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July 2018
Every month, we bring you the latest local news, events, and consultations, so you can get involved with life as a Liverpool city centre resident.

Liverpool World Heritage Site given another year to show progress

Thanks to the generous support of residents and businesses along the city centre and waterfront, who donated to our successful crowdfunder, Engage Liverpool chair, Gerry Proctor, was able to attend the World Heritage Committee meeting in Bahrain this month and lend our voice to the calls to support Liverpool’s continued World Heritage Site status.

You can read Gerry’s realtime blog of the World Heritage Watch and World Heritage Committee meetings here, including a video recording of the speech he delivered on behalf of the residents we’ve spoken to.

After giving the speech, Gerry had this to say:

“A number of delegates here have told me how Engage’s interventions last year in Krakow and this year in Bahrain have had such a positive effect, because they come from a place of real authenticity. The State Parties were moved by the simple voice of ordinary people and it managed to cut through an adverse political atmosphere.”

The Liverpool and UK governments now have another year to prove progress in maintaining the integrity of its World Hertiage Site.

The plight of Liverpool’s China Town raised in the national press

Liverpool’s China Town is the oldest in Europe, but—as The Economist recently reported—the area is facing decline, as the generation divide increases between the older Chinese residents and the hundreds of new young people moving into the city to study.

The high profile failure of Liverpool City Council’s “New China Town” development has left planners wondering what else could reinvigorate the historic area. Perhaps, as the Economist suggested, Liverpool’s 10,000 Chinese students could be enticed to spend more time and money in the area? Let us know what you think, on Facebook and Twitter.

Event: Liverpool Biennial

Taking place over 15 weeks across the city in public spaces, galleries, museums and online, Liverpool Biennial commissions artists from around the world to make and present work in the context of Liverpool.

The 10th edition “Beautiful world, where are you?” invites artists and audiences to reflect on a world of social, political and economic turmoil with free exhibitions and events across the city.

Read more on the Engage Liverpool website.

Debate: Is there still a space for artists in Liverpool’s city centre?

The historic home of Liverpool’s much-loved George Henry Lee department store on Church Street / Basnett Street (home to TK Maxx and, until recently, Liverpool stalwart Rapid) is set to be re-opened this month to provide exhibition space for artists as part of the Liverpool Beinnial, and a pop-up cinema run by a local community group.

Speaking in the Echo, Biennial festival director Patrick Kirk-Smith said:

“We need more artists spaces and artist studios in the heart of Liverpool city centre and by being given the opportunity to invite artists, both established alongside those just starting their career, we provide an excellent shop window in the city’s creative talent and why it’s so important to invest and celebrate it.”

Kirk-Smith’s words, however, speak to a tension right at the heart of Liverpool’s creative sector – with hotels and student flats absorbing more and more empty space in the city centre, where is left for the creative arts?

It is not without a hint of irony that the city trumpets the (temporary) reopening of George Henry Lee’s as an arts space… when it seems set to close and become an apart-hotel in the near future. Likewise the Gostins Building on Hanover Street, which up until recently, housed a vibrant community of artist workshops, galleries, and makerspaces… now pending redevelopment into a hotel.

And how about Liverpool’s previous thriving community cinema—A Small Cinema—which closed its doors in April last year, to make room for another football-themed luxury hotel?

How do you feel about Liverpool’s balance of the arts and leisure economies? Let us know on Facebook and Twitter.

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