Phil Redmond: Meet expectations

Oct 3 2008 by Phil Redmond, Liverpool Daily Post

ASK. And so you shall receive, the Scriptures are supposed to have said. It didn’t seem to work in our house, though.

Democracy seems to work in a similar way. Ask, and you shall be consulted, seems to be the way. And we all know that consulting is a far cry from asking.

Take the great cultural legacy debate, which seems to have turned into a new DIY strategy game.

At the last count, I think there are now five fully-fledged groups consulting on strategy running alongside that other great development of democracy, the fringe meeting.

As the guy standing in the middle of 2008, though, I have to confess to not having spoken directly to any of them. I will, though. I am sure of it. I can’t escape forever. They’ll corner me somewhere.

The real positive, though, is that there is obviously a keen interest, not to say demand, to get involved in our cultural future.

Is this not another sign that the real legacy is confidence?

Simply thinking that there is a positive future and wanting to be part of it?

And part of that is the confidence of knowing that things can be done relatively easily with the right enthusiasm behind them.

Cash isn’t, actually, the issue. Everyone will, and is, naturally fretting about funding, but 2008 has had enough successful events for people to sit down and work out what will and what won’t pay its way.

What works and what doesn’t work in terms of attracting people to public events or whether they are actually worth spending public money to invigorate the local regeneration agenda.

No, the big ask, as every media and entertainment business knows, is to find out what people actually want.

It’s easy to give away a million free T-shirts, but far harder to sell a thousand.

We are now in October, officially three-quarters of the way through our term as European Capital of Culture, and already being acclaimed as the most successful to date.

So much so that MEPs from the EU Cultural Committee were in town recently asking how it was done and what they could learn for future years.

One suggestion was that a well-defined legacy strategy, including how it will be funded, should be part of the bid process, rather than waiting, like now, to see what happens and then start cobbling things together.

So, having coined the phrase, the great Scouse Wedding, I appreciate that folk will always wander off and do their own thing, but, with three months to go, perhaps we should be looking for ways to ask a few of the wedding guests themselves, rather than just consulting the wedding planners?

Or, is that too much to ask?