The city that carved a name for itself

Feb 13 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

Sculptor Stephen Broadbent reveals to Lew Baxter why Liverpool could be the flashpoint for revolution

IT WILL surely be with an outwardly relaxed assurance forged by experience, and an informed grasp of his theme, that sculptor Stephen Broadbent will launch into his forthcoming talk in the sumptuous surroundings of St George’s Hall about Liverpool as “City of Sculpture”. Yet he quietly confides that perhaps, privately, he will be swept by twinges of trepidation.

He is, after all, following in the wake of an elite corps of often supremely intellectual predecessors who over the past decade, have explored, as part of the respected Roscoe Lecture series in Liverpool, what it is to be a good citizen in today’s mainly secular society, where many live in a state of isolation and anxiety.

We are reflecting here on such distinguished folk as Dr Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi; Mary McAleese, the former President of Ireland; His Holiness the Dalai Lama; Sheikh Dr Zaki Badawi, Head of theŠMuslim College; Lech Walesa, former President of Poland and leader of the Solidarity Movement; HRH the Prince of Wales; and – if he’ll pardon the unintended slight – among the more “populist” brigade, Gerard Houllier, French-born former manager of Liverpool Football Club.

The Foundation for Citizenship – which falls under the auspices of Liverpool John Moores University – was the original concept of Lord David Alton, who continues to play a major role in the Roscoe Lecture series.

Yet it is not the thought of those formidable fellow lecturers that slightly intimidates Broadbent, whose range of public art and sculptures graces not just various locations in Liverpool – such as his Connections: The Face of Liverpool, an integrated work of art, photography and architecture located around the Radisson Hotel – but many UK cities, including Belfast and Glasgow, and as far away as Casablanca in Morocco and Cotonou in the West African Republic of Benin, where one of his acclaimed Reconciliation Trilogy statues links Liverpool and Richmond in the USA as a reminder of the past evils of slavery

No, the present day great and good do not perturb him, it is the knowledge that the ghost of his one time mentor – and pal – Arthur Dooley, the admired but much underestimated Liverpool-born sculptor, will no doubt be watching over him, weeping copious tears as he did, it seems, on the most important personal and emotional occasions.

The subject matter is something Dooley held dear, declares Stephen, who spent four years under the tutelage of the man who was fired with a love, and, conversely, fury for his beloved Liverpool and art; while today some of his striking sculptures are considered definitions of the city’s identity.

His “Beatles” statue in Mathew Street – Four Boys Who Shook the World – is almost a shrine to worldwide fans, and yet Broadbent confirms that Arthur Dooley chose the symbol of the Madonna to represent the city rather than the group itself.

“He felt that this depiction of the comforting matriarch was more important than the lads,” added Stephen, who reveals that Dooley was convinced that Liverpool and its anarchic, wildly creative citizens could, above all other British cities, be the fulcrum for revolution.

“He always banged on about Liverpool being the victim of a deliberately managed decline; that it was undergoing a process of shipping out the ‘grot’ and gentrifying the town. He would see today’s development and regeneration as the fulfilment of his prophecy, and it would probably fill him with rage,” comments Stephen.

“But Arthur was also a ferocious defender of the city’s architectural legacy and I recall that he tied himself to the railings of the Albert Dock when, in the 1960s, the city authorities published plans for this marvellous collection of Jesse Hartley buildings to be demolished to make way for a car park.”

Fortunately, thanks mostly to the public outrage fired by the late architect Quentin Hughes – who set up the Liverpool Heritage Trust to protect many buildings that now form part of the city’s cultural heritage – it never happened; while for years Dooley harboured grand hopes that one day it might become a People’s University.

Although born in Wiltshire, well out of squawking range of the Liver Birds, Stephen Broadbent views himself as an “honorary” Scouser. None could gainsay his case, after early years at the city’s esteemed Bluecoat School in the 1970s and 1980s – when Liverpool was undergoing a period of, shall we say, social and political turbulence and not a little “challenge” – and then an immersion in the very bosom of its culture as deployed by the wit and the grandiose artistic gestures of Dooley, and no less his foibles.

Broadbent readily unleashes his own passion about the city and will enthusiastically discuss how Liverpool has more public statues than any other UK city apart from London.

