucinations from her childhood.

Finally, we stumble upon in a really cool place called the Static Gallery, run by Paul Sullivan, which inhabites a small noodle restaurant, a gallery and some small offices for creative entrepreneurs such as architects and model makers.

Mike tells us about some projects he is involved in at his neighbourhood. These are not adopted in the official Liverpool ‘08 programme, but rather are bottom-up reactions, initiated by people living in the communities. Friday we are going to dig deeper into that matter: Mike is going to show us around Garston, a suburb of Liverpool and the place where he lives. More to come!

The city centre of Liverpool has always been around Bold Street, but with European funds a new city centre has been created (and is still under construction) and is called Liverpool One. Our interviews from this morning leads to a lot of positive voices: more shopping, more employment, etc.

But in this interview Mike is giving another view on Liverpool One, calling it Liverpool gone:

When he said those words, we saw parallels with the (in)famous Utrecht shopping mall Hoog Catharijne and the new planned city centre of Utrecht. How can one build a city centre - which normally takes years and years to evolve in a more organic way - in just a few years? Can a small group of people just create culture? We think the phenomena called ‘culture’ is the result of a large group of people over a long period.
Regarding these thoughts, the words of David Parrish came into our mind again: is Liverpool a Capital of Culture or a Capital of Regeneration?

Onwards with David and Mike we reach the Albert Dock. One of their slogans states: “Albert Dock, experience Liverpool in a day.” If Liverpool One is Hoog Catharijne then Albert Dock maybe is the Dom Tower, the icon of Utrecht. So can you experience Utrecht, just by climbing the Dom? Is it possible to use a city icon to define culture anyway? Well, obviously, that’s nonsense.

Workshops with graphic design students
Today we meet up with Ian again, as well as with Cil (who was with us in the pub yesterday) at the art academy. With our yellow balls, statement T-shirts and have-your-say-posters we try to grasp the opinons of the students. How does the Cultural Capital atmosphere and events affect their minds, works and lives?

First, we introduce ourselves and show a little bit of our online portfolio. Next, we ask everyone (about 20 students) about their background and ambitions. We also ask them if they prefer to stay or go after they graduate. Actually, most of them would like to stay in Liverpool trying to make a living as a graphic designer. It that wouldn’t turn out OK, the’d consider leaving the city. There’s no ambition to swap Liverpool for London at all (’life there’s too fast and too expensive, we’d prefer a smaller town’).

First workshop: role playing games
Our first workshop is a series of role playing games. We present ten black T-shirts with ten different statements printed on them. Next, we ask two students to pick one out that suits them best and start a little discussion in front of the class. There’ a lot of response from the audience during the plays. Here you can see some examples:

We notice how some students point out that their work opportunities as a graphic designer have not been increased by the buzz of te Capital of Culture, although it was promised to them in some sort of a way. Also, the new art academy building was supposed to be up and running in Januar 2008, but it all got delayed. Untill Christmas, the art academy students will have to follow classes in their old place. That’s why there’s not paid much attention to their creative activities and potential for Liverpool.

Second workshop: yellow typoballs
The second workshop consists of small plastic yellow balls and typography. We ask each student to choose one word that expresses their vision on the European Capital of Cultural best. Next, everyone gets a yellow ball to design that word onto it. Some used markers, while others cut out the glyphs. Some balls were crushed, others got duct-taped.

After a while, everyone gets photographed with his or her ball/comment.

Finally, everyone receives someone else’s ball and is asked to explain what he or she sees in it. In this way, we are talking about the Capital of Culture and visual communication at the same time.

Third workshop: have-your-say-posters
Finally, we handed out the have-your-say-posters to the students, actually as a sort of ‘thank you’-gift. We ask them kindly to spread the posters around (in their neighbourhoods, friends etc.), but instead they start crossing out the words on the spot! All kinds of original comments, both positive and negative, appear on the posters.

