SkyscraperCity Forum banner

Liverpool in the media

Tags
media
3M views 22K replies 464 participants last post by  westisbest 
#1 ·
This thread is for representations of Liverpool in the media and any issues raised by how the city is represented.

As I write, there is a piece on Radio 4's Today programme about the UNESCO visit to Liverpool, and the danger of the city losing its WHS if it goes ahead with the museum.

The key narrative appears to be: Can the city remain faithful to its past whilst growing?

I have to say that it is an informed, balanced piece.

It ended with a statement to the effect that if UNESCO doesn't accept the arguments by LCC, EH, CABE, Liverpool might have to contemplate pulling out of the WHS club.

What do you think?
 
#21 ·
This week's lazy journo award goes to NW Tonight. Can't remember which night it was (Wed?) but the report was about the Home Office refunding Merseyside police for Dr Rice's recent visit to

Merseyside (not Liverpool).

Accompanied by a photo of Condoleeza and Jack in Liverpool?

Nah - one of them standing in front of that well know Liverpool club - Blackburn Rovers.
 
#22 ·
Tedious I know, but a google news search indicates that Debi Jones' attempt to destroy the best thing to happen to "South Sefton" in two generations has generated negative news coverage in:

The Guardian
The Independent
The Telegraph
The Times
The BBC
Reuters and UPI (and, so the two main international news agencies)
and something called Art Daily

If it's any consolation, Fishupdate.com seems to have more sanguine feelings about the news. No one else though. :eek:hno:
 
#23 ·
A better than usual piece from The Guardian

Gormley's iron men will have to go, planning committee rules

Sculptor rages at decision that his 100 beach figures must leave Merseyside

David Ward
Friday October 20, 2006
The Guardian

Another Place, the sculptor Antony Gormley's collection of 100 cast iron naked men installed on a Merseyside beach, will have to head for another city. Though they have attracted more than 600,000 visitors, and a likely government grant of £1m, councillors in Sefton have decided the figures need to be removed. The decision, in defiance of advice from council officers, comes days before ministers were to announce funding towards the estimated £2.2m needed to buy and maintain the lonely sea-gazing figures. Yesterday, arts promoters and Crosby's MP denounced the decision, based on safety concerns expressed by sea anglers and windsurfers, as appalling and shortsighted.

Gormley says the two-mile stretch of firm sand is the perfect site for his work, which had previously been seen in Belgium, Norway and Germany. It is now likely to head for New York. "There is no logic to this other than small minds in some grey zone of human experience wanting to deny the unusual," Gormley said yesterday. Although the decision was made by councillors in Sefton, a Merseyside metropolitan borough, it will be seen as another setback to nearby Liverpool's plans for its year as European capital of culture in 2008. - get used to this line, it's going to be popular during 2007 :yes:

The rusty men, all moulded from the artist's own body, were installed in July 2005 and immediately won the same kind of affection as had been gained by Gormley's Angel of the North in Gateshead. People flocked to the beach to pose for photographs with the figures, paint their testicles yellow and dress them in football shirts, use them as extras in a nativity play and as a backdrop for a ballet performance.

Sefton gave planning permission for 16 months but, encouraged by public enthusiasm, the promoters applied for a four-month extension to give them time to raise the £2.2m. Planning permission expires on November 28 but high tides mean the figures will have to be removed by October 31, with work probably beginning next week. Last night Another Place Ltd, the charitable trust set up to keep the figures in Crosby, announced it would appeal to the planning inspectorate. It is not clear whether the figures can stay during the appeal or will have to be removed and then replaced.

Debi Jones, a Sefton councillor and prospective Conservative parliamentary candidate for the area, said she thought the figures were "terrific" but the silent majority of local people now wanted their beach back. Ms Jones told the planning committee of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency's concerns that several people had had to be rescued after being caught by the tide when walking out see the most distant figures. Anglers feared that their boats could be ripped apart by submerged figures. "I told the meeting, 'I have to ask every member of the committee whether, if it came to a compensation claim following a serious injury or a fatality, we would be happy to support our decision to keep the figures in the light of the evidence we have had presented to us'," she said.

