Category: Culture Radar

This week’s Culture Radar guest is Kate Haselden, Assistant Curator at Tate Liverpool.

Loved: It was great to see Gender Stories at the Walker Art Gallery – the exhibition brings together some amazing works by Ajamu X, Del LaGrace Volcano, David Hockney and many others. One of my favourite works was a small watercolour portrait by Sarah Biffin (1784-1850), a female artist who established a successful career as a portrait painter and challenged attitudes towards disability.

Looking forward to: FACT is presenting two events focused on the work of John Akomfrah. I am particularly looking forward to the screening of ‘The Stuart Hall Project’ and thinking through how we reflect on forgotten histories. It is fantastic to see this alongside Akomfrah’s ‘Listening All Night to the Rain’ at the Walker; he discusses his long personal and professional relationship with Liverpool in the introduction to this display.

What is coming up for your organisation? We are organising a collaborative event with the International Slavery Museum on the 11th July, entitled ‘Call and Response: How does the land remember slavery?’. The free event will explore the impact of transatlantic slavery on the environment, with conversations informing displays at Tate Liverpool and the new International Slavery Museum.

We have two incredible speakers joining us – artist Imani Jacqueline Brown and writer and artist Tao Leigh Goffe. Both are undertaking crucial research into connections between exploitation of the environment and climate change. Goffe is travelling from New York for this event, so we are incredibly excited to welcome her to Liverpool.

The event is free but booking is essential.

Trivia: We have just announced our first major commission for the new Art Hall space of Tate Liverpool. Asad Raza will create the inaugural commission which will greet visitors as they enter our transformed gallery.

This week’s Culture Radar guest is Nicole Konigs Balfry, Director, Zest Event Management.

What is coming up for your organisation? We’re in the midst of Liverpool European Festival, one of our big projects in 2026. The launch events were amazing and there’s still loads in store until the start of July! I’m shamelessly plugging the festival because the events organised by the Liverpool European diaspora communities are just to beautiful to miss. 

What arts & cultural Liverpool City Regions event/s have you loved recently: The exhibition “Self-Defined. New stories from the Archives” at the Open Eye Gallery made me think hard about my understanding of identity. And I got to see bands I love and bands I didn’t yet know I love at “So Long, Good Friday”.

What arts & cultural Liverpool City Regions event/s are you looking forward to: The Utah Saints gig at Future Yard later this month and Africa Oyé in June! Plus I’ve got my eye on the “Liverpool Welcomes Europe” events, they are a great opportunity to connect “with Europe”.

Trivia: Whenever I teach event management at university level, the majority of students are female. This doesn’t translate into working life: female event managers are still under-represented, especially in the outdoor events industry. Me and my two female event managers are keen to address this imbalance, come and speak to us if you are, too. 

This week’s Culture Radar guest is Paul Duhaney, Artistic Director of Africa Oyé.

Loved: I went to the launch of the Toxteth: Harlem of Europe – an exhibition at the Victoria Gallery & Museum that runs until 1st August. It was a brilliant showcase of musicians and performers from the 50s and 60s that are so often overlooked. And at Oyé we also just partnered with The Tung Auditorium to put on the fantastic kora player Sophie Lukacs and her band for a free lunchtime concert.

Looking forward to: Liverpool Arab Arts Festival’s Family Day at the Palm House is always a highlight of the summer. And it will be great to see Fields of Éire – Liverpool’s first outdoor Irish music celebration since 2018 – in Newsham Park, a couple of weeks before we head to Sefton Park for our own celebration.

What is coming up for your organisation? The 2026 Africa Oyé festival in Sefton Park on 20th and 21st June is the start of a new era for us as an organisation as it is the first time the event will be ticketed. It’s been a challenging change to navigate but we’re really excited about showcasing international talent such as Patoranking and Fatoumata Diawara this summer as well as putting on an event with the same family and community spirit that Oyé has become famous for.

This week’s Culture Radar guest is Paul Doyle, Director of Chaos Arts CIC.

Founded in 2022, Chaos Arts CIC expands access to dance and creative opportunities across Liverpool City Region through education programmes, community classes and Leap Dance Festival, supporting diverse and marginalised groups to experience the arts.

Loved: I thought Jim Cartwright’s TWO at Shakespeare North Playhouse was brilliant. Two actors played all 14 characters in a working-class pub over the course of a night, really impressive!

Looking forward to: The whole Leap team is really excited about the return of Africa Oyé this summer! I think the city really missed it last year and it’s such an important event in our calendar for families and communities to come together to celebrate music and culture.

What is coming up for your organisation? Leap Dance Festival! This year’s programme runs from Friday 24th April – Saturday 9th May. We’re so excited to be able to offer a line up that balances free, family friendly performances and workshops (Dancing at the Palm House, Dancing in the Streets) with new work by incredible dance artists. I’m particularly looking forward to seeing emerging artists take to the stage at Unity for Liverpool Dance Prize (30th April), LGBTQ+ stories platformed at Queer Moves (1st May) and our new-for-2026 Leap Takeover at Shakespeare North Playhouse, including cabaret, workshops and a life drawing class! 

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.