We’re encouraged to shop small and shop local this Christmas. The city of Liverpool is full of talent – makers, sellers and independent businesses selling unique and special products. Our small businesses have been hit hard this year and need your support, to make things a little easier here’s our pick of local businesses selling great gifts you can give this Christmas.
Read MoreHas a human right become a privilege?
A trip to the toilet is a basic act for most of us: we sit or stand, we do our business, we flush, we wash our hands and we go about our day without a second thought. But this mundane routine is unfamiliar to many people across the globe.
On 19 November the UN will be celebrating World Toilet Day. It is a day that marks the importance of effective sanitation; something that many people in many countries do not have. The World Health Organisation reports that 60% of the global population has either limited or no access to a safe toilet. Going to the toilet is one of the most private human acts, yet 673 million people currently practice open defecation – that is, defecating in an open space with no containment, regulation or sanitation of human waste. These sorts of practices mean that deadly bacteria spread and water sources become infected, spreading killer diseases such as cholera, typhoid, and dysentery. It’s an ongoing crisis that is taking the lives of thousands.
World Toilet Day was established in 2001 by the World Toilet Organisation in an effort to address government neglect of the crisis and to tackle the taboos of discussing sanitation care. It became a UN-recognised day in 2013 and aligns with the UN’s sixth Sustainable Development Goal – for everyone to have clean water and sanitation by the year 2030. This crucial mission will help the reported 1.8 billion people currently drinking unsanitary water, an action that contributes to the deaths of 280,000 people a year; 280,000 too many.
It is difficult to imagine living without access to a clean and safe toilet, yet this is the reality for millions. And it doesn’t just affect people’s health, but also their education. Many young girls will miss school during their period due to lacking facilities. What we regard as essential becomes a privilege in consideration of the many people who go without it. The UN reports that more people have access to a mobile phone than a clean, safe toilet. Many of us love to use our mobile phone during our longer-than-usual toilet trips – yet given the choice, we could sacrifice our phone for a time to use a safe, clean and private toilet. While we can exercise these freedoms, many others have no choice.
As it stands today, only 40 out of 152 countries are on track to meet the UN’s sanitation goal by 2030, and it was only in 2010 that human sanitation and access to clean water was recognised as a human right. It is unquestionable that every human being is entitled to sanitation and privacy, yet so many are deprived of it. The journey of providing sanitary management for all will ensure people enjoy both healthy and dignified lives.
If you wish to get involved, visit the World Toilet Day website which is full of information, resources and events that you can get involved in.
– Rachael Willetts
This blog post was originally published on 24th October 2019
Awfully British reasons to cry...
Some awfully British reasons to cry...
Last year, us Brits admitted to being a nation of whiners. Research showed that 56% of us admitted to a daily moan and one in five (19%) confessed to moaning more than three times a day, resulting in 10,168 minutes of moaning a year. A Sunday scroll through Twitter led me down a rabbit hole and into a thread which got me belly laughing at some of the things we're actually moaning about. #AwfullyBritishReasonsToCry, of course, had much mention of Brexit, tea, fish and chips, the increased price of the Freddo and the pronunciation of scone.Here are some of my favourites, I hope they cheer you up if you’re having a dull day…
@shallowseal / #AwfullyBritishReasonsToCry Shelling out for a train ticket for it to not be checked.
@AndrewRoberts66 / #AwfullyBritishReasonsToCry The sandwich you wanted isn’t part of the meal deal.
@DistantValhalla / #AwfullyBritishReasonsToCry Half the digestive crumbled off into your tea.
@taesvnte / #AwfullyBritishReasonsToCry When it says ‘unexpected item in bagging area’ for the fifth time.
@CuriosityRocks / #AwfullyBritishReasonsToCry Woolworths.
@MRJGrist / #AwfullyBritishReasonsToCry Boris Johnson.
@PatWilliams18 / #AwfullyBritishReasonsToCry The queue in the next check out at the supermarket goes down quicker than yours
@Ianshad / #AwfullyBritishReasonsToCry You pay shit loads for Sky Sports and the footy’s on BT Sport.
@wildbunchtags /#AwfullyBritishReasonsToCry Microwaved tea.
@kurtaytoros / #AwfullyBritishReasonsToCry The weather.
@tavistockgirl / #AwfullyBritishReasonsToCry Someone left the big light on…
@BakemanMouse / #AwfullyBritishReasonsToCry Buffering.
@annette_xxxxx / #AwfullyBritishReasonsToCry When plans you wanted to be cancelled go ahead…
@JackGriffin1945 / #AwfullyBritishReasonsToCry When your next door neighbour changes his Wifi password.
@PaulPJB / #AwfullyBritishReasonsToCry The queen never flushed after sitting on the throne.
For more reasons to laugh (not cry), here's the twitter thread: https://twitter.com/hashtag/awfullybritishreasonstocry
-Emma
What colour is your name?
Have you ever thought about the colours in your name?For some people with the rare sensory trait called grapheme-colour synesthesia, this is the way their brain ‘sees’ letters and numbers. For those who don’t know, grapheme-colour synesthesia is a condition in which people associate specific colours with particular letters and numbers. I remember learning about the condition in a college art class and found it fascinating. I stared hard at black words on white paper and just saw black words on white paper, so I never gave it another thought.
Until a few weeks ago when I came across a blog, that led me to the colours of my name. Designer and artist, Bernadette Sheridan, who has grapheme-colour synesthesia, has built an online, interactive tool that can generate the letters of your name into a colour sequence. The colour sequence is made up of one specific colour for every letter in the alphabet and identifies how people with grapheme-colour synesthesia see your name.
Bernadette created the tool to allow us to understand how she experiences the world and so we can see our names come to life in colour. After Bernadette created the synesthesia gallery, made up of the names of everybody she knew, she noticed a pattern in which the colours of their names matched their personality. “The colour of your name triggers an overall assumption based on how light, dark, saturated or dominant your name appears, a lot of that is based on the vowels in your name.”, Bernadette writes in a follow-up blog.
I’m not going to lie, I was very excited to throw my name into the generator and see what colours it spat out. Optimistic Emma was expecting something bright, cheery and unusual (I like to think to match my personality). Emma is made up of the three primary colours. Kind of bright, kind of cheery but nowhere near unusual.
Find out what colour your name is...
-Emma
Our hopes for the 20s
Here I am in January 2020, at the start of a new year, and also a fresh decade. Over the Christmas break just gone, the passing of one year into the next seemed to take on additional significance for me as a result of the changing of the decade. I suddenly found myself casting my eye 10 years into the future instead of just a little way down the road, dreaming about my hopes for the decade ahead as well as figuring out new routines for the year ahead. An odd feeling.
As you do in such a moment, I thought first about the world at large - wondering what type of world my lad would live in when he celebrates his 14th birthday in 2029. When I spent time online towards the end of last year through the UK general election cycle, it seemed that the discourse there reflected something I’ve felt in the air in the past little while – a bit sneery and divisive with a fair bit of name calling and highly strung and defensive opinion shouting. I think I’d like to see the end of that, especially as our discourse continues and increases online – maybe by 2020 we’ll have learned to be a bit kinder, less shouty, mean and rude, more moderate and empathetic as a rule. And maybe the social media platforms could help us do that – by enforcing some rules of engagement on their private internet estates.
And, if they don’t – maybe we could make our own rules and internet estates.But why stop at us being kind to one another? Another big hope I have – kind of on the theme of kindness – is for there to be a big upswing in sharing. ‘Sharing, what?’ you say? Well, everything we can share. Need a lawnmower, car, soup pan, the meal that comes from the soup pan, a hammer, a laptop, a desk, a book, a set of pens, or a Lego set? Great! Don’t buy one, because you can now connect with someone who already has one and isn’t using it and is happy to share it. Stop buying things you only use once in a while and borrow them, instead! And that thing that you only use a little bit of the time but you feel sentimental about keeping – lend it out to someone who needs it but doesn’t have one! Then all we need is places on high-streets to fix these things so that we can use them forever and I will never have to buy a lawnmower again.