After the workshops are finished, we hang a selection of the posters in front of the windows of the art academy, so that bypassers get something to think about…

Today was a really interesting day, in the fist place because of the enthusiasm and sometimes strong opinions of the students. Besides that, we’ve been able to speak with the people who are the spine of Liverpool’s cultural identity for the forthcoming years.

When these people started their study (most of them are in their 3rd year now), they were promised that the Capital of Culture surely would create more jobs in their field of work. But now it looks like it made competion bigger, and therefore it has becomee harder to find a job.
But when we asked each student what they would like to do when they graduate, almost everyone hoped to stay in Liverpool, unless other attractive chances would come up. Hearing this, we sensed a real pride for the city of Liverpool, created or grown by the Capital of Culture.

Legacy is a word we’ve heard a lot in the last days. So what will Liverpool’s testament in 2008 hold for these young creatives? Has Liverpool made a cultural testament at all? Maybe this webpost we found could be a start: Liverpools 5 year masterplan.
Refering to our thoughts of yesterday: Liverpool, the Capital of Regeneration or the Capital of Culture? Liverpool invested a lot in regeneration, but did they take care for a culture climate, which can provide work in the cultural field for all these students? Or do they still have to get the big money in London, like one of the bigger studios such as Mercy Design? Here is a government based website on the statistics: Impacts08.

One suggestion for Utrecht is to invest in young creative talent at the academies and universities. Not just during the year 2018, but also in the years before and after. Young people are full of energy and willing to accomplish beautiful projects. They still have something to prove to the world, and are able to place obvious ideas (open doors) in brand new perspectives.

Like Liverpool, the threat of Utrecht is that the talented people educated in the city, will make a business elsewhere (often Amsterdam). It’s important to bind them, even before the Capital of Cuture year starts, to make them proud of their city. And most important of all: don’t make them promises you can’t keep!

Meet up with Matthew Finnegan
This morning we are supposed to do an interview at 11:00 with Matthew Finnegan, an inspiring contact of David Parrish. We are not sure what business Matthew is into (we only had short contact over the phone), but the first webpage we see when googling his name looks promising. It seems he has one or two things to say about the whole concept of Liverpool being the Capital of Culture.

Unfortunately, Matthew can’t make the appointment due to a full agenda. He proposes to do an interview per email. The ten questions we’ve sent him hopefully triggers him to send us fierce, maybe even controversial answers in return. As soon as we receive his email, we will post it here.

Visiting the Bluecoat, a few Biennial projects in town and the harbour
Because of the cancelled interview, whe had a gap in our schedule to fill. We visited the a small exhibition at the Bluecoat.

And after that, we took a walk to the amazing rotating window, one of Liverpools eye catchers.

For the last 15 minutes of our gap, we get a glance of the Mersey, basis for a lot of things in Liverpool (’pride of the Mersey side’, Mercy Design, etc.).

Meet up with Mike Carney in Garston
A ten minute drive with a taxi takes us to Garston, a village within Liverpool, one of the many. Garston has its own community, its own centre and its own shops. That is one of the reasons, why a lot of people in these areas don’t have much reason to come to the centre of Liverpool very often.
In Garston we meet up with Mike Carney, a designer raised and working for several years in Garston itself.

After visiting his house, drink a cup of tea and trying some tunes on MIke’s DJ gear (besides a graphic designer Mike is also a musician, DJ and what not), we take a walk through the neighborhood.
It’s striking how inviting the community of Garston actually is: Mike knows a lot of people from around - young and old - and everybody is friendly and curious about us. In contradiction to what we expected (severe crime, kids shooting each other, etc) everybody is very open and positive.

As we were walking around, Mike tells us about a Biennial project that has found its way to Garston. It’s called The Garston Embassy. It is here that the public and artists come together and produce products that inspire the neighborhood. We will come back to that later on. As we walked through Garston, we saw these small portraits of local people that were placed there by an Polish artist. You really have to search for them, but after a while you start seeing them everywhere. Mike also showed a couple of neon artworks that are part of the Biennial.

