The apparent cancellation of the Mathew Street Festival is not good news. The event has in past years attracted worldwide interest in Liverpool and generally fairly global attendance as well as local attendance at this event. It is to be hoped that moves to salvage the festival event based around the Cavern Quarter will succeed.
Whilst it is generally being perceived that the festival events – starting really in recent times with the garden festival event in the early 80’s are not a solution to economic issues the ability to profile the City in respect of something for which the City has always been famous – music – is important. Confidence is also required in the delivery of proposed events to take place both during the Liverpool 800 Celebratory Year and the Capital of Culture Year itself.
Talking of exhibitions and festivals such events have clearly at times be key in Liverpool’s history such as the 1886 Exhibition staged on the
“Edge Lane Hall Estate� followed by the Liverpool Exhibition of 1913 described as “an ambitious commercial undertaking designed to attract tourists and industrial investors�.
Looking back to the garden festival the event in1984 which attracted over 3.4m visitors , even in spite of the until recent subsequent decay of the site , has within the current generation signalled the initial signs of regeneration and reconstruction of the city landscape starting with the efforts of the Merseyside Development Corporation from the mid to late 1980’s.
Returning to the present cancellation of the Mathew Street Festival whilst Health & Safety concerns must of course be paramount it is to be hoped that the proposed action plan to ensure the festival is staged succeeds as there is weight in the statement that in the City’s 800th birthday year this has been seen as a curtain raiser for the culture year in 2008.