“It's like tidying up after a party, it's never fun,” says Claire McColgan, Liverpool City Council’s Director of Culture, a few days after the Eurovision Song Contest had rolled out of town.
But rather than waking up with a headache and regretful flashbacks, the city is still smiling - even if those who were central to making everything happen are looking forward to a good night’s sleep. In the six months after Liverpool was announced as hosts a huge logistics operation got underway, an expansive culture learning programme was devised and the staging was dreamed up and set into place at the M&S Bank Arena.
When the party officially kicked off on May 5 it continued at apace for what many viewed as the most spectacular and successful Eurovision Song Contest ever held. Ms McColgan says that events of this calibre usually take two years to pull off, highlighting the scale in effort required, but attention is already on what comes next - the legacy.