So there you have it – sharing and caring. More sharing, more caring by 2030, please, World. Also, that applies to the economy too.
- Andrew
Here is what the rest of the Wordscape team had to say on their hopes for the 2020s when I asked them….
What am I looking for? A bit less vitriolic roaring ringing in our ears, please.
On one hand, it feels like we’ve been getting somewhere over the last decade… Lots of our work is geared towards sustainability and it feels like it’s taking hold in the business world. Organisations are thinking about how they can act more responsibly and heeding the fact that we, the consumers, give a shit about this stuff. And while the pace of change isn’t moving fast enough, I think we can all see that things are moving.
I’m in Berlin at the moment, and – one of the subjects we’ve talked about at length this week – is what else is happening while we’re all thinking hard about sustainability. And there’s a lot – perhaps even of more importance.
The implications for us all of digitalisation, and the polarisation of political opinion are huge issues to face. Will an increasingly digitalised world tear the fabric of our society? Or will it mean, in reality, that our future is less focused on work, more balanced?
Politically, the 2010s feel like a decade where it all came apart at the seams. The schism in opinions and attitudes towards each other got pretty frightening – old versus young; Brexiteers and remainers; left vs. right. Going back 15 years or so, it feels almost inconceivable that we’d end up where we are now: a return of populism, poison hissing from either side of the debate and politicians playing with furious fire to further their own cause. I’m not sure how we’ll heal these wounds.
I hope the next ten years brings some answers.
- Fiona
This week I finished Matt Haig’s Notes on a Nervous Planet, an incredibly insightful look into how aspects of the modern world can impact on our collective mental health. Addressing such things as the internet, technology, the modern working day, and damaging marketing. Haig talks, part autobiographically part theoretically, on how the things that were originally designed to connect us, have left mankind wanting. He flags an unhealthy disconnect between our actual selves and our online selves, and the impact that this has on humanity’s mental health.
I lapped this book up; having been introduced to Haig only last year, I find that his writing really connects on a personal level, it’s current, and it’s relevant. During the last decade, we saw the dark side of social media with Cambridge Analytica taking advantage of groupthink, helping spark the rise of the far right globally.
But I’ve also seen it used as a force for good. Particularly in the mental health realm. Every day, I see posts from people I follow about their own mental health illnesses; celebrities are talking about anxiety, depression, eating disorders, OCD… The NHS is currently running a campaign encouraging us to talk, reminding us that we’re not alone. And, of course, Harry and Meghan – currently being dragged through the tabloids for wanting a more independent life – have talked of their own mental health in the past.
In the next 10 years, I *hope* that we can go some way to smashing the stigma surrounding mental health. Everyone has it, in the same way we have physical health. But I also have hope for the future.
Watching the millions of school children striking for the future of our world each week reminds me that there’s hope beyond capitalism and its damaging marketing; beyond technology giants and their associated billionaires; and, most importantly, beyond stigmatising somebody for their mental health…
- Lucy C
Ten years ago we thought the 2012 Olympics would be rubbish (they weren't), the idea of Trump and Johnson becoming world leaders would have prompted a chuckle in any discussion and Brexit wasn't a thing. It would be a bold person who predicted anything over the next ten years.
We still hadn't cottoned on to how serious and soon climate change would have an impact on our world and women were still struggling to make themselves heard. Despite everything that’s happened, neither of these are being taken seriously enough.
Gender parity is still a long way off. Some progress has been made thanks to brave souls like Carrie Gracie and Samira Ahmed sticking their heads above the parapets regarding equal pay, and abuse survivors summoning the courage to tell their stories, meaning that perpetrators are starting to be brought to book, or at least suffering the consequences of their actions.
There is also some momentum in understanding how women fit into a society which has essentially been created for men. If you haven’t yet, I would highly recommend Criado-Perez’s book, Invisible Women. This area is where I would like to see significant progress being made in the next decade.
- Lucy M
Driverless cars have graced the big screens for decades. Long before I was even born and long before we ever thought vehicle engineers would be able to put such a thing on our roads. In 1969, the Volkswagen racing Beetle named Herbie shot to fame as a magical car that drove itself in the Disney film The Love Bug. In 1990, Quaid hopped into a Johnny Cab to escape his pursuers in Total Recall. And, in 2004 Detective Del Spooner got from A to B in an Audi-inspired concept car that drives itself on four spheres instead of wheels in I, Robot.
Over the last few years, we have seen driverless cars wheel out of our screens and onto our roads in driverless car trails all over the world. Yet, I still don’t want a world with driverless cars, for purely selfish reasons. After two years of driving lessons (on and off), two theory tests (after one expired) and four practical tests (and a whole lot of money later) I finally passed my driving test in 2019. After all that hard work, my hope for the new decade is to drive as much as I can, within reason, before they let just anybody jump in a driverless car and drive away.”
- Em
My 2020 reading and listening list
I started 2020 as I ended 2019, with a stack of books by my bed, a load of queued up podcasts, websites bookmarked to read and a stack of magazines to read and one or two of all of above on various wish lists.
Here are 20, a few from each, that I’m excited to join me on my journey through the year ahead.
Websites
I’m a big fan of Apartamento Magazine - well-done interviews with creative people in their homes, with lovely photography and weird and wonderful homes and beautiful design. I have a subscription to the mag but the website sustains me in between issues. It’s lovely and I’ll look at it once a week or so through 2020.
Lego is the best. And Lego ideas is where very creative people pitch new Lego sets with incredibly detailed images and people vote for the ones they love. Once a year they’ll select a handful of these sets to be made and it makes me very very happy. This year I’ll buy a Lego model of the International Space Station which started as an idea a couple of years ago in a Lego fanatics head, then onto the Lego Ideas website and into the world in 2020.
Our mate Ronnie’s blog, A Sense of Place is a treasure. It is Liverpool as Ronnie sees it, and in his perfectly human way as he wanders around he tells the story of the city and many of the people and places that I love here - many of which I’ve discovered as a result of Ronnie’s blog.
My mate, Robin Brown, launched Liverpool Long Reads last year with a series of 4 long articles, one of which I wrote. Liverpool Long Reads will return this year and I’m thrilled that it will because at least 3 of the 4 articles from the first series were brilliantly written and skilfully edited by Robin. Liverpool Long Read articles look at things that really matter here and take the time to report on them thoroughly. I can’t wait for the next season of them.
Atlas of the Future‘Discover the talent and energy solving tomorrow’s challenges’ at Atlas of the Future. The Atlas is full of hopeful stories of people and projects doing things that improve the world in responsible and sustainable ways. What a joy.
Books
Palaces for People, Eric Klinenberg
This has been on my reading list for ages after I listened to a podcast episode by the same name by 99% Invisible. Libraries are important and their closing all over the place and so how can we save them and turn them again into places that might be perceived as palaces for people - I’m very hopeful there are answers in here.
Our National Parks, John Muir
I bought this on holiday in Boston last year and it’s been sat on my bedside table ever since. By putting this book on this list, I’m committing to finally reading it. I love the fact that the national parks in the states have been called, ‘America’s Best Idea’. I think national parks are a great idea, too.
School of Life, On being nice
If everyone was a bit nicer more often, the world would be a significantly better place. This book can get you, or the meanest bastard you know, started.
My Name Is Red, Orhan Pamuk
I was introduced to this book during a great conversation about Istanbul, a city I am desperate to visit, with Roy from Pacific Stream/AYCH. The last book he recommended to me, Lake Wobegon Days, was great and so I instantly ordered it and have it sat in the pile on my bedside table. I have no doubts it’ll be wonderful, and if it isn’t I’ll think twice about Roy’s book recommendations next time. I’ve committed to reading one fiction and then one non-fiction book in a row as a system this year and so this is next up in my fiction list.
EPA Graphic Standards System, Manual Standards
The EPA is very important and this book is very beautiful. This one is still on my wish list and my birthday is at the end of March. Just so you know. There is also a National Parks graphics standards system by the same publisher which is also on my wish list. And Christmas will be here before we know it, too. Just so you know.
