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Friday 18 July 2008

City revival

Mark Glazebrook on Liverpool, the European City of Culture

‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’ an inquisitive adult asked during the break for tea at a tennis party given by my parents in the Vale of Clwyd, North Wales, c.1948. ‘A cotton broker,’ I replied, wishing to follow in the ancestral footsteps. Then my father’s head shook from side to side, slowly, silently and solemnly at the head of the table.

And so it came to pass that I joined the postwar Liverpool diaspora — to London, in my case — while remaining proud that both my father and grandfather had been presidents of the Liverpool Cotton Association, the latter about 100 years ago when more cotton came to Liverpool than to any port on earth. Before the era of containerisation, in the days when docks were docks and the river Mersey boasted ten miles of them, Liverpool definitely merited its ‘Second City of Empire’ status and title — despite Glasgow’s rival claims. And now at last — admittedly 18 years after Glasgow was European City of Culture — Liverpool is European Capital of Culture 2008. (Same thing, actually — they just improved the title.)

My generation is more than content that the era of empire is over. The part the city played in the slave trade and its abolition is well documented in a Liverpool museum. If only the town in which my great-grandfather lived and worked as a doctor and surgeon could be great again — in a 21st-century way, of course. Could the arts be a significant part of the way forward? Or is dishing out these Capital of Culture awards by the EU merely an expression of hope — rather like giving Yasser Arafat a third of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 in order to encourage him to be more peaceful than he once was?

One answer is that the arts in general have already been part of the revival of recent years. Everyone knows about the Beatles. Tate Liverpool, for example, is a gallery that has proved a success in its own right and has helped to revive the docklands. Furthermore, Liverpool does have an esoteric history of culture upon which to build. Admittedly, that history does not stretch back much beyond the 18th century, for the sad but simple reason that medieval buildings were buried by boom-town commercialism.

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