Gormley denounced the safety concerns. "All this rhetoric about corporate manslaughter is just an indication of the way the country is going. This is another example of risk-resistant Britain," he said. "How can the interests of five illegal potential cod fishermen overturn a clearly articulated democratic and collective decision that this beach is better used as an extended public art work than a fishing beach? I don't understand how any of the arguments are logically sustainable. If there was this degree of human risk, why were we granted planning permission in the first place? We have submissions from coastguards and others to make it clear that the number of people who have had to be rescued from quicksands or waves is in absolute proportion to the extra number of people coming to the beach. There has been no exponentional growth of endangered people."

Crosby's Labour MP, Claire Curtis-Thomas, who fronted the campaign to keep Another Place, said there were no technical grounds for refusal. "This decision is about petty local politics led by a Conservative councillor who is standing as a candidate for the area in the next general election. No one came here before and no one will come in the future if the figures go.
"The figures gave Liverpool identity and recognition. We are going to lose millions of pounds as a result of this. We were talking to developers about developing the area around the figures and that was potentially a multimillion-pound programme. How can I expect people to invest here when I now have nothing?"

Laurie Peake, of the Liverpool Biennial company, which helped bring Another Place to Merseyside, was at the committee meeting, attended by large numbers of anglers, surfers and members of sailing clubs. "We had statements from the coastguards saying they had no objection to extending the planning permission and from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution saying it was perfectly happy with safety measures in place.
"But the planning committee chose to ignore all that advice. Members played to the audience that was there. It was mob rule."

According to Antony Gormley Another Place harnesses the ebb and flow of the tide to explore man's relationship with nature. "The seaside is a good place to do this. Here time is tested by tide, architecture by the elements and the prevalence of sky seems to question the Earth's substance. In this work, human life is tested against planetary time. This sculpture exposes to light and time the nakedness of a particular and peculiar body. It is no hero, no ideal, just the industrially reproduced body of a middle-aged man trying to remain standing and trying to breathe, facing a horizon busy with ships moving materials and manufactured things around the planet. It has illustrated that no landscape is innocent, no landscape is uncontrolled. Every landscape has a hidden social dimension to do with both its natural usage and the politics of territory. And I do like the idea that attempting to ask questions about the place of art in our lives reveals these complex human and social matrices."
 
#24 ·
Northern outrage!

I almost forgot about this one! This is about ABSENCE of Liverpool in the media. North West Tonight, Wednesday or Thursday. Gordon Burns was interviewing someone from the BBC about its threat to pull out of moving some departments to Salford. You can guess the narratives.

NORTHERN outrage.

London with a population of X hogs the media. This is unfair. Why shouldn't non-metropolitan areas get a share? (This seemed like a Freudian slip)

100 MPs have written to someone or other to demand that the move NORTH takes place.

Yada, yada, yada.

But the conflation of all things NORTHERN to ensure a move to one place in the NORTH (Salford), was astounding. Gordon Burns couldn't for one moment see that the concerns he expressed about London dominance weren't being addressed by moving lots of well paid jobs to one other city in the NORTH(Salford) in a tokenistic way.

It also brought home to me how successful people are in the Manchester and Salford region in getting what they want by dressing themselves up in NORTHERN garb and lulling southern politicos into believing that there is a groundswell of opinion in the 'NORTH' that without exception thinks likewise!

In this context Liverpool becomes part of a NORTH that is content to have itself and its interests and local obsessions catered for by another city.

How crazy is that? :crazy:
 
#26 ·
Liverpool on radio 4 at 8.45am

Discussion about electing a mayor, half way there in terms of collecting votes to force the referendum - Redmond, Lehey mentioned as candidates for a possible election next year.

Big dig, 800th birthday, City of Culture, massive development name checked


Taxi driver interviewed. He spoke about Liverpool being light years behind Manchester - no vison. He said he had seen Labour, Tory, Liberal led councils and used this an illustration of an absence of a local political focus.

Local political apathy mentioned

Hatton - also interviewed, latte making in the background, talking about a massive reduction in local powers and expressing a concern that there is 'no real industry here.'

Bradley's opposition to an elected mayor was voiced. He said that Liverpool has real problems that are beyond the scope of one individual.

Overall, quite balanced - although no real analysis.
 
#27 ·
#28 ·
Another negative story in the national media.Magnus Linklater in "The Times" yesterday, headlined,"i don't want to spoil the party" the gist of it,Liverpool shouldn't expect to be regenerated by COC, it won't work,cultural icon status is not enough to sustain the local economy.I'd say lazy journalism but it's more than that,Liverpool is easy pickings for the national media.It'a very poor piece of journalism by a senior "Times" journalist.Even this bunch of incomptent tossers we've got at the town hall are not relying COC to turn things round,it's more of a rebranding exercise. Anway the piece includes the usual stereotyping,run down,gritty and ends up with the customary complements,pride,passionate.... after the knife's been stuck in.**** the lot of them,let's declare UDI.
 
#29 ·
Just in case you want to read it one more time here it is:

The Times November 08, 2006
+ Post a Comment

I don't want to spoil the party . . .
Magnus Linklater

. . . but Liverpool needs to know that swanky art projects don’t revitalise Cities of Culture


I am glad Liverpool is putting its money on Gustav Klimt and Anton Chekhov to seal its identity as a City of Culture rather than staging yet another tribute to the Beatles. The programme it announced this week to mark its year as Europe’s cultural epicentre in 2008 includes Shakespeare, Britten, Heaney and Rattle, along with a suitably eclectic mix of raffish exhibitions (I liked the one featuring designer clothing, as worn by footballers’ wives) plus the Turner Prize. It will celebrate the roots of northern culture, but it will be international in outlook.

So far so good. But what matters is not so much the party as the aftermath. By the time it is over, Liverpool will have invested close on £3 billion, not just on the programme, but also on what amounts to a massive facelift for the city. It will have created a new museum, conference centre, retail complex and galleries, refurbished its waterfront, improved its transport system and done its level best to transform its image from gritty, if run-down, Victorian port to cultural icon of the post-industrial age. What, however, will sustain it? Does the sheer accolade of the title inject new life into a city, or could it all collapse on the morning after, when the caravan has moved on, and all that is left are some fancy buildings and a massive hangover?

It has now almost a cliché to say that go-ahead cities need cultural symbols to aid their regeneration. Yesterday’s warehouses and factories are converted into concert halls or galleries. An arts festival takes the place of a manufacturing strategy. A city like Bilbao establishes its credentials by erecting a museum designed by Frank Gehry. Glasgow signals its new image by refurbishing its Kelvingrove Gallery. The East End of London will become Olympic City. But is that a foundation strong enough to sustain a lasting economy? Or is it the equivalent of pyramid selling — a fragile structure built on promises, with layers of apparent activity concealing a hollow emptiness at its heart?

Conscious, perhaps, of the risks ahead, Liverpool is holding a conference at Aintree today on the impact that culture can have on local economies and regeneration. Delegates will doubtless hear stirring examples of how investment in the arts has attracted business by transforming the image of a city, drawing in creative talent and making it a more attractive place to work in. The reality is less clear-cut. A European Commission report which looked at 29 cities that had been designated Cities of Culture, found that, while economic growth had been among their principal aims, it had proved impossible to demonstrate that any definable growth had resulted. “With the exception of tourism, there is no clear evidence that the European Cities of Culture action has been used to create a platform from which to advance ‘investability’,” was its bleak conclusion. Those cities that thrived had been thriving anyway. Those that were failing continue to fail. Some of them had used “the rhetoric of economic success”, but had not managed to provide the evidence to back it up. Others, said the report candidly, “had simply preferred ‘not to know’.” The money had been spent, and that was that.

