A 40-year-old study of Liverpool’s art scene has been updated in a new book. Laura Davis asks how much has changed

IT HAS been more than four decades since journalist John Willett wrote his groundbreaking book on Liverpool’s overwhelming potential as a major cultural city. Back then there was no Tate gallery, no FACT centre, no Biennial visual arts festival and – just imagine it – no Superlambanana.

Had he not died in 2002, would Willett be rubbing his hands in delight at post-Capital of Culture Liverpool? Or would he regret that more had not been made of his report?

The original version of Art in a City was republished in 2007, to mark its 40th anniversary and Liverpool’s 800th birthday. A new book, Art in a City Revisited, which takes inspiration from Willett’s text, is being launched this month.

“The original was commissioned by the Bluecoat as a report into the state of art in the city, and how Liverpool could use art in a creative way,” explains Bryan Biggs, the Bluecoat’s artistic director and co-editor of the new book.

“We wanted to look at what had happened in those intervening 40 years – how far had we come and was Willett right in his predictions?

“And I think probably he was. He was a very prescient writer, he foresaw that Liverpool could become very much an arts city with major public art and institutions.”

Willett spent several years researching his report, in his own words, “starting at the bottom, taking a single city and trying to establish the past importance, present function and future potentialities of the visual arts there.”

He hoped it would provide a new approach for artists, architects, planners, social scientists and local politicians, and would encourage future investigations along the same lines.

“It was the first book about the sociology of the arts, looking at the art in one city and how it impacted on people’s lives,” says Biggs.