Podcasts
99% InvisibleExtremely well-told stories about the way things are built, made and the hidden design and architecture and technologies that we often overlook but are actually incredibly fascinating. I listened to one this morning about Vantablack, the blackest black colour that reflects no light, one yesterday about the importance of shade in cities and maybe my favourite podcast episode in the last year was a 99% Invisible episode about the Great Bitter Lake Association.
Radio Diaries episodes are first person audio stories and historical tales. They mainly document ordinary life, a perspective on a thing that happened. I’ve listened to stories about Nazis in Manhattan, Ski troops in the war, prison guards, Spiro Agnew and his attack on the press, Someone who dropped a wrench in a nuclear missile silo and the working tapes of Studs Terkel, a historian that documented the lives of workers across the states in the 70s. The stories are varied, but always well-told and fascinating. Excited to see what they have lined up for 2020.
A podcast by the BBC that looks at projects from around the world that solve problems in surprising and interesting ways. I have loads of these saved on my podcast app and I’m planning on spending a very enjoyable weekend morning soon with good coffee and a load of episodes in a row.
We learn by making mistakes and Cautionary Tales tells the stories of human errors and catastrophes from history and what we might learn from them. These are very well-told stories, engaging and at times funny stories. Over Christmas I listened to stories about airship races, jazz music, blitzkrieg and the Wall Street Crash - thoroughly enjoyed them all.
Radiolab stories are an eclectic mix of stories that look at the world in a way that only Radiolab podcasts do. Sciency (sic), intelligent and fun radio. They’ve been doing Radiolab since 2002 and so it’s very very well done.
Magazines
I have been following Whalebone on Instagram for a while and bought a copy of the Space Issue for someone recently. I’ve been impressed by the look of their issues, the design and the stories and the way they sell it and talk online. I’m going to the states this year and shall return with as many back issues of this as I can get my hands on. That space issue is a thing of beauty.
I committed to buying myself more issues of this as I put this list together. The Heritage Post has many things that I like in it - cool old bits that people collect, weird old fashioned brands and good denim and workwear. The one issue I have is beautiful and every time I see a new one online I tell myself that I should treat myself to it and then forget. By the time you read this, I will have the latest issue on order.
Positive News is brilliant and we should all be reading more constructive journalism - it is good for our brains and better for our souls. I’ve enjoyed all that I’ve read, online and in print, from Positive News and it is the type of magazine that we should celebrate and keep going.
We were fortunate to work with Scottie Press editor, Joel, on the newly redesigned Scottie Press issue 445 at the end of last year. Scottie Press is Britain's longest-running community newspaper and Joel has a vision for it that I’m very excited by. Community newspapers are very important and the Scottie Press is a gem of a community newspaper.
The best city mag in existence - Gentle Rain magazine is a magazine about Hamburg, Germany. I have all four issues of this, buying each one on release, and I love them. Lovely stories, great design and photography. Hamburg looks amazing and my only reference for this is Gentle Rain magazine. Nicely done.
-Andrew
Christmas gift ideas from people we know and love
Christmas gift ideas from people we know and love
Buying local and ‘buying social’ – from small businesses where your purchase really makes a social impact – have become more and more popular over the last decade or so. We’re always on the look-out for something a bit more meaningful – whether it’s the idea behind it, or the origin of the gift. This week brings both Indie Week and Small Business Saturday, so here are 12 Christmas gift ideas from people we know and love…
1. Saving Dad
Our most recent publication, Saving Dad has collected some incredible reviews in the month since its launch. ‘This is a game changer’, says one. Others include ‘incredible’, ‘brilliant’, and ‘this will give so much hope to so many’. It’s author Matt Janes’ personal memoir about his dad’s bi-polar disorder and it’s warm, hopeful and thought-provoking.
£9.99 | savingdad.co.uk
2. Lunya gin
I came across this beauty writing a blog for the Albert Dock website about Christmas gift ideas, so have already succeeded in selling it to myself. Catalonian champion Lunya produces its own gin in collaboration with John O’Dowd, creator of the original Liverpool Gin. Inspired by supplier trips to Spain, it’s blended from sunny Spanish botanicals, including membrillo (quince), smoked ñora pepper and orange blossom flower.
£35 | Lunya's website
3. Becka Griffin's Alphabet of Cheese
Becka's a friend and former studio-mate. When we first met her, she was famous for these clever alphabets. Now she also does a great line in city skylines, but what could be more festive than this alphabet of cheese?
£25 | Becka's Shopify
4. Ethos subscription
Well, we couldn’t not include a subscription to our favourite mag, could we?! Well, our ONLY mag, in fact. We’re changing things with Ethos next year, so that we have more time to make a better magazine. Which means that a bigger mag will come out but twice a year, alongside a range of storytelling events in between times, so we get to spend more time with our community, too…
£20 per year | Ethos website
5. Botanical Beauties calendar
We used to share a studio with Lisa at Lost Plots, and her finely-detailed illustrations are beautiful. I’ve got 2019’s Trailblazing Women calendar hanging on my fridge at home, and it’ll soon be replaced with 2020’s Botanical Beauties version – one of a very limited run of just 100.
£15 | Lost Plots Etsy shop
6. A is for Allegro
We work with Roy, over at Küla Studio, on a number of our projects. He’s the designer for Ethos, alongside a range of our client work. He's a car person and this is one of his books. A is for Allegro is a nostalgic A–Z of the cars from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, with his own inimitable illustrations and personal memories.
£7.99 | via Pavilion Books
7. Pinhead Liverpool pins
Pinhead founder and illustrator Amy shares our studio with us, and we often swoon over the new pins in her collection. These have arrived just in time for Christmas, bringing Liverpool landmarks including our Cains Brewery home, St John’s Tower, Liverpool Cathedral, Albert Dock, Metropolitan Cathedral and Sefton Park Palm House to a lapel near you…
£6 each or £25 for a box of five | Online from the beginning of December and at craft markets throughout the month – see below... P I N H E A D will be at the Winter Arkade this weekend, next weekend's Winter Arts Market and the Baltic Market on December 15.
8. Kitty’s Launderette soap
Absolutely our favourite launderette in the world, and one of the brilliant social ventures that came out of our work in North Liverpool with the Beautiful Ideas Company. It sells a range of artwork, totes and eco cleaning products, but this handmade soap is still one of our favourites.
£5 | grab yours on Etsy
9. Granby Workshop carafe
It's always exciting when Granby Workshop appear at the monthly Granby Street Market, as they're due to this weekend. With another successful crowdfunder for its new recycled materials under its belt, these ceramics always make an impact.
£48 | Granby Workshop
10. How not to be Good: the A–Z of Anxiety
We worked with Elli earlier this year and she launched How not to be Good: the A–Z of Anxiety in March. Talking honestly and compassionately about mental health, she's since started a podcast and has been talking about the book at a series of events throughout the year.
£10 | Elli's website...
11. A Dorothy poster
We recently grabbed a couple of Dorothy posters for the studio at Baltic Creative’s MacMillan Cancer morning. Inspired by music, books and film, they’re colourful, clever and always marked by amazing typography. My current favourites are the music-inspired stamps, but you’ll be spoilt for choice…
from £18 | We are Dorothy
12. Make’s luxury candle workshop
Our friends over at Make have a great list of workshops. You can head over and make anything from sourdough and sauerkraut to a little black dress or a luxury candle. I’ve picked this candle making workshop because it sounds irresistibly cosy, but don’t forget to have a look through the full list…
£49 | Tickets via Eventbrite
Or, if you want to get out and about and meet the makers in real life, we’d also recommend these local craft markets and events.
• Winter Arts Market, 7 December – the original, and still the best: Winter Arts Market.com
• Granby Market, first Saturday of every month – L8’s local 4 Streets community opens the market every month, come rain or shine… Find out more here.
• Winter Arkade, 1 December – find a North End novelty in this alternative seasonal shop… Details on Eventbrite
• Baltic Market – arts, crafts and inspiration at the Winter Gift Market on 15 December, plus an Xmas Farmer’s Market on 22 December. Have a look online...
