Event type: Talk

Queer Book Club: Dec 2026

Queer Book Club is an inclusive reading group open to anyone from St Helens to come together to read and discuss LGBTQIA+ literature. Founded in Autumn 2023 by a group of local queer artists, producers and book-lovers, Queer Book Club is a space to share a love of queer novels, memoirs and writing.
This month we’re reading…
The Woman in Me by Britney Spears is a brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope from the perspective of a global pop icon.
Queer Book Club is drop-in, meaning you don’t have to have been before to take part, but we encourage you to read the book ahead of the session.

Access

We want to make Queer Book Club as accessible to as many people as possible and therefore we will hold two pre-bought copies of the book.
Either contact Britney via britney@heartofglass.org.uk or call in to The Book Stop to borrow a copy. Additionally, as a QBC reader, you also receive 20% off your copy of the chosen book this month at The Book Stop in St Helens by quoting “Queer Book Club” at the till.

Safer Spaces

These events will use Heart of Glass’ Safer Spaces Agreement to create a space that aims to be as welcoming and respectful as possible.

Book Launch: The Slave Trader by Ben Shaw

The Bluecoat building began as a charity school for orphans, co-founded by Bryan Blundell in the early eighteenth century. His fortune, like Liverpool’s, was bound to the transatlantic slave trade. Drawing on Blundell’s journal, shipping records, sermons, and civic archives, Ben Shaw’s new book charts his career of prosperity and philanthropy, and the hidden costs that underpinned them. Panelists include Bluecoat Director of Cultural Legacies Bryan Biggs and Researcher Janaya Pickett.

Free, booking required

In Conversation with Stephen Graham & Orly Klein

Liverpool born award-winning actor Stephen Graham and psychology lecturer Orly Klein will be joined on stage by family, friends and a few special guests to discuss their book Letters To Our Sons and share the highs and lows of fatherhood.

Ghosts and Spirits Afternoon Tea: Christmas Past, Present & Future

An afternoon of storytelling of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, told by the Christmas spirits themselves. Join the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present & Future as they weave their way through Dickens classic Christmas tale. 

Your ticket includes the telling of this famous Christmas story, brought to life by our Ghosts, all served with afternoon tea to match past, present and future. 

Can Scrooge see the light and save Tiny Tim’s Christmas? Will he change his humbug ways? Only the Ghost themselves know and invite to sip your tea along! 

If you have allergies that we should be made aware of in preparation of your afternoon tea, please email boxoffice@everymanplayhouse.com including your order number, straight after booking. We cannot guarantee that our dishes are 100% free of allergens due to all food being prepared in one kitchen. 

Make Time to Speak About Sleep

Collective Encounters is working with Make It Happen (Birkenhead), using creative methods to explore sleep within community groups and organisations. The project will create a new Sleep Hygiene Playbook, providing practical techniques and resources to support healthy, proactive conversations about sleep and wellbeing.

Come and be a part of shaping this unique resource. We want input from people who might want to use or share the Playbook within your teams or the communities you support.

This is the final session within the current phase of the project. Don’t miss your opportunity to be part of it!

To attend, please email liz.ryan6@nhs.net or call 0151 2944470.

Heritage Open Days: Polish Heritage Tour Presentation

Explore the history of Liverpool’s Polish community through historic photographs and stories of migration, resilience and community. This accessible presentation shares highlights from the Polish Heritage Walking Tour with Merseyside Polonia, revealing how generations of Polish people have shaped the city’s cultural, social and maritime history. A chance to discover the deep connections between Poland and Liverpool and uncover stories often hidden within the city’s past.

Part of Heritage Open Days

Free, booking required

FLIPIM: THE Grassroots Regeneration Conference

Join us for a day of ideas, panels, and workshops, and we’ll hear from lesser heard voices alongside those who hold power and influence.

FLIPIM 2026: THE Grassroots Regeneration Conference

Inspiration | Activism | Connection

24th September 2026

It’s 2026 and FLIPIM is back!

For this year’s edition the grassroots are gathering in Birkenhead to flip the conversation on regeneration.

Community-led solutions are appearing in government policy as a way to turn around decades of decline in our neighbourhoods. The challenge now lies in execution; how can we leverage opportunities like Pride in Place to maximise the benefits for the areas where we live, work and play.

Join us for a day of ideas, panels, and workshops, and we’ll hear from lesser heard voices alongside those who hold power and influence, to ensure the future of our places can be built by everyone.

5 Core Themes for 2026

This year, we are expanding the agenda to dive deeper into the key pillars of community ownership and local resilience. Across our keynotes, panels, and interactive workshops, we will explore:

  • Housing: Securing genuinely affordable homes, resident-led housing models, and community land trusts.
  • Money: Exploring community wealth building, local investment vehicles, and keeping economic value within our neighbourhoods.
  • Culture, Leisure & Hospitality: Unlocking creative spaces, preserving independent venues, and reclaiming community-owned pubs, hubs, and social spaces as catalysts for local change.
  • Pride in Place: Ensuring local people have genuine agency, power, and ownership over their public spaces and surroundings.
  • Regeneration, High Street & Heritage: Transforming vacant buildings, protecting local history, and reviving town centres through grassroots action.

Making “Pride in Place” Real

We have a historic opportunity to show what happens when investment is met with community agency. Pride in Place will invest £5 billion over 20 years in 339 places creating the chance to make this happen.

