Culture in Crisis?: Broken promises mount up

Aug 13 2007 By Larry Neild, Liverpool Daily Post

THE dawning of the new Millennium ushered in a new feeling of confidence in Liverpool. Three decades that had seen political unrest, deprivation, tragedy and a city on the verge of falling over the edge, were ending.

The growing confidence and renewed faith in Liverpool was given an incredible boost when word got out that Liverpool would bid to become European Capital of Culture.

Liverpool? Culture Capital? Liverpool? cried the critics who had long looked down their noses at the troublesome city on the banks of the Mersey.

Glasgow had had similar social problems some years earlier and when it became European City of Culture, the Scottish city had used the occasion to re-invent, and to rediscover itself. The Clyde has never looked back.

So why not Liverpool? It was, after all, Liverpool’s time to rehabilitate itself as a major European city and the culture title would provide the perfect springboard.

Under EU rules, the UK government was to nominate a British city to host the title in 2008. Like a beauty parade, the nominations flooded in, and at the end of the day there were 12 UK cities bidding for the cultural crown, including Liverpool. The number was narrowed down and Liverpool remained on the final short-list, a triumph in itself, some would say.

The Capital of Culture title would not be seen in Liverpool as a prize, but as a scholarship, beamed the bidders. Winning the title would be the critical accelerator to enable Liverpool to fulfil its creative potential.

There were interviews, visits and some said Newcastle would be the victor because it was close to Tony Blair’s Parliamentary constituency, and he would have to rubber-stamp the final choice.

There is little doubt that Liverpool’s bid document was impressive, but time will tell if it was work of fact – or fiction.

Sir Bob Scott, who had won the Commonwealth Games for Manchester (having failed to win the Olympic Games for the city) was brought in to head the bid.

In its bid to the UK team charged with selecting a winner, Liverpool presented a case that oozed confidence, determination and, more importantly, the desperate desire to succeed.

Liverpool’s time had come, was the clarion call.

The city was moving away from old-style governance to a new model where creativity was at the core of innovation, regeneration, education, tourism and social care.

“Ours is a creative city agenda, a liberating agenda, which empowers its citizens and stakeholders and helps unleash their creative potential. Liverpool is changing.” Those were the opening words in the powerful bid document.

“We are a city willing to take risks and apply new approaches and solutions to our promises and challenges.”

The city’s bid was to be planned and delivered through a new inclusive organisation – the Liverpool Culture Company. A Creative Director would navigate the journey to and beyond 2008, working radically at the very heart of city governance directly to the council’s chief executive (then Sir David Henshaw), with a free role – roaming, prompting, provoking and prodding in all the city does with all partners.

“Whether choreographing the arrival experience for the cruise liner visitor or orchestrating the festival for the community on the outer estate, the Creative Director will be the antithesis of the sterile and stultifying planning that too often holds back our cities. The Director’s prime task is to be a creative animateur, to conjure and capture the vibrancy and excitement of city life at its best,” cried the bid document.

Come on down, Ms Robyn Archer – the job is yours.

Who would have known then that the adventure with an artistic director based half-way around the world in Australia would all end in tears? And at a cost to the city of literally tens of thousands of pounds.

THE judges were told that culture and creativity would be at the heart of civic and community life, and that every community in the city had been engaged by Capital of Culture. What, it should be asked, would be the response to that promise if the judges popped along to Norris Green, Fazakerley or Kirkdale this week?

Each year up until 2008 was to have a special theme: the city wanted to milk the 2008 Capital of Culture crown for everything it could, and why not?

But how would the city’s landscape change as a result of it being Capital of Culture?

The judges were told in 2002 the city chose Will Alsop’s visionary design for the Fourth Grace.

The Cloud, standing alongside the Port of Liverpool Building, would deliver a world-class cultural landmark on the waterfront, a home for the new Museum of Liverpool.

Many people who had visited an exhibition for a waterfront project had given Alsop’s Cloud the thumbs down. Yet so unusual was its design that it would have put Liverpool on the world map and the building would have been a global icon.

It was abandoned, and now there is talk of it going instead to Toronto. So much for that promise that Liverpool was a city willing to take risks, a city with a liberating agenda, unconstrained by the very conventions that had virtually put progress on hold.

The judges were told that funding was in place for a pioneering tram system, and that by 2005 a new cruise liner terminal would be ready.

More than half-way through its 800th birthday year, the cruise terminal (cost almost doubled from the original £10.5m) is still not ready.

The trams remain a distant – and some say impossible – dream, abandoned after local infighting and a government U- turn on funding.

There were winners, however, and the bid document spoke of Liverpool Vision’s scheme to build a new arena on Kings Waterfront, originally intended as a replacement for Goodison Park. It also spoke of the Grosvenor redevelopment of the Paradise Street area and the rapid growth of Liverpool John Lennon Airport.

All three have happened, or are happening, though none was specifically inspired by the culture crown and many would argue they would have happened in any case.

The aim, though, of the bid was to deliver a celebration that would be exceptional and memorable, touching the lives of every citizen and offering every visitor the chance to share in an adventure of self discovery.

“The new Liverpool dares to see what might be – but isn’t there yet . . . It will deliver a lasting legacy,” the bold promises continued.

So it was that, in June, 2003, a nervous gathering of city leaders, the bid team and the ever-present Great and the Good gathered in the new extension to the Empire Theatre.

Tessa Jowell, the culture minister, was to announce her decision live on national television. It was no doubt a scene being played out in each of the final bidders for the title.

Mike Storey, then leader of the city council, Sir David Henshaw and Sir Bob Scott stood side by side waiting for the decision.

It’s going to be Newcastle, it’s going to be Birmingham? The doubting Thomases were all wrong. The European Capital of Culture in 2008, declared Ms Jowell, is LIVERPOOL.

THE looks of excitement and exhilaration on the faces of Storey, Henshaw, Scott and everyone in the room brought tears to the eyes of many. A city battered by mass unemployment, being in a political wilderness, which had experienced riots and the Hillsborough tragedy, was after all to be given the kind of leg-up that money can’t buy.

The reality dawned on everyone that Liverpool’s time had come. There was the little question the EU people in faraway Brussels would confirm the decision, and ensure that Liverpool would be a worthy city to hold the crown.

Indeed, the EU’s selection panel met in February, 2004, to decide whether Liverpool’s nomination should be confirmed. They unanimously supported the recommendation, saying Liverpool had put forward an excellent presentation, showing a vibrant enthusiasm and energy. The EU panel even congratulated the Liverpool bid team on what it had achieved.

But in its deliberations the EU panel made some comments that would be a pointer for the issues yet to haunt Liverpool’s emergence as European Capital of Culture.

Apart from expressing some concerns about the “European-ness” of the Liverpool programme, the panel members raised questions about the role of the Artistic Director.

The cultural programme already developed made it quite difficult to attract an outstanding independent European personality, if not given the space for developing an “integrated artistic vision.”

Liverpool has set out its stall, first to the UK government and then to the Europeans. On paper the bid was impressive, but has it turned out that way?

Certainly many would question whether the run-up years have lived up to their expectations, and that in term creates an understandable nervousness about the year itself, 2008.

The collapse of the Cloud, the tram debacle, the fall-out between two of the key players, Storey and Henshaw, the departure of Robyn Archer and the catastrophic collapse of the Mathew Street Festival were not part of the original script.

If the events that have occurred since 2003 were now factored into the original bid document, would Liverpool still win its crowning glory?

larryneild@dailypost.co.uk