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Theatre in Liverpool
Preview: Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes at Liverpool Empire
Matthew Bourne’s Dark Fairytale of Obsession, Sacrifice and the Dangerous Allure of Applause. Few contemporary choreographers have reshaped the landscape of British dance theatre quite like Matthew Bourne. Over the past three decades, he has taken familiar stories and turned them inside out, revealing their darker undercurrents while making them thrillingly accessible to modern audiences. Among his most striking achievements is The Red Shoes, a production that returns to the Liverpool Empire stage as part of a major UK tour from…
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Arts and Culture
52 For 26 Poetry Project: Paul Pike
Paul Pike finds the everyday magic in the lost objects and the poetry of Merseyside streets. In the swirl of everyday London—or Merseyside, or perhaps somewhere between wherever poetry lives—Paul Pyke finds wonder. His submitted poem Dance Battle came to life not from grand inspiration, but from something as small and concrete as an abandoned bangle beside a pigeon flock. That quiet moment, waiting for trains and sausage rolls, sparked a poem about collision, imagination, and possibility. As Pyke…
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Music
Preview: Liverpool International Jazz Festival 2026
Liverpool International Jazz festival – Crossing borders with Jazz without boundaries. Liverpool’s relationship with jazz runs deep. Long before the Merseybeat explosion, the city was one of the first UK ports to welcome the sound of early jazz across the Atlantic. In 2026, that spirit of musical exchange returns in full force as the Liverpool International Jazz Festival (LIJF) takes over the Capstone Theatre and venues across the city from Friday 26 February to Sunday 1 March. Established in…
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Arts and Culture
Creative Spotlight: In Conversation with Naive John
From pixels to paint — Naive John builds images that resist meaning and reward patience. On the edge of Liverpool’s Toxteth district, amid terraced streets and the low hum of passing traffic, there’s a studio that feels less like an artist’s room and more like a laboratory. The light is subdued. Brushes are laid out with care. A monitor glows quietly in the corner. At the centre of it all stands Naive John — painter,…
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Arts and Culture
Beyond the Screen: Bruno Castro on Emotion, Discussion and Independent Documentary Film In Liverpool
Liverpool is a city alive with music, theatre, and grassroots storytelling — yet independent cinema, especially documentary, remains under-served. Beyond multiplexes and occasional screenings, there is no permanent, publicly minded space for non commercial film exhibition and discussion. Liverpool Doc Club steps into that gap, not as a conventional venue, but as a curatorial project and a community in formation. Founded by a curator with experience from Lisbon to UK festivals and cineclubs – Bruno…
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Arts and Culture
52 for 26 Poetry Project: Matthew Jacobson
Life, Light, and Humanity in a Single Train Ride Matthew Jacobson has always been a writer who sees what others miss. Whether he’s walking the length of County Road or digging into the myth and music of the city, he writes with an instinctive feel for people — their rhythms, their stories, their quiet heroism. In 55 Minutes, his acutely observational poem, that same instinct is directed toward a moving stage: a Northern train carriage, packed with the…
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Arts and Culture
Preview: Brendan Lyons – Discreet Discrete Exhibition At Bridewell Studios
Where paint deceives and asserts itself, Brendan Lyons makes the familiar feel unexpectedly alive… At first glance, Brendan Lyons’ work appears to flirt with the familiar. Tape, plastic, folds, fixings — the everyday language of the studio and the street. But linger for a moment longer and that certainty begins to slip. What looks like one thing quietly reveals itself as another. Paint becomes object, surface becomes substance, and perception is gently but persistently unsettled.…
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Arts and Culture
In Conversation – Elinor Randle
Past, politics, people — Unity carries them all into a future that’s safe and fiercely of it’s own making. There are buildings in Liverpool that don’t just hold memories, they argue back. Unity Theatre is one of them. Tucked just off Hope Street, it’s a space that has always felt slightly out of step with the city’s grander cultural institutions — and proudly so. Born out of the Merseyside Left Theatre in the 1930s, Unity’s roots…
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Arts and Culture
Sober Scribbles: Creating A Space for New Writing at Unity Theatre
How Sober Scribbles Is Reimagining Community, Care and Creativity at the Unity… On Wednesday 21 January, Unity Theatre hosts Sober Scribbles, a scratch night offering something quietly radical in a city where theatre bars and post-show drinks are often taken for granted: a deliberately alcohol-free space for writers, performers and audiences to come together around new work. At its heart, Sober Scribbles is about community. “It’s a space for anyone interested in writing in an…
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Theatre in Liverpool
Preview: Kittel Doktor Faustus of the Third Reich
Kittel – Doktor Faustus of The Third Reich : Guilt, Regret and the Theatre of Moral Collapse… Gerhard Kittel is not an easy man to spend an evening with. He isn’t meant to be. Kittel: Dr Faustus of the Third Reich, playing a tightly focused two-night run, is the kind of theatre that leans into unease rather than smoothing it over. It asks its audience to stay in the room with contradiction, to resist the temptation of moral shortcuts,…
