Liverpool's International Garden Festival in 1984 was part of a government initiative to regenerate the city in the wake of the Toxteth riots. The chosen spot was a heavily polluted landfill site between the Dingle and Otterspool which since 1945 had served as the...
From word games to Dial-a-Poem: the Windows Project
by DAVE WARD It was the long hot summer of 1976. Dave Calder, Libby Houston, Carol Ann Duffy and I had been invited by Dave Rickus of Merseyside Play Action Council to run poetry workshops on the summer playschemes. But how to create a space for children to sit down...
Poets who dared to be popular: the Liverpool Scene – and beyond
by SYLVIA HIKINS There can’t be many (if any) cities in the United Kingdom where local poets have become household names, but in the 1970s and 1980s Liverpool was exactly that. The famous trio, Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten were the pinnacle of a large...
The Bridewell and the Boys from the Blackstuff
On Prescot Street in Liverpool there's a former police station known today as the Bridewell Studios and Gallery. It was here, in the late 1970s, that much of Alan Bleasdale's highly acclaimed TV drama, Boys from the Blackstuff, was filmed. The building had been empty...
Merseyside Unity Theatre: enter, stage left
Merseyside Unity Theatre, originally known as Merseyside Left Theatre, emerged in the 1930s out of the Communist-influenced Workers Theatre Movement. Below is an account of its activities in the 1970s by the late Jerry Dawson, one of Unity's founders. There was...
Arthur Dooley: turning scrap metal into art
One artist who embodied the rebellious spirit of Liverpool — probably more than anyone else — was Arthur Dooley (1929–1994), a self-taught sculptor whose work brought him fame but not fortune. Dooley was a kind of lovable eccentric, pot-bellied, fond of a...
Recent posts
The Bridewell and the Boys from the Blackstuff
Much of Alan Bleasdale’s acclaimed TV drama was filmed at a former police station on Prescot Street.
Scotland Road Free School
Come to school when you want and do what you like. The Free School was a bold experiment in classroom democracy that didn’t work out.
Police, drugs and ‘agriculture’ in Toxteth
In 1971 there were two notable court cases where black men accused of possessing cannabis were acquitted after claiming police had planted it.
The battle to save Fisher Bendix
The Fisher Bendix factory in Kirkby had been built with government help to ease unemployment in the area. It wasn’t a success and in 1972 when the owners tried to shut it down workers occupied the factory in an effort to save their jobs. Three years later they began running it themselves.
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