• Croxteth Hall – worth a visit to get out of town amidst the lovely country park setting at Croxteth. Visit the walled garden while you’re there! (there’s a food market the following weekend…) More details via Eventbrite
-Fiona
Newsworthy newsletters
I’ve never been very good at reading email circulars. I unsubscribe from most unless there is a tangible benefit to me being on the list, like free stuff or discounts. I now realise that’s because I wasn’t on the right mailing lists. The ones I read regularly now provide insight, information and usually amusement too. So I thought you might be interested in some of the ones that claim my attention these days
.Five things on a Friday — James Whatley
This newsletter was recommended by Holly Brockwell in her Ethos feature a few months ago. A caveat: there are always more than five things and it doesn’t always come out on a Friday. Sometimes it doesn't come out at all if James is too busy with life. But it is very readable and contains some really interesting links and information, some techy, some humorous, some reflective stuff, some daft, but all engaging. It will lead you into other worlds, and no doubt to other newsletters too. He had a break over the summer so I haven’t had many issues, but have loved all of them so far, especially a recent one which recounted James’s battle with severe mental illness a few years ago. We need more of this.
Invisible Women — Caroline Criado-Perez
As a follow up to her much-lauded book about women existing in a men’s world, Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, this is a new newsletter from the woman who successfully campaigned for Jane Austen to appear on the £10 note, and for a statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, which continues the theme of the disparity between how data created by men about men is used to impact on the lives of women, leading to major differences in how each gender experiences the world around them. Examples such as the use of crash test dummies modelled on men only, mean that driving is inherently more dangerous for women, medical instruments designed to fit into men’s hands means they are often unwieldy for female medics, and military uniforms designed for men causing major discomfort for female armed force personnel. The book should enrage you, and this newsletter provides a way of Caroline updating issues she has raised in the book as well as introducing new ones. And you can join in her utter despair at the crowd-sourced toilet queue of the week. Always the women's, always because there are never enough toilets.
The Wordscape team has introduced me to this newsletter recently. It is, as its name suggests, dense with information, mostly tech-related but coming from a place of ‘tech-solutionism’, whilst recognising that technology can’t be the answer to everything. It contains a massive amount of information such as recommended apps, indie magazines, social media insights and talks about hardware and software too. But in a very approachable way, not in a boring technical in-depth way, encouraging you to find out more if you want to. It’s beautifully curated and presented too.
The Spoon - Jane Merrick, Bobby Friedman, Martha Gill and Dominic O'Neill
We're now surrounded by news constantly, whether it be through TV, radio, on our phones or on social media. You can choose to ignore it all of course, and I'm not sure anyone would blame you. The Spoon is trying to tackle presenting news in a bitesize way so that with a quick glance you can find everything you need to know, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. The email has character, but not too much, and links to articles from across the media spectrum if you want to delve further into a story. It covers some politics, some international news, and some popular culture, so you can never be quite sure what you might get. They have a Patreon too, so you can support their work.
My final two picks are both regular newsletters but also publications. Happiful focuses on positive mental health, so as well as producing a magazine, it sends out regular emails with hints and tips about to live a more positive healthy life. The magazine is available for free online through Issuu, although you can either purchase/subscribe to a printed edition too. I find the information accessible, thoughtful and unpatronising. The magazine itself has a wealth of useful information and is a joy to read. It features people you will have heard of and some you won’t but each feature is positive and affirming and promotes good mental health.
For people who work from home, no matter what they do, a publication with a primary focus on how to deal with some of the issues that arise from working on your own for long period of time is to be welcomed into the marketplace. Louise Goss has a very gentle style of writing and edits a beautiful magazine with all sorts of helpful advice from a number of contributors who talk money matters, dealing with loneliness, childcare and decluttering your workspace. In between editions (£18 a year for four copies), she sends out regular newsletters covering some of the issues on a slightly more general level. Although her emails are clearly more marketing for selling the magazine than others in this list, they still contain a lot of interesting information.
-Lucy M
A hug through your screen
An odd turn of phrase, but said by a BBC2 continuity announcer recently when introducing what has fast become one of my favourite programmes, The Repair Shop. And I’m not alone. Thanks to some decent scheduling pushing this TV delight to more popular time slots, The Repair Shop has gained traction as a much-loved TV favourite.
Despite being around for a couple of years, the programme only came to my attention earlier this year. The ‘shop’ is based in the Weald and Downland Living Museum in West Sussex and is populated by restoration experts whose job it is to bring family heirlooms back to life. There is a circle of regular experts, such as Jay (the host and furniture upholsterer), Steve (clocks), Will (furniture), Dom (metal), Suzie (leather), Kirsten (ceramics), Brenton (intricate metalwork), Lucia (paintings)and Julie and Amanda (dolls and teddy bears). And then there are specialists who come in to deal with specific types of repairs eg bicycles, jukeboxes, fountain pens, guitars, bookbinding and so on.
The restorations are nothing short of incredible. The experts are exceptional. The love and care poured into the items are heartwarming. And the stories are emotional. Very few episodes haven’t brought a tear to my eye. And that’s what the programme hinges on — members of the public bringing in their heirlooms, usually in a state of utter disrepair, but always with a story. Some of the stories are remarkable, some ordinary but important, but all are told from a place of not wanting to throw away the item, and the hope that it can be repaired and restored, back to its former glory. So it’s a programme for modern times. In the throwaway culture we find ourselves in, something can be done with these important items even if they look beyond hope.
One story that recently captured my imagination was about a woman who had worked as a British spy in Germany. When she left the city where she had been based, she packed a beloved cat teapot, and on the train, the suitcase it was in fell from its shelf, breaking the head off the teapot. Years later, the men she gifted the teapot to before she died brought it into the repair shop to be restored, and Kirsten worked her magic to get it back to how it would have been when the woman first owned it.
Other stories include a son who brought in his Dad’s radio which had survived Dunkirk, a bike that belonged to a woman who used it to cycle to her job at Bletchley Park during WWII, a painting of a woman brought in by her son which was so dirty he had never seen what his mum looked like at that age, items passed down through generations, teddy bears from people’s childhoods that have been loved to disrepair, and a couple of photo albums that charted the progress of Scott’s Antarctic expedition, put together by a New Zealand explorer.
And some of the restorations are more like miracles. A recent episode saw a Carolean-era chair brought in, wrought with the scars of woodworm and a teething puppy, and it went back out looking like it was new out of the furniture maker's studio. Will is a miracle worker with wood. An old pouffe was brought in, made with hundreds of pieces of barely sewn together leather, and Suzie, the leather expert carefully took it apart, cleaned and reinforced every piece, restuffed it and it looked new. It must have taken her days. And the experts try and work as much as possible with what they have. Unless absolutely necessary, no new materials are introduced into the item, apart from incidentals like paint and glue, as much of the original item is kept as possible. And the experts quite deliberately don’t make the product look brand new. Minor marks, scratches and scuffs are kept to preserve at least some of the item’s history.
The Repair Shop is gentle, slow TV. It’s British. It is a warm embrace at the end of a long day. It works on so many levels. The experts are a family, engaging others to help where their expertise doesn’t allow. There is no peril, no fake tense moments. It is just people doing the job they love to the very best of their ability, and improving people’s lives.
As of writing this, there are a few episodes on i-Player, some 60 minutes, others 30 minutes, but all wonderful, inspiration and life-affirming television. It seems to have fallen out of the schedules for now but I'm sure it will be back soon.
And before you ask, no, Will is not married.
Read Stuart Heritage’s take on the programme here (spoiler: he loves it too).
