Hopes are high for a feast of city’s cultural heritage

Sep 15 2007 by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post

THE second Hope Street Feast day takes place tomorrow – and organisers are already giving praise to a triumph of co-ordination between those who live and work in the heart of Liverpool’s traditional cultural quarter.

Scheduled to coincide with the end of the city’s food and drink fortnight the festival is set to be a grand celebration of local talent and enterprise around the Hope Street/Hardman Street axis.

Its focal point will be the Philharmonic Hall which is staging a free admission open day from 10.30am until 4.30pm featuring a host of special performances including three short concerts by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by its principal conductor Vasily Petrenko.

Other venues, restaurants and shops will also be open throughout the day while Hope Street will be closed to allow for the 50 stalls farmers’ market plus demonstrations by a host of street performers including the Shiverpool ghost tour group and the giant Beatles puppets.

The Liverpool and District branch of CAMRA, which has been operating a two-week Liverpool Pubs Passport campaign designed to push its Capital of Real Ale programme, will also be offering free tastings of beers from Merseyside’s growing number of breweries.

The event’s organiser, the Philharmonic Hall executive director Simon Glinn, said: “We held the first Feast day in September last year and it was so successful because we asked everyone in and around Hope Street to contribute – and everybody did.

“This year is going to be a smashing event because we’re catering for everybody – when you’ve got the likes of Shiverpool ghost tours and the two cathedrals getting behind it all, it creates the opportunity to show the cultural diversity that’s going on.”

Mr Glinn said that there are high hopes of making it an annual one day event.

“What’s really worked well this year is that Feast has been staged at the culmination of the food and drink festival and the start of the academic year. It’s also the start of the cultural season when everything starts to kick into action so a one day event like this at this time of year every year seems perfect.

“But,” he added, “we still want it to be a subtle, low-key affair. We don’t want a whole weekend with 50,000 people out on the streets swigging pints of lager. Hope Street is a bit more subtle than that. A one-day Feast aiming to be the finest, not the biggest, is appropriate for this.”

mikechapple