Category: Culture Radar

This week’s Culture Radar guest is Barbara Phillips, Founder/Director at Positive Impact.

Loved: The Tung Auditorium – Afternoon Sessions with Nikki Blaze, one of Liverpool’s most established and influential female hip hop artists.

Looking forward to: Completely biased, but I’m beyond excited for Positive Impact Sing Big Band with the Halcyon Syncopators at The Black-E on 14 March. It’s a fundraiser celebrating 25 years of Positive Impact, whilst helping raise funds for our young people to perform in Disney Florida!

Trivia: My dad was Lord Woodbine, known as one of the first ‘music mentors’ for the Beatles. I guess you might say I’ve followed in his footsteps because, I have been a music mentor for young people for many years!

This week’s Culture Radar guest is Hazel Preston, Gallery Manager at dot-art

Loved: My colleague Carolyn and I visited the Turner: Always Contemporary exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery. We also both loved Emma Stibbon’s Tabular Berg in the gallery, so haunting!

Looking forward to: I don’t want to miss Sweet Factory at The Atkinson. Love that it’s using food and art to explore working class history and culture.

What’s coming up at dot-art? 2026 is dot-art’s 20th birthday! We have two great exhibitions opening, by our Artist Members. TWENTY and 20×20. You could also win yourself an original artwork by Hazel Thomson worth £1,200 in our brand new prize draw. 

Trivia: A lot of people don’t know dot-art run Liverpool Art Fair! We also run dot-art Schools and Art Bytes, to inspire future artists in Liverpool City Regions, and nationally too.

To kick off the new year our Culture Radar guest is Paddy Hughes, Programme Coordinator at Collective Encounters.

Loved: The always brilliant Everyman panto and the Sean at The Hotel album launch.

Looking forward to: The Liverpool Irish Music Festival is something I always look forward to.

What’s coming up at Collective Encounters? ReCITE and the development of our Theatre Informed Policy Making model AND our sector development events in the new year which are:

• Creativity for Evaluation Training, Thursday 29 January
• Trauma Informed Practice for Participatory Artists Training, Thursday 5 February
• Making Theatre from Lived Experience Masterclass, Thursday 12th March

Trivia: Outside of Collective Encounters I run a script reading service called My Next Draft (Mynextdraft.com) that helps writers locally and internally to finish drafts of plays and screenplays.

This week our Culture Radar guests are Maisy Gordon & Evan Byrne, Co-CEO’s of Tip Tray Theatre.

Loved: We recently visited FACT to see the new Bassam Issa Al-Sabah exhibition: THE MISSION IS THE END, THE END IS ALL I WANT! Every element of the exhibition was fantastic, definitely check it out before it closes on 22nd Feb!

Looking forward to: We are really looking forward to celebrating Chinese New Year in February. The celebrations are always so much fun and there’s loads of different events happening around the city.

Trivia: Tip Tray Theatre is now part of The Culture Network, so we would love to introduce ourselves! We’re a disabled-led, Knowsley based company supporting underrepresented and emerging artists through socially engaged theatre, development opportunities and creative activism. We make work that’s curious, political, and rooted in lived experience.

 

This week’s Culture Radar guest is Ria Bagley, Membership and Systems Coordinator at The Culture Network LCR.

Loved: I’ve loved Remember Nature at FACT, where I performed alongside Bernadette McBride, Tom Doubtfire, and Paul Harfleet. I brought a setup full of tech to weave together sounds of the past and present, and even let my mushroom and plant choir voice a speculative post-human future. FACT has always felt like a place where you can think differently, and performing within that shifting environment with such an open-minded audience reshaped my own approach which felt less like performing at something and more like performing with it, in conversation with the space. The Moi Bakeshop at FACT deserves a shout out for their excellent brunch offerings!

Looking forward to: I’m really looking forward to seeing the Toxteth: The Harlem of Europe exhibition at the Victoria Gallery & Museum. Toxteth is too often framed through the lens of the riots, but for me it’s one of the most vibrant, characterful and resilient places I’ve ever known, and the kind of neighbourhood that deserves to be celebrated.

Trivia: I may think I’m a punk, but I have an Internal Audit Practitioner designation and IIA Certificate in Audit and Business Risk \m/.

This week’s Culture Radar guest is Unity Theatre’s Marketing & Digital Lead, Emily Maguire.

Loved: Having Homotopia Festival back at Unity— Liverpool’s longest-running LGBTQIA+ arts festival came back with a bang this month. It was so fun to work on the various events they held at Unity, with a particular shout out to An Evening With Dross – everyone was taken aback with the stunning visuals that brought Unity One to life.

Looking forward to: I can’t wait for Unity Theatre’s Christmas Cabaret, its quickly becoming one of my favourite festive events we have on at Unity. Expect anarchic hilarity, comedy, acrobatics, puppetry and standout performances from Velma Von BonBon, Katy Anne Bellis, Caustic Widows, and Teatro Pomodoro and more…

Trivia: This year will be the first time in 7 years Unity has created an in-house Christmas production (Sleep Can Wait!). I can’t wait to see families in our space enjoying the festivities!

This week’s Culture Radar guest is Archana Shastri, Director of Marketing & Communications, Milap.

Loved: I recently had the chance to see one of India’s most celebrated composers, Ilaiyaraaja, present his very first Western symphony, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. With a career spanning over 7,000 songs and a huge global following, it felt special to witness such a milestone in his incredible career — the music was breathtaking, and it was amazing how he brought his signature Indian sound seamlessly into a Western symphonic form.

Looking Forward To: INDIKA Festival is just around the corner, and honestly, the whole line-up is going to be brilliant. In music, I can’t wait for The Stringmasters featuring Milap favourites Jayanthi Kumaresh (veena) and Anil Srinivasan (piano) with Indian percussion, and in dance, Dancing the Divine with kathak dancer Sanjukta Sinha — the way she blends energy, passion, and grace is astounding.

Trivia: I trained in Bharatanatyam, an Indian classical dance form, for over 15 years.

This week’s Culture Radar guest is Creative Coordinator of The Windows Project, Dave Ward.

Loved: Toria Woofe at the Nordic Church. She is a UK Americana singer/songwriter, she was amazing… the venue is just as incredible; they do monthly music events as means of local fundraising ranging from folk, to classical and jazz. What a warm and welcoming experience.

Looking Forward To: I’m looking forward to the forthcoming classical music season at Liverpool, Philharmonic. I have very eclectic taste, but classical music is a passion of mine; my dad was a music teacher, so it is in my blood!

Trivia: I also write folkloric fiction under the name David Greygoose (my great grandmother’s name) and have provided lyrics for the forthcoming album Smoke Road by Crystal Jacqueline. In my spare time I grow cooking apples, stew cooking apples and eat cooking apples … amongst other things!