-Lucy M
Katumba Halloween Parade 2019
Join in Katumba Halloween Parade 2019 'From Darkness to Light: Where the Worlds Meet' On Saturday 26th October, Liverpool ONE will become the stage for an epic battle between Darkness and Light! Hailed as the Northwest’s biggest Halloween Parade in 2018, this year’s procession will culminate in the ultimate clash of darkness and light, beats, moves and fire.Organisers Katumba invited artists, partners and bands from Liverpool and the Northwest to join in the fun and go even bigger in 2019 with ‘From Darkness to Light: Where the Worlds Meet’. Audiences can follow the huge parading spectacle from Bold Street through Liverpool city centre to its final destination Liverpool ONE.The parade starts on Bold Street at 8pm! More Community Engagement than ever before!This year, you too can be part of the Katumba Halloween Parade! Having secured funding from the Arts Council for Community Involvement, Katumba is running a series of workshops on Sunday 20th October at the Katumba Hub in Toxteth. Bring family and friends and create your own prop or lantern for the parade! Spaces are limited so make sure you sign up for your place.For 31st October - Halloween proper – Katumba has another ace up its sleeve. Teaming up with local partner organisations, they are throwing a spooktacular Halloween Party for the whole family at their Hub at John Archer Hall in Toxteth. Expect performances, Circus Skills and Capoeira workshops, drumming, Halloween games, delicious free food and much more!It’s highly recommended to register early for the workshops here.
-Nici Konigs Balfry, Zest Event Management
Cirqadia Festival of Contemporary Circus
Cirqadia Contemporary Circus Festival - A First for Liverpool!
8th - 10th November 2019
Liverpool's circus pioneers Freefall are delighted to announce that their Arts Council England bid for funding to support the city's first-ever Festival of Contemporary Circus this November has been successful.Cirqadia is a pioneering weekend of events celebrating the talent of UK based circus performers and providing a platform for new work from performers across the region as well as allowing young people new to the circus the opportunity to learn from the professionals.Over the weekend audiences will be able to experience two new works from leading British circus artists – Sadiq Ali, Hauk Pattison and Laura Murphy. The main event on Saturday 9th November will feature a double bill of Sadiq and Hauk performing “The Chosen Haram” which is a newly commissioned work for the festival, and Laura performing “Contra” which is currently touring in Europe and was a highlight of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.A special showcase event, premiering works from emerging artists on Friday 8th November and hosted by the international circus and burlesque star Velma Von Bon Bon, will allow the performers to try out groundbreaking and experimental performances with a focus on gender, sexuality and diversity in contemporary circus.Workshops and a symposium of talks and discussions centred on contemporary circus arts will also take place over the weekend at the Florrie.More info can be found here, tickets are available here.
-Nici Konigs Balfry, Zest Event Management
Attending the UN as a member of Amnesty's Children Human Rights Network
In June I joined Amnesty UK’s Children’s Human Rights Network as a committee member. The network – which is made up of 10 members from across the UK – meets once a month to plan its work around children’s human rights. We work on issues which affect children’s rights including knife crime, school exclusion, FGM, child marriage, climate change, cuts to mental health funding for under 18s, and citizenship rights. We also launch campaigns across the UK to secure rights for all children.
The most recent petition – which we delivered to the Department for Education on 6 September – carried over 7,000 signatures and called for the UK government to ratify Optional Protocol 3 (OP3) of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).
This year is an important milestone for the CRC, as it turns 30 in November. It is the most ratified human rights convention in history and has been signed by all but one of the UN member states. The US is yet to ratify the convention – it has had the opportunity to do so, since 1989.
The CRC consists of 54 articles detailing how children should be protected by their governments with regards to family reunification, child labour, protection from violence, the right to education, and juvenile justice, amongst others.
OP3 is an addition to the CRC which – if ratified – would mean that children, who believe that their rights have been violated by their State, would be able to bring a complaint directly to the CRC to be heard on an international level.
The UK is yet to sign OP3 into law; therefore, children living in the UK are unable to complain or seek justice if they feel that their human rights have been breached by the State.
If children don’t have the option to complain if their human rights have been violated – their rights aren’t real.
On Monday 16 September, I travelled to Geneva with the network to attend the 82nd meeting of the CRC, taking place in the historic UN Palais des Nations – the UN’s European headquarters. We began the day at the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, where our network met with committee members of the CRC, alongside child activists from Canada, Mexico and the Philippines.
We spoke with the CRC about our ongoing campaign to make rights real for all children, and how we’re pushing for the UK government to ratify OP3. In the afternoon we attended the launch of an exhibition which celebrates 30 years of the convention, where we heard from committee members on the importance of children’s human rights on an international level.
From 3pm – 6pm it was the 82nd meeting of the CRC, which was opened by our very own Serena, a child activist and member of Amnesty UK’s Children’s Human Rights Network. Alongside the chair, Serena spoke emotionally and eloquently about rights violations that children suffer due to climate change, universal suffrage (or the lack thereof), and the need for the ratification of OP3.
You can watch Serena’s impassioned and inspiring speech in full, here.
Her speech was delivered in a week that saw over 4 million people take to the streets in a historic demonstration against political inaction on our climate emergency. Adult allies stood alongside our school strikers, who have been skipping school in order to educate the global political elite on what needs to be done to secure the future of humanity.
It also came one week before Greta Thunberg – the 16-year-old activist who sparked a global movement in her Fridays for Future campaign – stood alongside 15 other child activists as they utilised OP3 to take the climate crisis to the CRC.
The climate crisis is a violation of our human rights.
The inaction taken by global leaders on the defining issue of our time, is a violation of our human rights.
The children leading this movement should be an inspiration to all of us. These children – who cannot vote, so therefore cannot have a say how their futures play out – are waking the world up to the devastating effects that a climate catastrophe would have on our future.
We need to listen intently to these children; politicians around the globe need to act immediately before it’s too late.
Ratify OP3.
-Lucy C
How climate change affects our human rights
“Climate change is a human rights issue not only because its devastating impacts affect the enjoyment of human rights, but also because it is a man-made phenomenon which can be mitigated by governments.”
Kumi Naidoo, Secretary General of Amnesty International
Our planet’s climate has always fluctuated over time. But, our current rate of warming is occurring much more rapidly than ever before; and it’s the overwhelming scientific consensus that our rapidly warming world is manmade. By burning fossil fuels, over-farming our lands and demanding more livestock to feed us – our greenhouse gases are the highest they’ve been in over 800,000 years.
This change in our climate will only magnify the existing inequalities that humanity currently faces; with severe droughts occurring more frequently, and sea level rises forcing people to flee their homes, we'll see rafts of climate refugees over the coming decades. Not to mention it exacerbating violent conflict in already war-torn countries; and deadly heatwaves and wildfires across the globe.
The inaction of governments around the world, means that our climate crisis is quickly becoming one of the biggest human rights violations in history.
***
How climate change affects different classes and ethnicities…
In North America it’s the poorer communities of colour which are suffering the most, due to their neighbourhood’s proximity to power plants and refineries. Breathing in the toxic fumes, means that African Americans are three times more likely to die from airborne pollution than any other in the US.
How climate change affects gender…
As women and girls are more likely to be marginalised and disadvantaged in many countries across the world – it is women who will suffer the most from climate change.
How climate change affects generations…
Displaced children will be the worst affected by climate change, as their developmental needs will not be able to be met with regards to safe water, sanitation, food and housing.
How climate change affects communities…
Indigenous communities will be hit hard by climate change, as their livelihoods most often depend on the fragile ecosystems which have supported them for centuries.The rights to life, food, water and heath (amongst other rights) are enshrined in international human rights law and are the basis for life to thrive. Our escalating climate crisis affects each of these rights individually.
***
How climate change impedes our right to life…
Every human being has the inherent right to life, and climate change will impede our right to life in several ways. Many people globally are suffering from death and injury due to increased floods, storms, heatwaves, droughts and fires. There is also increasing hunger and malnutrition which ensues from the lack of nutritional soil; heavy rains which destroy crops; and droughts which make our land arid and untenable.
How climate change impedes our right to food…
Leading on from the above, the right to food is adversely affected by climate change as flooding and droughts increasingly threaten our arable lands. Place this alongside our growing global population and we start to see food shortages the world over. The UN’s Development Programme has estimated that an additional 600 million people will face malnutrition caused by climate change – this will be particularly devastating in sub-Saharan Africa.
