Category: Culture Radar

This week’s Culture Radar guest is the Youth and Community Director at 20 Stories High, Paislie Reid.

Loved: I loved watching The Rocky Horror Show at Liverpool Playhouse recently it was so much fun. I also enjoyed the River of Light, it’s so pretty and makes the city buzz.

Looking forward to: I’m looking forward to 20 Stories High The Access Manifesto screening event in January. We are really excited to share the film with local organisations, share our learning and open up conversations about access within the arts! You can learn more about The Access Manifesto here!

This week’s Culture Radar guest is the Gallery Manager at dot-art, Claire Henderson.

Loved: Land, Rights and Resistance at FACT with local PHD candidate Gabriela Saenger Silva leading a discussion with Yula Rocha from People’s Palace Project exploring a project this past October of creating a 1 tonne 3-D printed replica of the sacred Kamukuwaká cave with Xingu Indigenous peoples living in the Brazilian Amazon.

Looking forward to: Another FACT event! From Ground Zero screening of 22 short films by filmmakers from Gaza, each presenting their current reality of Gaza. Each £10 ticket is donated and shared between the London Palestine Film Festival and Medical Aid for Palestine.

Trivia: Do you know about the dot-art Christmas Baubles? Metroplitan Cathedral, Sefton Palm House and the Royal Liver Building are the three designs we have in sustainably sourced wood. We even worked with our dot-art Artist Members to create limited edition painted versions of each iconic Liverpool building.

This week’s Culture Radar guest is our Intern Alice Cockburn, joining us as part of LJMU’s Discovery Internship Programme.

Loved: I absolutely loved seeing Yoko Ono’s Ceiling Painting at The Tate. I saw it years ago, but the message really stuck with me and has driven me to seek out positivity wherever I go! I am relatively new to Liverpool as a Yorkshire lass, but I have been particularly taken by the galleries here. I’ve seen some wonderful exhibitions at Smithdown Social Arts Hub and Castle Fine Art.

Looking forward to: Later this month I’ll be going to the Festive Paper Bunting Workshop with Design Laser Play. I am excited to meet new people and get stuck into an activity. World Museum are also having Relaxed Screenings at the Planetarium which sound like a beautiful way to calm my mind before Christmas.

Trivia: I’m interning with Open Culture and I’m really enjoying engaging with local arts, culture and a vibrant community.

This week’s Culture Radar guest is the Joint CEO at RAWD (Random Acts of Wildness Disability), Steffi Sweeney.

Loved: Let Your Ideas Come Back As Children at the Bluecoat was brilliant, I went with my 2-year-old a couple of times.

Looking forward to: I am looking forward to the next Unity Scratch Night. Lee Leebo Luby is performing who is always boss to watch.

Trivia: Through my work at RAWD I am working with an artist called Alana. Alana communicates and accesses her computer via a chin switch and scanning method. We are making an autobiographical show and creating a new communication system that provides Alana the agency to direct in the rehearsal room, loads of learning. I’m loving it.

This week’s Culture Radar guest is the Director at Bidston Observatory Artistic Research Centre (BOARC), Angelina Moana.

Loved: I went to Bridewell Studios for the first time the other day, and loved it! The new exhibition “Ni de aquí, Ni de allá” by Talia Belen Laing and Stephanie Trujillo has wonderful tapestries, photos and hanging structures. The Unity Theatre has also had so many great shows lately – ‘Dark Mother’ by Lucy Hopkins was pure magic.

Looking forward to: BOARC’s Annual General Exchange is always something special and full of interesting discussions, hilltop walks and big group dinners. I’m also really looking forward to Woman | Women by Rowena Gander, which will be in theatres across the city this month. Each show is going to feature a new duet with a different performer, so I’m tempted to see them all!

Trivia: I’m also a founding member of Ugly Bucket Theatre, a Liverpool based physical comedy company, and at the time of writing – still very much in post-Edinburgh Fringe recovery mode!

This week’s Culture Radar guest is Stand up comic & Artistic Director of The Comedy Trust, Sam Avery.

Loved: I’m obviously biased but I’ve loved working on Liverpool Comedy Festival, specifically Doddy Day which celebrates the life and legacy of the late, great Sir Ken Dodd. Getting to know Lady Dodd throughout the process has been an absolute privilege – she has some of the best stories I’ve ever heard!

Looking forward to: I can’t wait for Christmas! The markets, the pantos, the cheeky afternoon pints down Dale Street. This city is so cosy in December.

Trivia: As a teenager I was the bass player in a nu-metal band. We toured with Motorhead and Napalm Death and even went on Top of the Pops 2. I had more hair then.

This week’s Culture Radar guest Jackie Pease, one of the (all volunteer) organisers and members of the DoES Liverpool community for almost eleven years.

Loved: I really enjoyed Transition Liverpool’s “Retrofitting Liverpool” event on 5th October. There was a wide range of knowledge and people, and it was good to look at realistic ways we can move from where we are now to a more sustainable future. You can read about it here and I believe they’re organising more events. I also recently went to the R.I.P. Germain Masterclass in the Studio/Lab at FACT. He was a great speaker and gave some good advice for people considering immersive works themselves. I managed to see the exhibition before it closed and I think I gained a lot by going to the talk first.

Looking forward to: I can hardly wait for River of Light. I love light installations! I know some people at DoES are creating light effects for a mass cycle ride during this year’s event.

Trivia: DoES Liverpool is a co-working, maker and event space. It’s been around for 13 and a half years and based in the Tapestry Building in Kempston Street for more than 6 years. We’ve got all sorts of kit, including laser cutters, CNC routers, 3D printers, sewing machines, embroidery machine, pen plotter, an electronics workbench and lots of electronics testing equipment.

We have all sorts of people at DoES from translators and sign language interpreters to economists and electronics specialists. Artists have been involved from the start, and it’s that mix that brings out new ideas and makes DoES what it is.

This week’s Culture Radar guest the Artistic Director and CEO of Liverpool Irish Festival, Emma Smith.

Loved: I certainly jumped at the gunshots — and laughed hard at Cameron McKendrink’s ‘drip-of-shame’ jeans, before he got covered in gunk — in The Lieutenant of Inishmore at The Everyman. I took the Brickworks exhibit at Tate Liverpool + RIBA North a little more seriously (on ’til January and well worth a look)!

Looking forward to: I’m not really allowed to say the Liverpool Irish Festival (17-27 Oct) am I? That covered, John Grant at The Philharmonic and The People’s Pyramid/Day of the Dead have both been in my diary for some time. No doubt the city’s River of Light will draw plenty of people down to the waterfront, too. Being from Leicester originally, I am a bit of a sucker for Diwali.

Trivia: People who know me well know: I love nothing more that getting in to a pottery class (Lark Lane and Altar Pottery are both brilliant) and making a mess of myself. I throw pots mainly and have not long completed a collection plate for the Liverpool Irish Famine memorial. If I don’t go for a while I start to miss the clay!

This week’s Culture Radar guest is the Head of English at the University of Liverpool, Greg Lynall.

Loved: The illuminating Creatures of the Nile exhibition at the University of Liverpool’s Garstang Museum.

Looking forward to: There will be a great new season of concerts starting this month at The Tung Auditorium, the University of Liverpool’s state-of-the-art concert Hall. In October I’m looking forward to the Liverpool Literary Festival featuring an eclectic line up of best-selling novelists, poets, and critically-acclaimed screenwriters and actors!

Trivia: My department has teamed up with Collective Encounters, the arts charity who use theatre for social change, to create Voices on the Streets, a sound journey that you can download to your phone and use to explore the city.