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Arts and Culture
Creative Spotlight: In Conversation with Rowena Gander
Rewriting the Rules: How Rowena Gander Turns the Pole into Power, Memory, and Queer Visibility Gander is quietly rewriting what it means to be a queer performer in Liverpool. And she’s doing it from a pole. Not the kind you see in glossy magazines or nightclub corners, but a pole that doubles as memory, as protest, as stage partner, and as research object. Liverpool’s arts scene has always had its heavyweights, but few artists here…
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Arts and Culture
52 for 26: A Year of Poetic Noise Across Merseyside
In January 2026, Liverpool Noise will begin something that looks modest on paper and feels anything but once you scratch the surface. The 52 for 26 Poetry Project will publish one poet a week, every week, for the whole of the year. No grand launch. No competitive framework. Just poems arriving steadily across twelve months — accumulating, conversing, disagreeing, and gradually forming a picture of where Merseyside poetry is as of 2026… From the outset,…
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Liverpool News
The Reader Launches Reading Heroes Christmas Appeal 2025
In the space between reader and child, a future starts to take shape… In a city that knows the power of voices being passed down, shared and amplified, it feels only right that one of the UK’s most quietly radical literacy projects is rooted in Liverpool. The Reader’s Reading Heroes project – launched in 2016 – doesn’t shout. It doesn’t dazzle with tech or gamification. Instead, it does something far more subversive in 2025: it…
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Music
The Choir with No Name: Big Christmas Singalong Returns to the Tung Auditorium
The Choir with No Name performance carries a particular charge — the kind that comes from lived experience, shared resilience, and the simple power of voices rising together. In Liverpool, that energy has been cultivated for more than a decade, and on 14 December 2025, it will fill the Tung Auditorium once again as the choir brings its Big Christmas Singalong back for a third year. Founded in 2014 and long guided by the exceptional…
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Arts and Culture
Creative Spotlight: In Conversation with Paulina Kurzydlowska
Paulina Kurzydlowska – charting a practice where memory meets the modern There is something quietly radical in the way Paulina Kurzydlowska works. She moves easily between memory, nature and the digital, letting thread, paint and pixel coexist in ways that feel both intuitive and deliberate. She describes herself as a mixed-media fine artist working across painting, textiles and digital processes, creating what she calls “new ways of experiencing our physical world.” Her work always seems…
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Theatre in Liverpool
Valley Community Theatre Brings a Classic Panto Tale Home to the Heart of Netherley
The Valley Community Theatre is opening 2026 with a familiar seasonal highlight: its annual pantomime, a fixture that has become something of a local tradition in Netherley. This January, Valley takes on Dick Whittington, but with a twist that roots the story firmly — and affectionately — in L27. In this reimagined version, Dick and his ever-resourceful cat set out not for London, but for Netherley, in search of opportunity, adventure and the occasional bit of trouble.…
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Arts and Culture
Preview: An Evening With Seán Street
Liverpool’s literary and broadcasting worlds are set to converge later this month for a distinctive evening of poetry, conversation, and sound. On Friday 21 November, acclaimed poet, writer and broadcaster Professor Seán Street will appear at the Liverpool Friends Meeting House for a reading and discussion hosted by Liverpool Poetry Space. Tickets are free, and the evening promises not just a sharing of poems, but an exploration of how words and sound create meaning, connection,…
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Theatre in Liverpool
Jhanaica Van Mook on Bringing Liverpool Spirit to The Scouse Christmas Carol
Liverpool Royal Court’s annual Christmas spectacular is back — louder, cheekier and more full of heart than ever. This year’s festive offering, The Scouse Christmas Carol, opens on Friday 7 November and runs until 17 January 2026, promising a riotous mix of Dickensian ghosts, Scouse humour, live music and, in a new twist, a touch of murder-mystery. At the heart of the show is Jhanaica Van Mook, a rising star whose name you’ll want to…
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Arts and Culture
Creative Spotlight: In Conversation with Sorrell Kerrison
Sorrell Kerrison — Threading Colour, Chaos and Compassion In the vast and vibrant landscape of contemporary textile art, few voices hum with as much honesty, energy, and defiant colour as Sorrell Kerrison’s. A self-taught embroiderer, musician, and multidisciplinary artist now based in Liverpool, Kerrison’s practice is a deeply personal dialogue between sound, texture, and emotion — a visual symphony where needle and thread replace strings and frets. Once a touring musician and frontwoman, she has…
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Arts and Culture
Ken Horton: A Life In Colour Exhibition Coming To The Cornerstone Gallery
Rhythm, light and colour – Ken Horton steps back into the spotlight… Ken Horton’s upcoming exhibition at The Cornerstone Gallery, A Life in Colour, offers Liverpool audiences the chance to step inside the creative world of one of the city’s most quietly influential artists. Running from 6 November to 18 December 2025, this retrospective gathers together paintings spanning more than forty years – from figurative beginnings to luminous geometric abstractions that pulse with life and…