Birkenhead finds itself a national “trailblazer” for the government’s programme. We know that true “Pride in Place” isn’t just about a new coat of paint; it’s about who owns the assets and who makes the decisions. The data shows that the grassroots approach can be transformative:

  • Community-led businesses and assets currently boast a 94% long-term survival rate, providing the stability our high streets desperately need.
  • Research confirms that resident-led regeneration doubles local business growth in disadvantaged areas compared to top-down models.
  • Research by Power to Change shows that community owned assets contribute £220 million to the UK economy, with 56p of every £1 they spend staying in the local economy

Let’s Take Action!

FLIPIM 26 combines high-level insights with hands-on workshops. Our schedule is designed to move from big-picture thinking to practical next steps.

  • Keynotes & Panels: We’ll host deep-dive conversations with policymakers, urbanists, and community leaders on the regeneration landscape.
  • Workshops to Activism: From Community Right to Buy to Highstreet Rental Auctions, we’ll host tactical sessions on navigating new and existing policy for taking community control of land and property.
  • The Carousel Problem Solving: We’ll use the collective intelligence of the room to find a way through common hurdles and unique challenges.
  • Time With Your Peers: Connect with a national network of people for radical honesty and shared expertise.

Join Us

If you believe that regeneration is most successful when it is built with communities, FLIPIM is for you. Whether you’re a local resident, housing activist, or simply looking for the “how-to” of grassroots power, we’ll see you in Birkenhead.

Tickets will include refreshments & food.

Talking Culture: Public Discussion Group

Talking Culture is a series of friendly discussions where curious people can come together to think, talk, and explore today’s major issues. The next session will take place on Thu 3 Sep, and will focus on questions associated with masculinity online

The Rise of the Manosphere

What is happening with masculinity online? Against a complicated backdrop shaped by all sorts of social and economic pressures, masculine norms are often said to be undergoing radical transformation. Take, for example, the recent media debates addressing the ‘manosphere’, or UK policy proclamations of a male epidemic of loneliness; something is changing or is said to be with respect to masculinity and online life.

What sense can be made of this context? Does social life online profoundly reshape our ideas of what it means to be a man? Are men’s friendships and emotional lives fundamentally altered by the increased time spent online? What does all this mean for gender relationships more broadly?

In this open discussion led by Dr Brittany Ralph, Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Liverpool, we will reflect together on the fascinating context of masculinity online. As ever, no prior knowledge is necessary, and we look forward to hearing your views.

Free, booking required

Borough Road Shuffle

More than a decade after it was last held, the Tranmere Trust is delighted to bring back the Borough Road Shuffle. On August Bank Holiday Sunday, we’ll be bringing the SWA together with our friends at Future Yard for an afternoon and evening of live music and conversation to celebrate everything that makes our local community special.

At its heart, the Borough Road Shuffle is about bringing Tranmere fans together. Whether you’ve supported the club for decades or only recently found your way to Prenton Park, this is a chance to celebrate the vibrant community that exists around our club and our deep links with Birkenhead’s music and creative culture.

The original Borough Road Shuffle held back in 2012 – when Rovers sat top of League One – featured performances by The Loud, Oxygen Thieves and By The Sea, with Bill Ryder-Jones on DJ duties.

The Trust believes football is at its strongest when supporters come together. The stronger our community, the stronger our collective voice, and the more we can achieve for the future of Tranmere Rovers. By coming along, you’ll not only be part of a fantastic event —you’ll also be supporting the work of the Trust and helping us continue to represent fans throughout the year.

We’ll be announcing our line-up of live music, DJs, speakers and more details over the coming weeks, but as a Trust member, you’re receiving exclusive first access to tickets before they’re released more widely. Simply click on the link below to grab a ticket.

Harvest Power: Eco Open Day & Lughnasadh Gathering

 

This Lughnasadh / Lammas; the Gaelic fire festival marking the grain & fruit harvest, we’re coming together on Windsor Street to consider the past and future traditions of land, food, community, energy and place:

  • Make and taste flatbread from 12 noon with Edi! With heritage grain flour gifted by our pal Fred from Gothelney Farm & UK Grain Lab.
  • Squash building tours with architect and co-founder of People Powered Retrofit Marianne Heaslip – come and find out more about how we co-designed and built our eco community building. 11.30 and 1pm.
  • Visit the Travelling Power Station which will be rocking up to Windsor Street! The Travelling Power Station is an exhibition, game and space for having conversations about energy. It has been designed by communities for communities, putting people rather than energy systems at the centre. Participants need no prior knowledge of, or interest in energy. The Travelling Power Station centres fun, game playing, reflection, conviviality and care as crucial to the future of energy. Meet artist Josh and join in! With love and support from Two Up, Two Down, Zero Carbon Liverpool and the University of Manchester.
  • Add to the Lughnasadh altar with artists Tabitha & Clare
  • Visit the Co-Labouring with Soil exhibition at our community garden 12.30pm
  • Every Saturday is Sourdough Saturday at the Squash cafe – loaves and sweet bakes on sale from 10am!

AT SQUASH, 112-114 WINDSOR STREET, LIVERPOOL, L8 8EQ

Access info: The Squash building is fully accessible including level threshold entrance (shop/cafe) and ramp access to the garden. There is an accessible toilet. The Grapes Community Garden is a short walk from Squash, approx. 150 meters along Windsor Street. There is some uneven ground in the garden.