Special report: Liverpool’s long and winding road

Liverpool has put its heart and soul into preparing to be European city of culture in 2008.

The “greatest day in Liverpool’s recent history” came quite unexpectedly, on June 4 2003. The announcement that the Merseyside city will be the UK’s European capital of culture in 2008 was considered the key to unlocking a regional renaissance.

Locals hope the standing will allow Liverpool to transform its image from gloomy northern city to major European player. According to some estimations the cultural status will generate at least £2bn in investment, 14,000 new jobs and 1.7 million extra tourists.

“2008 is the rocket fuel for Liverpool’s economy,” Mike Storey, deputy chairman of the Liverpool culture company declared. “June 4 2003 changed Liverpool. At a stroke, national and international perceptions changed and the image of the city improved. Solid foundations have now been laid for Liverpool’s ongoing transformation into a world-class city.”

There is no denying that Liverpool is undergoing a dramatic face lift. Cranes dominate the city’s maritime sky line and building works envelop almost every patch of unexploited land.

“Cranes are now a welcome per- manent feature and they will proliferate over coming years,” the Liverpool Culture Company boasts. The Culture Company was established to submit Liverpool’s European city of culture bid in the UK.

Until 2004, the EU delegated responsibility for selecting cultural capitals to its member states. This changed in 2005 when it was decided EU institutions should also take part in the selection procedure.

When British cities were bidding in 2003, the UK government required regions to compete against one to other to prove their worth.The city best known for the Beatles beat off competition from Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Newcastle-Gateshead and Oxford.

Staff at the Culture Company say the competition helped the Merseyside contingent raise its game. “For Liverpool the bidding process was like training for a boxing match. We had to get fighting fit,” Mike Doran, news officer at the Culture Company explains.

“By the end we knew what our strengths and weaknesses were and were able to put forward a plan.” Liverpool’s timeline of themed years leading up to “the big one” in 2008 is thought to be one of the principal reasons the city won.

The bid team decided that if Liverpool really wanted to rise to the European challenge it would need to start warming up from the outset.“It would have been pointless to put a team together and not test anything out until 2008,” Doran explains.“Some people think European capital of culture is just an event, we want them to see it as part of a bigger picture.”

Last year locals celebrated Liverpool’s maritime heritage in “sea Liverpool” while in January the culture company launched “Liverpool performs.” 2006 is about focussing on “how well Liverpool performs in arts, sport and business” say the company’s brochures.

Liverpool’s programme of regeneration is underpinned by a “creative communities” scheme that distributes resources among grass-roots programmes. One local youth organisation – Yellow House – has received funding for its theatre projects that target some of the city’s poorest communities.

“Listening to the media anyone would think all hope had been abandoned on the streets of Liverpool,” Gerorge McKane head of Yellow House worries.

His unrelenting faith in Liverpool’s working class youth have seen him dedicate more than 25 years to encouraging young people to express themselves through art. “In the 1980s and 90s Liverpool was given such a bad press,” he says.

“The city was associated with theft, violence and anger. We were set up to challenge that and the European city of culture status allows the city to step up that battle. Liverpool needed this.”

Liverpool definitely needed something to shake off a troubled past.Twenty five years ago a week of violent unrest reduced one of the city’s most deprived neighbourhoods to rubble.

The infamous Toxteth riots saw parts of Liverpool crumble into smoking ruin as the city came close to its nadir. British ministers surveyed burnt out cars and shattered windows asking where it had all gone wrong for the city that once lay at the epicentre of a trading system that reached out to the four corners of the globe.

Liverpool was once the “second city of the empire” - playing a crucial role in the growth of the British commonwealth. But by the 1970s and 80s vast areas of Liverpool fell to their knees as unemployment and social deprivation ate away at the city’s social fabric.

By the 1990s poor districts like Everton endured an unemployment rate of 44 per cent and in 1994 almost every second household in Liverpool relied on support from social welfare programmes. That same year, the EU promised to take note of Merseyside’s ills and awarded the region “objective one status.”

One of the first UK regions to be recognised as having severe social deprivation, Merseyside was promised cash to bolster flagging industry.

In 2000 the EU pledged a further €1.3bn in aid to be applied before the area’s special status expires at the end of this year. But questions over how effectively EU funds have been applied continue to reverberate around Merseyside. Indeed, at the height of EU injections into the region, local MP Frank Field told quizzical reporters, “If you asked me where the millions are being spent, I couldn’t tell you.”

Critics warn Liverpool against succumbing to the allure of gentrification and commercialisation. They point out that beneath the glamour of Liverpool’s cultural status, the city and its environs are still home to some of the poorest communities in the UK. Incidences of burglary and car crime are falling in Liverpool but violent crime is on the up.

John Lennon airport may well be the fastest growing in Europe and growth in the sector is no doubt bolstering Liverpool’s global standing – but what about the locals? “We are working with the police and we are also working with young people to teach them how to benefit from culture,” Doran argues.

“We have health, education and sports officers too. This is not just about regeneration of the city. It would have been easy to just throw a lot of events but we have not done that. Our  schemes give local people a purpose. Ours is a full rounded package.”

Liverpool hopes to reproduce the Glasgow effect – 1990’s “city in transition.” The Scottish city still has serious social problems to contend with, but is now the third most popular tourist destination in the UK for overseas visitors and has secured a good name for itself in the international art world.

“2008 is just the beginning,” Doran insists. “Legacy is key to us. 2015 will be one of the most important years for us – only then will we be able to really judge if this has been a success for Liverpool.”

This article originally appeared in the february 6 edition of Parliament Magazine.

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