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Arts and Culture
Becky Beasley’s A Gentle Man (Part II) Comes To The Bluecoat
An exhibition that begins beneath your feet and eventually arrives at the subject of dying is clearly asking rather more of its audience than simply to look… Opening at Bluecoat this September, Becky Beasley’s A Gentle Man (Part II) (1975– 2029) brings together photography, sculpture, ceramics, furniture and moving image within an installation that transforms the gallery into what Bluecoat describes as a “contemplative and immersive landscape”. It is an ambitious proposition, concerned not only with the…
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Arts and Culture
Liverpool Independent Art School At 10: This Is What Art School Was Supposed To Be Like
There is a story about Liverpool Independent Art School (LIAS) that probably tells you more about its philosophy than any mission statement ever could. It involves two artists, a load of drawing equipment, Sefton Park and lots and lots of rain… Founders Paul Gatenby and his colleague Tony O’Connell had been teaching at what was then the Community College for almost twenty years when they began to feel increasingly uncomfortable with the direction education was…
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Arts and Culture
Poetry on the Fringe: Give Poetry A Chance Returns to The Ship & Mitre
Give Poetry A Chance (GPAC) began, by Dan Cullinan’s own admission, without any grand plan to become a Liverpool poetry institution. He started writing poems as thoughts in the notes section of his phone and had never intended to become a poet, let alone an event organiser. Yet since 2019, Give Poetry A Chance has developed into a regular platform for Liverpool’s poetry community, bringing together established voices, emerging writers and audiences in an environment that feels deliberately different…
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Theatre in Liverpool
English National Ballet’s Romeo & Juliet Comes to Liverpool Empire This October
Nearly 50 years on, Nureyev’s Romeo & Juliet still knows exactly where it hurts. Some stories survive because they are good. Others survive because they refuse to stop hurting. Nearly 50 years after Rudolf Nureyev created his Romeo & Juliet, English National Ballet brings the production to Liverpool Empire for three days this October, opening a national tour that will ultimately culminate at the London Coliseum, where it premiered in 1977. Shakespeare’s tale of forbidden…
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Arts and Culture
52 for 26 Poetry Project – Paul Reid
Speaking out when silence feels safer… Paul Reid’s route into writing has taken in school classrooms, punk rock stages, spoken word performances and creative writing groups across Liverpool. Throughout those different chapters, one thing has remained constant: a desire to connect with people, whether through humour, observation or reflections on the world around him. Writing has remained a constant presence since childhood, when he enjoyed reading his stories aloud in class. In his younger years,…
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Arts and Culture
52 for 26 Poetry Project: Michelle Wright
Michelle Wright – After Eden: A Poetic Journey Into What Remains When Paradise Falls Silent In The Caretaker, Michelle Wright turns her gaze toward one of the oldest stories we inherit: the Fall, the moment when Eden’s perfection collapses and humanity is cast into a world forever changed. But rather than retell the familiar account of Eve, desire, and punishment, Wright positions her poem in the uncanny stillness after the exile. Eden remains, but its…
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Arts and Culture
Creative Spotlight: Caroline Gorick
Caroline Gorick – Holding onto the moment… Caroline Gorick has been painting for as long as she can remember. There is no neat moment of discovery in her story, no sudden realisation that art might become a career, because painting was never really something she decided to do. It was simply there, embedded in her life from childhood onwards, becoming more serious and more demanding as the years passed. “I haven’t stopped painting since I…
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Music
Sumud: A Night of Solidarity and Song Comes to Liverpool
There are plenty of gigs coming to Liverpool this September, but few arrive with quite the sense of purpose surrounding Sumud, a special fundraising concert at The Dome at Grand Central on Friday 11 September, organised by Amos Trust in support of its Gaza Appeal. Bringing together an unusually strong line-up of established names, Palestinian voices and emerging talent, the evening promises music, solidarity and, importantly, a direct contribution towards humanitarian relief. Amos Trust describes itself as a creative…
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Arts and Culture
Beckett in the City: Liverpool Welcomes the Return of an International Festival
For many people, the name Samuel Beckett immediately conjures images of two men waiting beneath a lonely tree, hoping against hope that someone called Godot might eventually arrive. Others picture stark stages, long silences and plays that carry a reputation—often unfairly—for being difficult, enigmatic or intimidating. This September, however, Liverpool invites audiences to look at Beckett rather differently. Returning for its third edition, Beckett: Lieben is far more than a celebration of one of the…
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Arts and Culture
Adrian Dunbar on Beckett, Liverpool and the Power of Feeling
Samuel Beckett has been part of Adrian Dunbar’s creative life for more than four decades. His first encounter came in 1981, when, as a student at the Guildhall School, he saw Waiting for Godot and became fascinated by a writer who was already something of a legend: an Enniskillen schoolboy who had gone on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and create work that seemed to resist easy understanding. That fascination has endured, and…
