Liverpool Daily Report

Tue. 04-11-2008: reconnaissance

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.

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