AND he continues to add to that list, his latest creation – to be unveiled this summer – is a triptych that celebrates the lives of the two great religious leaders of Liverpool in the late 20th century: Archbishop Derek Worlock and Bishop David Sheppard. It will be located in Hope Street, between the city’s two cathedrals, and the central panel will be missing, permitting – even encouraging – pedestrians to walk through with the two bishops in low relief on the sides while the back is a collage of their press cuttings. “It is about a significant period in the city’s history,” says Stephen.

He is eager to show how this urge to celebrate and commemorate its citizen achievers was a vital part of the Victorian and Edwardian nature of the city, as indeed was the key role played in the early 19th century by William Roscoe – after whom the lectures are named. A fierce anti-slavery campaigner, Roscoe was even described as the “founder of Liverpool culture” and was a champion of education for the masses.

“The great merchants of Liverpool wanted to reflect their idea that Liverpool was the new Athens but I think we were more akin to Rome. We were basking in the glories of Empire, and as Britain’s vital world maritime hub, resulting in commercial success and civic riches, “ comments Broadbent.

“There was hardly any emphasis on the intellectual as they wanted to create a collection of classically influenced buildings – such as St George’s Hall – to demonstrate the importance of the city on a global stage,” comments Stephen whose talk will examine the thinking behind this architecture and related public sculptures, which were infused into the very fabric of the city.

He will also look back to Liverpool’s earliest days when the little church on the Pool was a symbol for the first settlement and 40 years later, the castle.

We are chatting in the airy, well-lit kitchen of Stephen’s home in Cheshire, a lovely old farmhouse that enjoys views of the rolling hills and woods, with adjacent buildings that house his studio and office. It is far removed from the dirty, shabby, dark space that he shared with Arthur Dooley in the old Bear Brand industrial complex in Woolton, in south Liverpool.

He remembers with nostalgic affection, that the whole place smelled strongly of resin and was often shrouded in dust. He was in essence Dooley’s last apprentice but laughs that Arthur would have been contemptuous of that term. “I knew his son, Paul, at school and asked to be introduced to his dad. I was the only boy at The Blue Coat who studied metalwork, with a fabulous teacher called Mr Hicklin who by trade was a silversmith. Indeed, I was supposed to be going to Sheffield to learn to be a silversmith.

“Then at 17 I met Arthur. He warned me not to go to art college as I would turn out like all the rest,” says Stephen who recalls that Dooley then said: ‘Come and work with me for a year and I’ll show you, and then you can teach them’.

SO, HE quite literally moved his bed from the Blue Coat dormitories to Dooley’s work unit in the almost derelict complex. Stephen, like Dooley – who died in 1994 – is of the notion that artists, and people generally, cannot live separately outside the prevailing zeitgeist of the day; they are influenced and affected by it.

His “bible” for the lecture has been Terry Cavanagh’s Public Sculpture of Liverpool that was published 10 years ago by the Liverpool University Press.

“It is a remarkable record of every public statue in the city and I am indebted to it,” says Stephen whose own book, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sculptor, was published around the same time, and carries the argument that artists have a very important part to play in both the serious dramas of cities and also in the play and humour.

He is hugely tickled by the Superlambanana sculpture created by the Japanese artist, Taro Chiezo, and now almost regarded as the 21st-century symbol of Liverpool, while the Liver Bird maybe looks to the past.

And he is hugely supportive of the project that will see 100 individual interpretations of the well-loved sculpture scattered throughout the city during its Capital of Culture year.

He is, though, persuaded that today’s buildings lack the stature or even the arrogance of the past. “Sadly, in general terms, I’m not convinced that most of what is being built today carries the authentic Liverpool accent, and could be in any city. You need that personality and voice rather than the new mood of individualism that says “blow citizenship”. But, in the end, I suppose Liverpool will always have that great sense of place, of being on the edge. It is largely the phenomenal light, which is almost Venetian in its intensity and like nowhere else in Britain – even London.

“For me, the story of Liverpool and its rich cultural and racial mix is one of adventure, risk and difference. Perhaps Arthur Dooley was right – if there is ever to be revolution in this country, then Liverpool is probably the place it will start.”

STEPHEN BROADBENT will deliver his Roscoe Lecture: “Liverpool – City of Sculpture” on Monday February 18th at 12.30pm in St George’s Hall. Free but ticket only admission – contact the Foundation for Citizenship on 0151 231 3852.