Category: Culture Radar

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.

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!