BEATLES ARE JUST PART OF MERSEYSIDE´S CULTURAL MIX

NEWS that there is a collective coming together to ramp up the Mathew Street area should be welcomed. As should the point that not enough is made of the global interest in the Beatles.

This is perhaps confirmed by a snapshot from the user generated tourist website, tripadvisor.co.uk, which shows the top two local visitor attractions to be John and Paul’s old houses. The Casbah Coffee Club, were it all started, is in third spot.

The Cavern, however, comes in at number eight, just behind the Walker Art Gallery, with the Anglican Cathedral, Anfield and St George’s Hall sandwiched in between at numbers four, five and six. For those interested, the Albert Dock is number nine and the Philharmonic, hall not pub, make up the top ten.

It reflects many such ‘top ten’ sites, but the significant thing is not that we should be flogging more Beatles themed T-shirts and key rings, but recognising that despite their undoubted impact and place in world music, they are just part of the mix that makes up the region’s tourism offer.

Even more significant is that it took the National Trust to save the Lennon and McCartney heritage. But what about George? And, of course, Ringo? And there is the nub of the issue: that folk shouldn’t start singling out one specific aspect of the region to be made its ‘attack brand’.

Marketeers love branding but slogans are what often kill good ideas. Think Big Society. Think that the Fab Four were fab because they were four and did, actually, come from Liverpool with its rich history of imported music through the port. Just as the city’s cultural heritage existed before and exists after them. As with its football.

Liverpool, as any city, is one huge collective. The ambitions and achievements, enterprise and endeavour, alongside the passion and politics of its people is what defines and shapes its character and forges its place in the world.

If people insist on trying to find one so-called attack brand then they need look no further than the museums, galleries and arts venues across the region. Not because of what they contain but how they got there and how they are named.

Walker, Tate, Brindley, Sudley, Williamson, Bluecoat, Lever, Pilkington. Behind every one there is a tale of enterprise and entrepreneurship, including the Beatles or The Beatles Story itself. How the collections came into being. How the wealth was made to acquire and then bequeath them.

If there has to be an ‘attack brand’, then it has to be culture, in general. And that is not about singing and dancing, but about entrepreneurship and social intervention.

Remember 2008? Remember a ‘world in one city’? Remember what really makes up the city-region.

WHICH is as good a line as any to link between two other positive announcements over the past seven days.

One was that The International Business Festival, business’ own Capital of Culture, is coming to Liverpool and Wirral in 2014.

The other was the launch of ExHurbe, a new locally based think tank that will have the elephant that has haunted many a room discussing the Liverpool city region in its sights.

The long heralded brain child of local political legend, and one time Santa Claus lookalike, Peter Kilfoyle, should also be welcomed as both illustrating and forming the cultural mix that makes the city-region distinct.

And on that culturally positive note I am taking a break. Back in September.

That Hippie Penny Lane