First annual conference of the University Network of European Capitals of Culture

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First annual conference of the University Network
of European Capitals of Culture

• TOWN AND GOWN
• Lucian Blaga University
• Sibiu, Romania

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LIVERPOOL08

• What does it mean to the City's residents?
• Investigating the IDENTITY and BRANDING of
  Liverpool from the Perspective of some Liverpool
  Residents
• Jan Brown and John Phillips
• Hope Business School
• Liverpool Hope University

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• Presented by Professor Bill Chambers
• Pro Vice Chancellor External Affairs and Widening
  Participation
• Liverpool Hope University

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Town and Gown

• Liverpool Hope University's contribution to the
  Liverpool08 Capital of Culture
• The function of academic research in the local
  community to discern the future it is necessary
  to understand the past
• Research asked key questions about Liverpool's
  past
• How did people form their identity their self
  image and the image projected to others?
• How did people form the communities
• that gave them that identity?

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METHODOLOGY

• Purposive sample not a representative or
  numerical sample of residents
• In depth semi-structured interviews
• 2-3 hours in homes kitchens and lounges
• Loosely using grounded theory
• Narrative framework listening to voices
• To point of saturation

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The Residents

• N 11
• Women known to one researcher
• Born pre 1950
• 59 97 community elders
• Inner city by the river Mersey
• Faith group church attenders
• Pre 1950 Working class
• Mixed race birth and marriage

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Aims

• To investigate whether the branding terms of
  Capital of Culture and World class can give
  Liverpool people a new identity and a new sense
  of community
• by
• Investigating and understanding how people in the
  past created identity and formed community.

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Some Definitions

• Identity image of self and the image
  communicated to others
• Place branding the application of marketing and
  branding strategies and techniques to the
  economic, social and cultural development of
  places like cities and nations

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A Capital of Culture

• Avowed purposes
• Economic regeneration
• Community building
• Building social capital

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Ethics of Place branding

• Some questions
• Can a brand be imposed upon the residents of a
  place, like a commodity, and without their
  consent are people as well as the place branded?
• How can a consensus be formed about the nature of
  the brand and how can it be enforced?
• How can a brand reflect social complexity and
  differences amongst people?

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The role of Culture

• What is culture?
• Artefacts exhibitions concerts festivals?
• Occasions that draw people together in community?
• What is the function of culture?
• Defining and preserving identity?
• Creating community Only culture can do this?

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Challenging the presumptions

• Can Capital of Culture status, and cultural
  artefacts really re-brand Liverpool?
• Can a new identity be imposed from the top on the
  residents below?
• How can people give their consent to the
  re-branding, and to any particular new brand or
  identity?

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Liverpool the original brand

• Seaport gateway to the New World

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Heritage and history

• There is no town in England, London excepted,
  that can equal it Defoe 1724
• The New York of Europe Illustrated London News
  1886
• One of the richest and most prosperous trading
  centres in the world Muir 1907
• The pool of life Carl Jung 1927

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Liverpool the updated brand

• Beatles

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And football

• and little else

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Liverpool the dark underside

• Slave Trade 18C
• Industrial unrest 1960s
• Economic degeneration 1970s
• Social disturbance 1980s
• The need for a new brand a new identity

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Quo Vadis?

• What does the future hold?
• or
• How can that future be shaped or branded to
  develop Liverpools social capital to its fullest?

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The interview questions

• Opening
• What was it like growing up in Liverpool?
• Closing
• What do you think of the Capital of Culture?

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EMERGENT THEMES

• Community and Identity built around
• First family
• Neighbourhood
• The significance of the Mersey and Docks
• Adolescence
• Adult life
• Key life events and interventions

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FIRST FAMILY

• Mothers matriarchs home and community builders
• Inspiring values
• In charge

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the family

• Fathers absent sea and docks
• Siblings playmates, parenting skills
• Aunties and uncles support and social welfare
  network

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NEIGHBOURHOOD

• Neighbours street aunties and uncles
• The street pride playground

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the streets around

• Institutions Church school shops embassies
  and consulates
• Social Integration
• community forged by poverty
• no colour consciousness
• little religious distinction

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RIVER AND DOCKS

• Passage of love passage of sorrow
• Family work marriage
• Seamen cultural richness music, food, smells
• Routines and rhythms work and recreation by the
  river

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ADOLESCENCE

• Group membership
• Music clubs dancehalls
• Community centres
• Coffee bars

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ADULT LIFE

• Second family own children matriarchal values
  carried on
• Grand family carers celebrations
• Work factories
• racial prejudice enterprise

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LIFE INTERVENTIONS

• World War Two 1939-45
• evacuation unhappy
• Blitz and air raid shelters
• created community

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Post war

• Slum clearance 1950s uprooting of communities
• Toxteth riots 1981 frightening wrong kind of
  branding lasting reputation

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THEMES LIVERPOOL 08

• City
• Liverpool 8 Toxteth
• Community
• Capital of Culture

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CITY

• Great pride in Liverpool / Merseyside
• Waterfront heritage
• Regeneration new communities with strong bonds
• but
• Regeneration pricing ordinary people out of home
  ownership

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TOXTETH

• Rejection of alias
• Pride in the area

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But

• Mixed experiences open and closed doors
• Incomers keep themselves to themselves

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COMMUNITY

• Not local family based
• Some close neighbourhood communities
• But
• Social disintegration bad parenting children
  not in control too much money and too few values
• Absence of community centres

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CAPITAL OF CULTURE

• Pleased with award potential
• But
• No jobs contractors out of town/immigrant labour
• No lasting economic effects or investment
• Not community building groups excluded from
  consultation no ethnic diversity

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• not reaching
  ordinary - people life style shops -
  expensive apartments in dockland

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Key findings

• IDENTITY FORMED BY
• MATRIARCHY
• NEIGHBOURHOOD
• RIVER
• ENERGY, EXCITEMENT, CURIOSITY
• REPLICATED IN OWN FAMILIES

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CHANGING STRUCTURES

• SOCIAL ECONOMIC
• affluence
• mobility move out and away
• end of a river full of ships
• (though a greater volume of trade than ever)
• Seaport as heritage

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End of Community

• As formed in this manner
• Identity rooted in the past experience
• A disappearing memory

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Re-branding

• Re-invention not restoration
• New brand
• New identity
• Not heritage and history

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Final questions

• What is this new brand to be?
• How is it to be formed and transmitted?
• By whom?
• How are the people to assent to it and to express
  it?

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Capital of Culture dusk
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Or dawn?
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Researcher details

• Contact
• Jan Brown
• Hope Business School
• Hope Park, Liverpool L16 9JD, UK
• brownj_at_hope.ac.uk
• 0044 151 291 3582
• Invitation to work collaboratively on similar
  projects in Capital of Culture Cities