So at first sight we thought that this area is totally forgotten by the Capital of Culture concept, but slowly we are starting to see some nice little jewels emerging. But there are also less pleasant things in Garston. For instance: a lot of the shops are run down and closed. The city council decided to build a new shopping mall nearby, and ever since, the original shopkeepers lost almost all of their customers.

Mike also showed us the separation point in Garston: under the bridge. That’s where the neighborhood gets divided. Here is what he had to say on the subject:

After the bridge the road leads to the old docks. New apartments are being built here as we’re standing there, but only a few yards ahead, on the other side of the road, there will rise a huge recycle platform, which will lead to hundreds ‘lorries’ (trucks with stinking litter) passing by all day every day.

Once, this was a flourishing area of Liverpool back in the days.

The Garston Embassy
The Garston Embassy is an old building in the middle of Garston and headquarters of the creative entrepreneurs of Garston (among them, of course, Mike). The garden around it is one big fantasy work of art, containing a rocket launcher, a labyrinth and moving character dolls of inhabitants of Garston (including the butcher, who we are gonna interview in real life in a while).

Inside there are three floors, some spaces are used for creative workshops. Children’s paintings and a lot of broken down furniture fill up the rooms.

The whole atmosphere is creative, yet deprived at the same time… Mike tells us he and his colleagues need to send in a report to convince the city council of Liverpool the Garston Embassy is useful and important. If the council doesn’t buy it, the Embassy is done for in 2009 and they lose the house.

Talking to the local butcher
We decided we wanted to hear from a local entrepreneur what he has to say on the subject. So Mike arranged an interview for us with the local butcher.

Hanging around in the pub, having an interview with Ian
After the interview we wanted to visit a local pub and find out what the opinion is of the average Joe in Garston. We first sat a while in the pub before we gathered the courage to step up to Ian, a 61 year old retired train driver from Garston. It was good to hear from Ian how his experiences are with the Capital of Culture, because up to this point, we have mostly spoken to the younger audience. This is what Ian had to say:

Today was the day to hear stories from the Liverpool outskirts, represented in our case by Garston. Garston is a small suburb situated in the southeast of Liverpool (it’s actually near the airport, we passed it on our first day, but couldn’t see any of it because massive billboards were covering it up). This part of Liverpool used to be full of activity as the harbour and docks were situated nearby. Most people here are working class and have or had their business in the (harbour) industries. Since the harbour activity decreased, Garston turned into a deprived area more and more.

In the last few days we have heard several negative stories about how places like Garston are excluded from the Capital of Culture activities. We heard the real action only takes place in the centre of Liverpool, and that it’s ridiculous a new shopping mall is being built while there are still degenerated buildings and unemployment in the outskirts. Surely the people living in these deprived areas would agree with this criticism, or wouldn’t they? (See a real critical movie on it here.)

To be honest we were quite eager to find at least a few negative opinions on the Capital of Culture in Garston. After a score of 10 positive to 1 negative (the green and red ball-poll last Wednesday at Liverpool One), we figured it to be a geographical issue: people in the centre benefiting from all the investments are content, while people outside of the centre are not. But after today, we might conclude the opposite is true: from within Garston we hear outspoken positive voices about the Capital of Culture!

Referring to David Parrish, the responsibility of a Capital of Culture is not to regenerate. It is really sad to see an area, full of deprivation, unemployment and run down buildings. But should one blame the Capital of Culture organization for that? No, that’s another issue.

We think one of the main responsibilities for a Capital of Culture organization, is to involve the complete population of the city. In the past days, we thought the answer to this question, is a geographical one: make sure every area is involved and every area will benefit from the Capital of Culture activities. But maybe the answer is: make sure the programme makes your inhabitants proud of the city, make sure that the people can identify themselves with the programme.

A thing that stood out yesterday was something that has to do with the collective memory of a city. During the workshop with the students, Sam mentioned the gigantic Spider (Liverpool’s great opening act): maybe the kids who saw this spider, will remember it for years and years, maybe even start doubting whether it wasn’t just a shared fantasy… Either way it will be a memory linked to their city.