How climate change impedes our right to water…
If the climate crisis intensifies, water shortages will become more commonplace in cities around the world. We’ve already witnessed these effects with the Cape Town water crisis of 2017-18, which was the result of decreased dam water levels for several years beforehand.
How climate change impedes our right to health…
We all have a right to the highest standard of attainable mental and physical health. As our world warms, the disparities between the rich and poor will grow as access to adequate healthcare becomes a luxury that some poorer communities simply can’t afford. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), climate change has claimed the lives of over 150,000 people per annum since 1970. If our global temperature increases by just 1°C on preindustrial levels, the WHO predicts that these numbers could double.
-Lucy C
World Photography Day
It was World Photography Day on Monday, an annual celebration of the art, craft, science, and history of photography. When I went to university, I enrolled in a photography degree with absolutely no intention of becoming a photographer. I just had this burning desire to learn about photography and how the camera is used as a tool to tell stories. Since being surrounded by photographers and filmmakers I’ve learned so much and been so inspired by the narrative and creativity of photographic series. So, in the spirit of World Photography Day, I thought I’d share some photographers and their work that promote important issues, tell personal stories or just experiment to create some really interesting and unusual images.
Sian Davey – Looking for Alice
Looking for Alice is a photographic series which explores a mother’s gradual acceptance of her daughter, born with Down’s Syndrome. Photographer Sian Davey started to photograph her daughter when she was just a year old and has since been photographing her in the context of her family. Her images in the series capture all the joys, tensions and ups and downs that go with the territory of a family.
Winnie Au – Cone of Shame
Cone of Shame is a series of dog portraits wearing alternative ‘cones of shame’ made from feathers, straw, and spaghetti. The series aims to highlight the woebegone expression that accompanies the standard plastic cone pets are issued with at the vets. Winnie Au uses the body of work to promote rescue dog centres and highlight their need for funding medical treatments. Winnie raised money on Kickstarter to print the images as a postcard set with future proceeds being donated to Animal Haven's Recovery Road Fund, a no-kill shelter based in NYC.
Amy Romer – The Dark Figure*
The Dark Figure* is an ongoing project, mapping the immediate surrounding neighbourhoods where victims have been held as modern slaves. The series of landscape images of houses, street corners, cul-de-sacs, and gates highlights the hidden nature of modern slavery and draws realism on the potential dangers which could be happening next door or around the corner. Amy Romer’s use of photography and investigations into cases of modern slavery have led to the Police and Home Office to use her information as a training technique for Police and Council staff on spotting signs of slavery.
Daniel Beltra - Spill
Daniel Beltra is a fine art photographer with a passion for conversation. His photographic series ‘Spill' documents The Deep Horizon Oil spill. The industrial disaster that happened in May 2010 and is considered to be the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. Daniel Beltra spent around two months shooting from 3,000ft above the scene which delivered a wider perspective of the disaster as it unfolded.
https://danielbeltra.photoshelter.com/index
Chow and Lin - The Play Project
The Play Project is an aerial survey of 100 playgrounds across Singapore. A study conducted about playgrounds in Singapore found there were nearly 1500 public playgrounds across Singapore, making it perhaps one of the highest playground per square meter land space in the world. Chow and Lin worked with a local drone company and customised a drone to carry and mirrorless camera. The drone flew over Singapore’s playground to frame their foam mats, coloured steps and spiral slides against the urban city.
Spending The Week At Baltic
Spending the week in Baltic...This week I have been exploring the Baltic Triangle district in Liverpool. Monday 19th August was World Photography Day, so I decided to dedicate an afternoon to trying to capture some of Baltic’s street art.
The Baltic Triangle itself is located in the development area of Liverpool’s city centre, which over the years has become home to the city’s creative industry. This urban environment is a space where artists of all kinds can collaborate and exhibit their work. The creative industry is valued here, it’s constantly changing and evolving with new street art, mezzanine studios being built and small grass root businesses being supported. I have chosen to photograph street art to try and reflect the area’s creative individuality and freedom, from giant murals to small experimental pieces.
Northern Lights
This toblerone shaped building was painted by artist Jason Hollis, the lively exterior reflects the vibrant thinking of the interior. The building houses a number of small businesses from freelance painters to a tattoo studio, it’s a key catalyst for some of Liverpool’s most artistic talent.
‘Abbey Road’
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Beatles ‘Abbey Road’ album, local street artist Paul Curtis was commissioned to recreate the iconic album cover in the band’s hometown. The cover artwork of The Beatles crossing Abbey Road outside of the London based studios where they created most of their music. People can now recreate the cover by posing in front of the artwork; making this an interactive piece connecting the present to the legacy of the area’s past.
All You Need is Love
Another reference to the Beatles, with the lyrics ‘All You Need is Love’ taken from the iconic song Love Is All You Need. This mural’s size and contrasting colours against the charcoal grey background makes it a striking piece. The strong shading gives a fluid or almost metallic look, slightly messing with your head! Standing further away creates an illusive 3D effect whilst standing closer reveals the 2D abstract shapes and textured paint.
Cosmopolitans
This quirky illustration of a 1950s style woman was stuck on an alleyway wall off Jamaica Street, its bold minimalist colours cheer up an otherwise dark corner. It was drawn on the remnants of a cocktail menu, reviving rubbish into art. The illustration style has a pop art/graphic flair achieved with marker pen.
Kaleidoscopic Girl
This bright and feminine mural was on a wall just off Brick Street. The painting of the girl has a delicate approach contrasting to the graffiti and brick wall around it, which brings a sense of hope and optimism to the street. The layers of paint built up on her face create texture and detail. -
-Claudia Gambles
World Humanitarian Day
World Humanitarian Day is celebrated every year on August 19th. It's a day of honouring humanitarians who risk their lives for people in war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria. The United Nations decided that humanitarians should have a day specifically just for them, where we celebrate their courage and bravery as they support their communities no matter the circumstances. The UN believes that it is important to inform the public about their humanitarian efforts which can often be dismissed, it's also a day to promote helping vulnerable people in a crisis.
This year’s World Humanitarian Day will be honouring all the women and their undeniable humanitarian efforts, which are vital to their communities for recovery. As women dominate the public health sector, they make it their duty to protect the sick, the elderly and children. These incredible women make up the largest number of people who risk their own lives to save others. Their unparalleled perseverance deserves to be acknowledged and celebrated as they present undeniable female strength.
August 19th will be the day where we appreciate what they do and what they go through to protect their vulnerable community whilst often finding themselves in misogynistic societies. Their committed support towards their community is sometimes undermined because of gender roles within their society; and men’s views being taken into account over women’s, as they are respected more within certain societies.
According to CARE International - a global organisation which works to help vulnerable communities fight poverty, and defend dignity - this is what inspired Rachel Chandiru, a gender focal person in South Sudan, to be a humanitarian. She was motivated to help young girls that were sexually and physically abused during the civil war. Her message to other women and girls who are interested in humanitarian work is that “we should continue to work and help the women and girls who are disadvantaged, to know their rights. The battle for our rights will take many years; but we need to be persistent, raise our voices jointly until we are heard. The fight for our rights still continues.”
Attia Alsommali, a Yemeni field officer with CARE, sees it as her duty to provide and help people regardless of their opinions on women. They have a role in society which they want to make better and gender stereotype is beyond that. These female humanitarians believe that it is important to make a difference in their communities as they continue to help them grow and develop, while also fighting these negative misconceptions.
So, as World Humanitarian Day comes closer, we should celebrate these strong-headed women, as well as all humanitarians across the world, by showing that we see and support them for all the courageous work that they do. They have something to prove and to challenge so this should be highlighted with a day honouring them, as they continue to display how determined they are to support their communities.
-Faaiza Akhbor
Beyond the Boundaries
Liverpool’s world heritage status now faces a significant threat. Since we started working with Engage Liverpool a few months back and started a series of events that looked at boundaries and why they are important, the proposal for new Everton Football Club stadium – which would sit inside the boundaries of the World Heritage Site on Bramley Moore dock – has shifted gears somewhat. Liverpool City Council has proposed to UNESCO that the site boundaries be moved to allow the new stadium to be built without affecting the status, but UNESCO has refused to consider this idea.