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Arts and Culture
52 for 26 Poetry Project: Don Brookes
Don Brookes : A Lifetime of Observing Nature, Language, and the Quiet Comedy Between Them In Talk To The Animals, Don Brookes invites us into a gently comic, quietly reflective world where the familiar sayings we attach to creatures great and small are turned over, examined, and playfully unsettled. The poem has travelled a long road to reach its final form—one that began back in the 1990s, when Brookes was working as a Laboratory Technician. A…
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Arts and Culture
52 for 26 Poetry Project: Moon
The Power of Performance – why Moon’s poetry truly comes alive when spoken aloud. Project 52 For 26 has always been about voices – singular, striking, often surprising – and this week’s featured poet, Moon, brings all three in abundance. Their chosen piece arrives as an excerpt from a much larger meditation on gender, though it has long since taken on a life of its own. What began as a section within a broader work…
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Arts and Culture
Afloat Theatre: New Songs, New Voices and a New Chapter
Afloat Theatre has been keeping things relatively quiet of late – but, as anyone involved in the organisation will tell you, quiet does not necessarily mean still. Behind the scenes, Afloat has been busy preparing for what feels like a new chapter, one that expands its already distinctive approach to community, creativity and social change into the world of songwriting and music. Now a Community Interest Company, Afloat has unveiled a programme of forthcoming events…
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Theatre in Liverpool
Unity Theatre Announces a Bold Autumn/Winter Season for 2026
Following a summer spent celebrating 100 years of radical theatre in Liverpool, Unity Theatre is looking ahead with an Autumn/Winter 2026 season that feels every bit as ambitious. The Hope Place venue has long occupied a distinctive place in Liverpool’s cultural landscape, combining its reputation as one of the city’s most welcoming theatre spaces with a willingness to take risks, platform underrepresented voices and give emerging artists the same stage as nationally acclaimed touring companies.…
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Theatre in Liverpool
The Archers Come to Liverpool: 75 Years of Ambridge Takes to the Stage
For three generations of listeners, the familiar strains of Barwick Green have been an invitation into another world. A world of village fêtes, family feuds, affairs, farming crises, pub gossip and the endlessly complicated lives of the people of Ambridge. Now, as The Archers celebrates its remarkable 75th anniversary, that world is leaving the radio studio and heading for the stage. On Monday 28 September, The Archers: Live at 75 comes to Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, promising a one-off theatrical…
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Arts and Culture
52 for 26 Poetry Project: Chloe Jones
Chloe Jones : Finding Freedom in the Limits of Creativity Creativity often reveals its sharpest edge when it’s hemmed in—when ideas are shaped not by limitless freedom but by the curious discipline of constraint. For Moreton-born writer Chloe Jones, that edge appeared in the form of a playful but demanding exercise at the Spider Project: a list of unrelated words, each contributed by someone in her writing group – Owl. Electricity. Death. Light. Recovery. Cake. Stand. Time. Unicorn.…
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Arts and Culture
Poetry Has Plenty To Say: Liverpool Poetry Space Looks Ahead To An Autumn Of Words, Voices And Collaboration
Poetry can sometimes be made to sound like a rather serious business. Books arrive with solemn covers, readings take place in hushed rooms and the word poetry itself can still carry the slightly intimidating suggestion that somebody, somewhere, is about to make you feel inadequately educated. But as you know, Liverpool has never been particularly good at that sort of thing. And this autumn, Liverpool Poetry Space is offering another reminder that poetry can be…
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Arts and Culture
52 for 26 Poetry Project: Suswati Basu
Suswati Basu – A Poetic Testament to Resilience and Adaptation Suswati Basu’s contribution to the 52 for 26 poetry project – Hide and Seek – is a piece that sits quietly at first glance, yet carries a profound emotional resonance. It is a poem shaped not by abstraction but by lived reality — an intimate reflection on what it means to navigate the world when the tools you rely on begin to slip through your fingers. Basu…
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Arts and Culture
Creative Spotlight: In Conversation with Pete Carr
Pete Carr: The Art of Looking Closer… Photography began for Pete Carr as a creative outlet, but the reasons they were drawn towards it reveal something fundamental about the way they sees the world. The technology appealed to their autistic fascination with how things work, while the immediacy of pressing a shutter and seeing something you have made appear on the back of the camera provided a form of creative gratification that drawing had never…
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Arts and Culture
Grindr: The Opera! Writer Erik Ransom on Love, Lust and the Search for Connection
When Erik Ransom first began writing Grindr: The Opera!, Grindr wasn’t even the subject. The piece began life as Manhunt: The Opera, inspired by Ransom’s fascination with the wildly contrasting intentions he encountered on early online dating and hook-up sites. Some users were looking for sex, others romance, some something considerably more complicated. Beneath all those different desires, however, Ransom recognised a common thread: connection. With a background in classical music and a taste for…
