We hope to announce further poetry tours by Jim Greenhalf and colleagues for the future.
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, Lost Villages of Liverpool: Pt. 1
, The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby 1826-93
and map Toxteth (Old O.)
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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. [More books on aspects of Liverpool life and legacy are listed immediately below this article.]
Liverpool 800 is an impressive publication, charting honestly and openly 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 offers a focus for how we can now move forward to a second period of success and (this time, benign) global influence 
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.
After a false start in October, Sunday 19 November 2006 was the long-awaited commencement of the regular calendar [see schedule at the end of this article] of Liverpool's 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.
Read more of this article here.
My first few visits were in the company of musicians in the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, who have a very real relationship with that city - the Orchestra's Conductor Laureate is Libor Pesek KBE, the feted international maestro who over the years has done such great things with his Liverpool colleagues. The RLPO, with Pesek, was the first-ever non-Czech orchestra to open the famous Prague Spring Festival.
And then, more recently, I have visited Prague on my own as part of my work with European Renaissance, which of course brought a whole new perspective to my experience. So I've now seen a little of Prague through the eyes both of artists and of business people. What good fortune.
So much to see and learn
This is a city I could never tire of. As I've learned to navigate Prague's historic heart I've realised you could explore forever - always the mark of a great capital city. First, one finds the physical place, where things lie; and then the depth of history and culture starts slowly to unfold. Why is that statue there? Why did that building survive, but not the one next to it? What's the story behind this type of trade or that kind of cultural offering?
There are things which will always stay in one's mind: The enormity of Staromestske Nam, the beautiful cobbled old town square, which has seen such extrordinary events over the centruries. The dramatic beauty of adjoining Tynsky Chram, the Church of Our Lady before Tyn, backed by its intimate piazza cafes and boutiques. The fact that Vaclavske Namesti, Wencelas Square, scene of the Velvet Revolution, is in reality a central shopping boulevard with Narodni Muzeum, the striking National Museum, towering above that boulevard at its furthest point from the river.
Then there's the majesty of Katedrala Sv. Vita, St. Vitus' Cathedral, and the attached area of Prazsky Hrad, the Castle, approached from the old town via the Vltava River (Moldau) over Karlov Most, Charles Bridge. How could one not be eternally taken with all this?
Living heritage
All these splendours unfold before you even get to the ancient Josafov (Jewish Quarter), huddled, heart-achingly small, down near the river and the Rudulfinum with its Dvorakova Sin, the Dvorak Concert Hall, home of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.
Nor, on this 'virtual tour', have you yet seen the great triangular Obecni Dum (Municipal House, with its concert halls, including the Smetana Hall, home of the Prague Symphony Orchestra), at the other end of the historic quarter.
Nor indeed, until you have crossed back across Charles Bridge with its painters and jewellers, then travelling on high up to the Castle once more, have you viewed the contrast from the mighty symphonic halls which is found in the tiny, ancient, craft workshops of Zlata Ulicka (Golden Lane).
All these venues are alive with artists and artisans exercising their skills much as they might have done some centuries ago.
Big changes
Prague is nonetheless a modern city, changing all the time. It has lost its grey, concrete sadness, imposed for so long by the Soviet authorities, in favour of a cosmopolitan , almost festive, demeanour. Now the city centre is bedecked by art works of all sorts, some of them huge and eye-catching if not always demure.
Nothing illustrates these changes better than Duta Hlava, the Architects' Club situated by Betlemska Kaple in Betlemska Nam (Bethlehem Chapel and Square) in the Stare Mesto, the Old Town. The first time I encountered this underground cafe-restaurant was a decade or more ago; the best way to descibe it then would have been 'bohemian'.
When we last dined there, fairly recently, it could have been described, instead, as suffering from its own success: it was much smarter, heaving with well-heeled people (the students seemed to have migrated elsewehere) and the serving staff were stretched to the limit.
Commercial vs. nostalgia?
And much the same applies to the commecial and retail centre of Prague, based around Wenceslas Square. More cyncially savvy commentators may deplore the arrival in the Czech Republic of Marks and Spencer, Debenhams and Tesco, but these surely are seen by others as indicators of the business coming-of-age of this extraordinary country.
To compete and develop in the international market Prague needs these stores, as indeed they need Prague. There is no doubt that the citizens of Prague will need to keep their wits about them as they emerge even more into the gaze of international capital and all that comes with it. But the costs of not doing so, especially in a state where until so recently the autonomy of the market did not (officially) exist, would be unthinkable to most.
Here is a city on the move but with its heritage very largely still intact. Long may it stay so.
Challenges and opportunities
Much of what Prague offers is priceless. With care, even more of it could be. As in other cities - Liverpool in the U.K. amongst them - there are opportunities which as yet have not been fully grasped. These include a reliably consistent level of delivery, especially in some public services.
But Prague has the huge advantage of having seen how other European cities have dealt (or not) with such challenges. No two situations are identical, but there is enough commonality in the scenarios to learn the lessons, one city from another.