So much of the online discussion around the issue has been poor quality, entirely lacking in context for why a city is given World Heritage Status in the first place and what it actually means. It's set off on an ‘us against them’ type discussion – UNESCO is setting rules for us about what we can and can't develop here etc.
In a way, it’s that type of thinking that leads a place to make ill-judged decisions about its future – exactly the type of mentality that has led to the UK crashing out of Europe and being widely mocked for doing so.
But it’s easy to understand, too. Especially when the arguments for it are presented in a way that makes it appear that we're being kept from developing the city, from a brighter future with more new buildings that become physical symbols of the growth of a place and of growing what we have here. The prevailing arguments on Twitter are that UNESCO is against developing a new stadium on the waterfront at all, and that we don’t need world heritage status to show that we're a global city. Both of these simplistic takes on the situation are specifically designed to mislead – they're an opinion that skirt the edges of the story.
The third and final event in our series with Engage, Beyond the Boundaries, happened shortly after this discussion kicked-off again on social media and these one-sided perspectives threatened to completely shape the narrative of the situation. The event was designed to look at how are areas outside the Liverpool boundary relate to the areas inside it and, more specifically. how the history and heritage of the wider city region fed into us having a site that might be considered a world heritage site at all.
Attendees, mainly representing heritage sites across the city region, gathered to tell their story. We discussed the importance of storytelling, of heritage buildings as a place to house discussions and stories of an area over a long period. And, as it develops, of how they evolve to serve different needs but remain treasured community assets. We discussed the need to preserve the significance of these buildings, the things that make them special and treasured, whilst ensuring that they're relevant, sustainable and serve their communities well.
Also discussed was the idea that we might better connect these spaces – our parks, cemeteries, libraries and landmark buildings – through wayfinding and signposting – both within the boundaries and outside. And connect them for all people, whether they travel on foot, bike, car or public transport. Creating clear sight lines across the region and linking the stories of the site and the people that lived and worked there, and tying those stories together between sites.
'How do these sites positively impact our physical and mental health and wellbeing? Can we do more to celebrate and link these heritage venues as primarily public spaces?' we asked.
It was argued that for the venues that surround the city centre, it can feel like they’re just sitting outside looking in and the city centre venues don’t reach out. The city centre, the world heritage site, gets all the attention – and it’s up to them to share some of that attention and bring them into the conversation. What is outside the boundary is ultimately linked to what's within it – Liverpool’s mercantile and shipping heritage was made possible by the labour of people who travelled across several boundaries to get within the current boundary of the world heritage site.
We now find ourselves at the end of this series of events about boundaries and how we feel about them; about what boundaries in a place are important to us and what aren’t – but the overall discussion about the boundaries of the world heritage site is far from over.
This series has introduced me to the idea of ‘outstanding universal value’; the idea that something about our city is unique in the world in what it has contributed to the story of humanity. How will the decisions we make today about our city affect how we are perceived in terms of our contribution to humanity when my son, now three and a half, is my age? The phrase and the idea that it represents has made a lasting impression on me.
Having spent a good part of the past three months thinking about the history of the city in relation to the heritage of our built environment, I’m left wondering how we could possibly even be in the situation where we might lose our world heritage status at all. Yes, Everton FC is entitled to build a new stadium. If they can afford to do so, why not? But is the price of what our city perceives as progress – the desire to build new things, to evidence growth through developments like new stadiums and waterfront apartments – too high? If it is, does it come at the cost of losing a designation that marks Liverpool as a unique city? The docklands are a vast space – is there another site on them where a stadium could work that doesn’t involve us filling in a dock and pissing off UNESCO?
And, if we are to develop as a city, which I absolutely think we should, are we trying hard enough to build things that might be considered outstanding? Things that in 100 years will be celebrated as showing that Liverpool offered something of unique value to humanity, right now?
But what I’d really like to see and be involved in is more informed discussions around the world heritage site and the importance of heritage to us as a city now – the types of discussions that we’ve been having in this series. Discussions that go beyond the simplistic perspective of development vs UNESCO and whether or not we’re a global city if UNESCO say so or not. Discussions about what value our heritage sites offer us today, and how the protections that we have in place around them might protect the future of things that we value as the people that live here.And so, if anyone fancies a chat about any of that, pick a date and a pub and I’ll look forward to seeing you there.
-Andrew
Walking The Boundaries
Last Wednesday evening I went for a great walk with a great group.
We gathered on the roof of Central Library on what felt like the brightest and warmest day of the year so far – good walking weather. A group of 30 – some from Fazakerley, Walton and the waterfront – had turned up for the second in a three-part series of events looking at the boundaries of a place and why they matter. We were joined by Jon from Barcelona who, moments earlier, had been minding his own business before being roped into the tour by Gerry and Odie the dog. As we stood waiting for the group to gather, Gerry pointed out the Welsh hills, clearly visible in the distance. I took a photo to send to a friend.
Chris from Hidden Liverpool would be our tour guide, along with Gerry, as we passed from the library, down Dale Street and on to the Pier Head. I was excited to stretch out and learn new things about my city, to be newly proud of bits of it. Before we set off Gerry pointed out Millennium House, now the Shankly Hotel and its prominent roof extension, carried out by the current owners, Signature Living. We all agreed that from that vantage point, it looked a bit shit.
We strolled first past the Churchill Flyover, which is soon to be knocked down, learning new things about the Mersey Tunnel and the prominent boundary of 151 Dale Street. We learned about the history of the Municipal Buildings, the Conservative Club and one of the remaining police bridewells in the city. We saw the oldest dwelling in the city (built between 1765 and 1785) and still standing on Hockenhall Alley and passed the remnants of the failed Shankland Plan and its walkways in the sky – noticeably at Moorfields station, where you have to go up an escalator to the ticket office to go down again to the subway. The yellow brick road took us past the Artist’s Club and Garlands, based in an old Masonic Hall, to the Tempest building and the empty spaces surrounding it – the never-filled-in spaces from buildings destroyed in the Blitz.
By this stage, we’d passed several pubs and not lost a single person to a cold pint on a hot night. My will for abstaining was about to be seriously tested as we passed Ye Hole in the Wall, built in 1726, and Rigby’s, built in 1850 on the site of an old Quaker House. We lingered for a little while at Exchange Flags to talk old public art, sanctuary stones, cotton flowers and pineapples, before heading off past Martins Bank to see secret octopuses and hatches for the country’s wartime gold reserves; Oriel Chambers, a building that piloted the building technique that made skyscrapers possible; past the India Buildings, soon to be home to HMRC and on to the Pier Head.
We finished our walk at Pier Head for a gander over the Mersey to the Wirral. As I stood, I reflected on the boundaries we’d crossed as we walked – and the boundaries that I didn’t see at first. On the fact that the World Heritage Site covers some side streets and not others; sections of the walk, whilst in the site, are distinct areas within it – the cultural quarter and business district, as examples. But it also put me in mind of something we discussed in the first event of this series, the phrase ‘Outstanding Universal Value’. It was something I felt as I walked from the library to the waterfront, peeling back layers of history and crossing boundaries as I did.
The stories we heard along the way – the places and people that make up the history of our city – have created outstanding universal value here and elsewhere. Our story in Liverpool is a global story, a story of the world’s heritage, for good and ill. And we have the designation and recognition of a being World Heritage Site to prove it.
We’ll be picking up the chat about boundaries again in the third and final event in this series on July 17 at the Florrie. Beyond the boundaries will look at how the things that make the World Heritage Site have been shaped by heritage projects from across the city region, from outside its boundaries. I’ll look forward to seeing you there.
-Andrew
Independent Bookshop Week
It’s Independent Bookshop Week until June 22, part of the Bookseller’s 'Books Are My Bag' campaign. So, while we’re celebrating independent bookshops in the UK and Ireland, we’ve been thinking about some of our favourite indie bookshops – both in Liverpool, and a bit further afield.These are a few that are close to our hearts, but keep an eye out on the indies near with a full programme of events, reading groups, storytelling, author signings, literary lunches and face painting this week… For more information, head to https://indiebookshopweek.org.uk/.