The most salutary example was Salonika, chosen by the Greek Government in a blatantly political attempt to transform it into “the metropolis of the Balkans”. Museums and galleries were erected with no expense spared, and hundreds of thousands of visitors poured in during its year in the limelight. Nine years on, it is still paying the cost. Unable to attract sufficient numbers of tourists to fill its halls and pay for their maintenance, it spends its time trying to extract money owed to it by the Greek Government, and dealing with litigation arising from its bid.

Other cities have shrugged off the need to demonstrate economic benefits by creating their own definitions of success. Lille, City of Culture in 2004, grandly described itself as “a spaceship changing the fabric of time”, rather than anything as banal as a model for regeneration.

Even Glasgow, which is often cited as a byword for urban reinvention, and which brought the Bolshoi, the Berlin Philharmonic, Pavarotti and Sinatra to the city in 1990, failed to capitalise on its success. Fourteen years on, an academic study concluded that there had been no sustainable economic development as a result of the award, that local politicians had failed to build on it and that their achievements were “opportunistic rather than strategic”. Only now, with a leadership that understands the need to link public investment in the arts with private sector initiatives, have the indicators of economic success — a rising population, the growth of small businesses and the creation of new jobs — begun to suggest that the city is responding to treatment.

Liverpool has set itself the target of becoming a tourist city, changing its image, drawing in visitors, staging big arts events and reversing its population decline by making it a more attractive place to do business in. It deserves to succeed, if only because of the way it has already turned its back on its disastrous political history, and because its people have an unquenchable spirit and a pride in their own identity; I have no doubt that by the end of 2008 Klimt, Chekhov and the rest of them will have become honorary scousers.

It should not, however, forget that only through wealth creation can growth be guaranteed. Or, as John Lennon once said, when asked what he would do after Beatlemania had subsided: “Count the money.”


Do you think he really believes that he is telling us anything that we already don't know? Journalists - the spin is everything, especially when it panders to pre-existing stereotypes.
 
#31 ·
It will celebrate the roots of northern culture, but it will be international in outlook.
Can someone help me out with this one? WFT is northern culture? Anyone have a ouija board so I can ask Fred Dibnah et al?
 
#33 ·
The problem with this L8 is i've seen 3 or 4 pieces in Times in the last 3 months about COC ,all with a negative slant.But i've yet to see a response in the letters page or anywhere else,from LCC,The Mersey Partnership or Liverpool Vision.
**** them. They can kiss my arse. I'm sick of English myopia as far as this city is concerned. Come ye ryanair bandits and easyjet gauchos, mingle with us and connect us to the mainland. :yes:
 
#34 ·
The odd thing about that is Linklater is a Scot.
Re-reading the piece again, I'm thinking - you're not really just talking about Lpool per se, you're talking about Glasgow. Letting us know that it has turned a corner. Implicit messages.

Got your number, Mr Linklater.
 
#35 ·
There has just been a discussion about this show on the radio. Someone asked why it couldn't be brought to Liverpool. The interviewee responded that it was too expensive to stage in this country.

Oi, Paul/Ringo/yoko - 2008? Yeh?

Ta
http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/Cirqu....htm?sa_campaign=internal_click/redirect/love
Mike McCartney asked whether it could come to Liverpool for 2008 when he went to Vegas to see it and they sounded up for it at the time,maybe that's to be announced in the future and going on that preview i'll be first in the queue if it does.:cheers:
 
#36 ·
Of course stage "swanky art projects" in London or Manchester and they'll be raved about until the cows come home. Liverpool just can't do anything right for some sections of the press. Like Liverpool8 said, **** them.

"Swanky art projects" aren't really my cup of tea, mind.
 
#38 ·
It's also the mistake of saying all this investment £3bn+ is all due to E.C.o.C. which was given to Liverpool because we needed the regeneration more than the other cities. More handouts, £3bn+, to get things done.

I'm a supporter of the London Olympics, but isn't this effectively a multi-multi billion pound handout to stage a sporting event so as to regenerate an area of London...!
 
Top