The uniqueness of Prague lies elsewhere, in the very heart of this capital city. That is what Prague must defend and develop for itself.
Free Enterprise Moves East: Doing Business from Prague to Vladivostok
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, in which a group of architects come to a castle above a village ostensibly to discuss proposals for radical changes in the planning and organisation of the village. The political metaphor - the play was written before 1989 - is obvious.
Emotional honesty
On a personal level, regeneration means facing up to difficulties honestly, with candour; taking well-judged risks instead of reckless gambles; doing not simply talking. We need emotional honesty in which the emphasis is on direct reporting of raw experiences.
The performance of poetry is one way to approach emotional no-go areas. This can be pleasingly cathartic (tears & laughter) and, in a small way, illustrates the philosophy of European Renaissance - that regeneration is liberating.
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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 people elsewhere 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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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 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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Jim Greenhalf responds:
Finding the "soul" of regeneration
"Soul of renewal" and "soul-searching" are unusual, challenging, phrases to read in a piece about regeneration. At first I wondered if "soul" might carry the suggestion of mysticism and nonsense. On reflection I accept those phrases. It is important to emphasise that places do have a feeling peculiar to themselves; even in decline.
Bradford, once the wool capital of the world, has a modern history of trying to stave off economic and social decline. However, it still stimulates, still strikes a deep inner chord. Perhaps cities in decline do that because, unlike the great cities of Paris, Florence and Rome, they have to fight for their lives.
Cities of the newly emerging democratic economies, such as Prague, must not be viewed merely as real estate offering development opportunities. That would be to forget that this great city still has a signature or soul of its own - in spite of years of soulless Communist control and the dubious post-Communist free for all which has led to obstrusive commercial advertising and much ugly graffiti.
Expectations and prospects
Acknowledging “expectations” in what we do is more problematical. In developing our project we must avoid the indecisiveness, timidity and the dictatorship of consensus. Trying to anticipate people's expectations is likely to result in unanticipated outcomes - such as total failure. Better to lead from the front.
I do not mean that public feeling should be ignored, simply that it should not dictate what one does. Did Stravinsky conduct a vox pop before composing The Rite of Spring? Did the architects of Prague's Dancing Buildings ask Czechs if they liked Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers?
The role of artists in regeneration
Including artists in regeneration sounds good, but in my experience there can be risks of factionalism, ego-promotion - what's in it for our group?, or of social engineering - that projects ‘should’ have the requisite quota of single mothers, the disabled, unemployed and ethnic minorities to be valid.
I saw this in the late 1990s when Bradford Council belatedly realised that regeneration funding was only being given to cities that had a declared arts policy. Local arts groups and action groups were roped in for a series of meetings culminating in a joint get together at St George's Hall. I dropped out after that meeting. The Forum came to nothing because these so called artists could not agree to anything. It was a shambles. The lesson I learned was that the cultural component of regeneration, to be authentic and meaningful to others, has to flow from the imagination of particular individuals.
Lessons of Bradford's bid for 2008 European Capital of Culture status
What are the lessons to be learned from Bradford's abysmal failure even to get short-listed for the 2008 Capital of Culture bid? This bid was based on the premise that culture means everything that people do – which, when taken to its literal logical absurdity, demonstrates what an exceptionally lazy notion it is.
The Bradford bid failed principally because the campaign was nakedly parochial and materialistic. Bradford was, we were told, a great city like Florence and Berlin. With great architecture and great culture - er, the Brontes, um, David Hockney, phew, J B Priestley, Delius. More emphasis was placed on the temporary success of local pop singer Gareth Gates than the city's one enduring modern example of revitalised life: Salts Mill in the village of Saltaire. The former textile mill, the inspiration of Victorian manufacturing magnate Titus Salt, had fallen on hard times like most of the industry.
Saltaire, Unesco World Heritage Site: the legacy of Jonathan Silver
By the mid-1980s Salt's giant Palace of Industry was empty; local shops were run down; house prices in the village were low. In 1987 a Bradford entrepreneur Jonathan Silver bought the mill and in the ten years until his death from cancer in 1997 wrought miraculous changes to the fortunes of both mill and village.
He did so by combining culture - creating free galleries to exhibit the pictures of David Hockney - with commerce - letting refurbished space to high-tec manufacturing firms, which enjoyed a flourishing decade of success. In 2001 Saltaire was granted World Heritage Status by UNESCO.
Silver's success was not based upon a pre-conceived blueprint. Salts Mill is the living proof that true regeneration, unlike development and ill-conceived culture promotional campaigns, evolves. Silver spent ten years adapting and adding to the Salts phenomenon.
Dream with imagination and panache
Now, visitors from all over the world come to admire the transformation he brought about. People will come, to paraphrase the movie Field of Dreams, only if you build with imagination and panache.
My message to Prague and other European cities aspiring to regenerate is this: learn from what Jonathan Silver did at Salts Mill.
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