Referring to Mike’s reaction - Liverpool Gone, the new shopping mall which could be in any city - our advice for now is: invest time, money and effort in projects people can identify themselves with and which are unique projects on which they can say: this was in my city and it could only be there, not in just any city.

At the Liverpool ‘08 desk…
This morning we went out the official Liverpool ‘08 information centre for some practical information about the events. The modern, multimedia based (touchscreens everywhere!) information desk is situated in the heart of Liverpool One, the new shopping centre we wrote about earlier. Besides informing about the Capital of Culture there’s also a lot of merchandise you can buy out here.
We hear stories about all the great events and impresive numbers, but we also understand there are several projects mainly focussing on helping out deprived areas and creating jobs. One of those projects is Merseywise, which plays an active role in run down areas such as Croxteth.
Obviously, the lady behind the desk is very enthusiastic about all the events. She even claims that all the events of this year were a success.

We ask the girl about the ten best visited events:

- Exposition on Gustav Klimt
- Turner Prize
- LA Machine (the big spider / opening act)
- Exposition on Le Corbusier
- Super Lambananas
- MTV Awards
- Liverpool Sound
- Concert of Simon Rattle
- Matthew Street Festival
- Liverpool Unites

Are there any similarities? We learn that open, public and big (size, money, activity) events score best. Big names (Liverpool Sound featured sir Paul McCartney, the MTV Awards had a lot of popular superstars) makes an event succesful for sure. (Pop) music and  easy-to-grasp public art are mainly represented on this list. Of course the definition of ‘culture’ is much broader than the content and atmosphere of these 10 events, but this is what works in Liverpool.

Crossing the Mersey!
In the afternoon, after a few days of long and hard work, we take some time to ourselves. When visiting Liverpool, one should definitely cross the river Mersey on the world famous ferry, so that’s precisely what we did! On the other side, in a small village called Birkenhead, the only (cultural) attractions are situated at the ferry dock itself! There’s not much to see or do after 50 meters or so. The ferry dock consists of a huge indoor playground for kids, a space expo centre (currently showcasing Doctor Who props) and an aquarium (not open yet).

On our last day in Liverpool we visit a few spots of the Liverpool Biennial 08, an art event which already had previous editions, so before Liverpool became Capital of Culture. Only this year the Biennale’s setup was bigger and featured more international artists. Obviously, the Capital of Culture helped the Biennial to drew more attention to arts and culture activities in Liverpool.

The Liverpool Biennial takes place in more than twenty spots in the centre of Liverpool. A free map takes the visitor along all the places in a walk through the city. There’s also a catalogue available with background information on all the art projects on display.

Besides that, the socalled Independents Liverpool Biennial 08 takes place at the same time, only these events are spread out through the suburbs of Liverpool and are not curated by the city’s institutions. A few examples of the Independant we’ve already seen in Garston.

Most people working for the Biennial are volunteers. One of them is Zoe. We ask her about her background, her opinion on the Capital of Culure and the legacy of Liverpool 08. The interview is split up in two parts.

At the Biennial 08 visiting centre, we get in touch with another volunteer named Shaun. He agrees with an email interview (he’s a bit nervous to get interviewed on camera). As soon as we have his say, we’ll post it here.

On our short break we take some coffee, fruit juices and pies in Egg, a nice lunchroom on the third floor of a building close to Bold Street. All of a sudden we are offered a treasure map from a girl, which actually is an invitation to drop by some sort of a art sale next to a nearby parking garage. We decide to have a quick look. After a short stroll we end up in a small garage box full of amateur art works, homebaked foods and antique stuff taken from dusty attics, all for sale! It’s nice to see how the community itself creates cultural/artistic events on its own. The art in here doesn’t really appeal to our taste, but that’s a different story.

Finally we visit an exposition called Future, Fiction and Fantasy. All the art works here are actually made by 18 different schools from aroud the area, in collaboration with professional artists. Some of the projects are quite original and visually very impressive . It’s a good thing to see how schools are involved in the whole Biennial programme!