News from Nowhere
This independent bookshop is perhaps Liverpool’s best known, situated on Bold Street in the city centre. It’s a radical and community not-for-profit collective, with all decisions made as part of a team effort – the shop first opened on May Day 1974 and has run as a women worker’s operative since 1981. The be-your-own-boss attitude and membership of the Alliance of Radical Booksellers influences the books it sells, with texts ranging from feminist literature and LGBT books, to anti-racism and anti-war books and a stack of radical ideas.The NfN team also raises awareness and campaigns for various equality and justice initiatives – both locally and internationally – and encourages customers to take part in events around Liverpool which are aimed at bringing people together. It’s always been massively supportive of our books, too, and has got involved in some of our events, joining us at Folken to talk about independence. Well worth a visit…
Henry Bohn Books
London Road’s Henry Bohn Books is an absolute treasure trove of the you-don’t-find-them-any-more variety. An extensive supply of books ranges from antiquarian to modern classics, with a substantial collection of history, literature and art titles, alongside travel, topography and natural history. Wooden shelves hug each wall, with stacks of books and a long central table laden holds a broad collection of classical and Jazz LPs and CDs.
Linghams
This family-friendly bookshop in Heswall on Wirral was voted the Number One Bookshop in the North in 2012, and the overall winner of the Independent Bookshop of the Year Award in 2013. It stocks a huge range of books, toys, greetings cards and stationery and guarantees that it can get hold of any title it doesn’t stock. A variety of events – from book clubs with wine and snacks to poetry evenings – give people a chance to get their poetry heard, including Bumfuzzle poet and musician, Keith Wilson. Linghams is passionate about getting young people involved in reading, with ‘storytime’ events for toddlers and babies, free author visits and events at local schools. In an age of technology, its mission is to demonstrate the joy brought about by reading.
Reid of Liverpool
Reid’s is an antiquarian and used bookshop, based on the doorstep of both of Liverpool’s universities, on Mount Pleasant. Opening in 1975, it remains rich in history, in a shop which is amongst the only surviving Georgian, purpose-built retail premises in Liverpool, dating from around 1785.The second-hand bookshop holds over 40,000 titles, from academic, science, fiction and arcane, buying and selling books on most subjects – which makes it perfect for picking up course books at cheap prices. Its homely feel is epitomised by the resident cat, who wanders the shop, seeing what customers are up to.
Ler Devagar Bookstore in Lisbon
We headed to Ler Devagar when we went to Web Summit in Lisbon, to see for ourselves why it’s been named one of the ten most beautiful bookstores in the world. Its place within the cool LX Factory enclave is a perfect setting, with scores of other independents, cafés and bars. Housed in an old newspaper printer, the presses remain upstairs for customers to wander around, and the permanent exhibition of the artist Pietro Prosperio provides a unique Lisbon cultural experience.Its famous flying bicycle sculpture hangs above shoppers, adding to the sense that literature can take people places and allow them to experience things which they never have before. Alongside a range of titles on arts and creativity, Ler Devagar – which translates at ‘read slowly’ – holds concerts, workshops, debates and author events to engage people with reading, including in its two coffee shops.
Posman Books, Chelsea Market, New York
NYC’s Chelsea Market is a haven for independents, packed full of makers, bakers and butchers… and bookshops. Stretching a block long and a block wide under the High Line, the market’s boutique indie bookstore includes a beautiful selection of bestsellers, literature, biographies, histories, cookbooks and travel guides, alongside stationery, cards and a stack of gifts. Its recommended reading is all hand-picked by staff, with comments and mini-reviews for each one.It also stocks the mouthwatering Chelsea Market Cookbook, a round-up of recipes from some of the traders in its famous old food hall, which reflects the Meatpacking District’s long history of food production and retail. The former National Biscuit Company Factory s now home to more than 35 food vendors, and an ever-growing variety of independent makers, artists and sellers.
-Joanna Cooper and Fiona Shaw; research by Joanna Cooper
Scouse Stories
Books from Liverpool
And because I’ve been thinking about independence – and home, after a couple of recent trips – it felt like the right time to do a round-up of a few lovely books about Liverpool. Summer is the season that brings Liverpool to life with, seemingly, a festival every weekend and the promise of a stop to the sideways rain. People pour in for their first experiences of the city; the music, lights and sounds, the colour and creativity.
Some are picked as a slice of Liverpool’s inner life, others for their creative independent spirit – several for both of the above. They’re all worth a look…
Unloveable Landscapes
Published last month, this is our Ethos designer Roy McCarthy’s first volume in his Unloveable Landscapes series. Canal bridges, car parks and the Churchill flyover appear in hand-drawn pen and ink sketches, alongside Bootle’s Hugh Baird College and Baltic’s New Bird Street. And Roy’s knee, in his Volvo. A series of minutely-detailed observations, they’re what he calls ‘what you end up with when I’m left to my own devices. Black and white observations of the places in between places; places that wouldn’t normally be sketched; places that aren’t photogenic, or noteworthy, or well-known.’ And they’re lovely.
Available from Roy at Frame Baltic, or News from Nowhere
Please Read This Leaflet Carefully
Published by our Northern Lights neighbours, indie fiction publisher Dead Ink, it’s been hard to miss the plaudits won by Karen Havelin’s Please Read This Leaflet Carefully recently. Havelin’s novel is of a life told in reverse, following Laura Fjellstad in her struggle to live a normal life across New York, Paris and Oslo, fuelled by her belief that to survive her endometriosis diagnosis she must be completely self-reliant.The novel flows backwards from 2016 to 1995, through Laura’s younger selves: a daughter; a figure skater, a lover, and a mother. ‘To be devoured intensely in one sitting,’ recommends Dead Ink.Available online from Dead Ink [https://deadinkbooks.com/product/leaflet/]
Truth Street
Truth Street was written by Luton-based poet David Cain, and last month was shortlisted in the Forward Prize for the Felix Dennis Prize for a first collection, with winners announced in October. Cain describes finding ‘humanity’ and ‘beauty’ in witness statements from the Hillsborough disaster, using evidence from the second Hillsborough inquests in his poetry to separate the emotion of witnesses from legal jargon and news headlines.
Available from News from Nowhere
Mersey Minis
One of our own – through sister company, Capsica – we published Mersey Minis to celebrate Liverpool’s 800th birthday way back in 2007. It was a different time… Consisting of five volumes –Landing, Living, Longing, Loving and Leaving, the Minis were meticulously compiled by editor Deborah Mulhearn, bringing together writing about the city from across those 800 years. Covering ground from politicians to punks, artists, sailors and writers to immigrants and emigrants, passing through as they set sail for America, musicians and day trippers; it ebbs and flows, shifting gears and confounding nostalgia, cliché and expectations of a city that’s seen it all.As journalist Paul Morley says in Living, ‘Liverpool is not part of England in the way that New York is not part of America. It is more Welsh, more Irish, a shifty, shifting outpost of defiance and determination reluctantly connected to the English mainland, more an island set in a sea of dreams and nightmares that's forever taking shape in the imagination, more a mysterious place jutting out into time between the practical, stabilising pull of history and the sweeping, shuffling force of myth.’
Available in very limited quantities from us…
Luca Veste
I’m an absolute lover of a crime thriller, so will soon be plunging myself into the world of Luca Veste and his Liverpool-set psychological thrillers. A second generation Italian, Veste was born and raised on Merseyside, and uses Liverpool as the backdrop to his Murphy and Rossi novels – DI David Murphy and DS Laura Rossi first burst onto the scene in Dead Gone, which I’ll be starting with. Penned as a ‘writer to watch’ by author Mark Billingham and called ‘darkly impressive’ by The Times, I can never resist novels where I spend as much time location spotting as I do thinking about the twist and turns of the protagonists. Roll on autumn and dark evenings and lots more time for reading…
Available online and in bookshops all over the place…
-Fiona