Culture was always a large part of my life. But when we all had to rush home in March 2020, I felt like I lost it on the way – as if I’d left it on the bus in a bag. It’s making me question my future: what will be left when all this ends? How many venues, how many bands, how many theatres, how many art galleries?
You are never far away from culture in Liverpool. The forthcoming host of the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest on Ukraine’s behalf has long pioneered the idea of “arts as life support” – via initiatives such as The Life Rooms, which uses a library and theatre (among other sites) to engage people in cultural activities as part of its social health model.
While COVID required the temporary suspension of many in-person arts offerings, it also sparked a remarkable shift in how the city’s arts organisations and charities operated. As government health and welfare services shut down or struggled to adapt to the crisis, cultural organisations stepped in to provide vital support – including, in some cases, fundamentals of food and heating – to their networks of participants and audiences whose usual care was falling short. As one Liverpool arts organiser recalls:
