Funded by DaDa Disability and Deaf Arts and supported by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, Cllr Steve Rotheram, there are two categories: under- and over-18s.

I’ve been reading through the entries and thought I’d flag them up, as they’re a good mix of the reverential, celebratory and amusing.

This couplet in particular amused me:

But a word of warning, avoid Granby Street My friend
Because that even makes me nervous.

All of them seem uniquely scouse to me, which I mean as a compliment, though I was sad to note that self-proclaimed People’s Poet, Tony Chestnut Brown did not submit a poem.

Thanks to some idiotic regulations in force at the Albert Dock we were faced with the choice of watching betweeen a gap in the Pumphouse and Dock buildings or walking around the entire Dock, by which time they would have certainly been finished. Lunacy.

Anyway, later on I went to the Tate to see the diverting but fairly hollow Fifth Floor and intriguing William Blake exhibition; and the Bluecoat where the decidedly patchy Next Up Liverpool Art Now exhbition and at least two gigs were on.

Me and the missus got told off for taking for trying to take a picture of me with my arm round a owl-faced child. The absurdity of that admission is not lost on me, but touches on a particularly irritating fact about certain galleries that maintain a strict policy on installation art that’s totally at odds with the aims of making art more accessible and less daunting for people. So I carried on taking photos regardless, just to be contrary.

The night ended off in the Baltic with several pints of Smoked Porter with a group of friends, and much talk of ‘cranking’, which is best left unexplained.

It was boozy, musical, cultural and fun and it seemed fitting.

Until then here’s a reminder of the very last event of Liverpool’s Captial of Culture year – the hand-over to Vilnius/Linz comprising a wide array of cultural events and spectacles this coming Saturday (10 January 2009).

The not-actually-finished Pierhead hosts the kick-off, projecting a video onto the not-quite-finished Museum of Liverpool and a lantern parade to launch the extended Leeds-Liverpool canal link.

Following on from that is the Light Night, with the city’s cultural destination throwing their doors open til late. Make the most of it – that’s your lot!

In the meantime check out the blog’s Capital of Culture round-up of the year.

Press release from Liverpool City Council follows:

Liverpool is to say a special thank-you for everyone’s support throughout its year as the UK’s European Capital of Culture 2008.

Cultural venues across the city centre are throwing open their doors late into the evening as part of a special Transition Light Night, in what will be one of the biggest free events in the Capital of Culture programme.

The cultural extravaganza on Saturday, 10th January 2009 – a year to the day the city officially launched its culture year – marks Liverpool’s transition from ’08 to its Year of the Environment.

The evening will kick-off with a spectacular ‘People’s Celebration’ along the Mersey waterfront and new-look Pier Head.

This free waterfront party will be a multi-media sound and light spectacle – the first event on the iconic World Heritage site since the extensive £100 million pound regeneration of the Pier Head public space.

Starting from 6.15pm, the celebration will include a filmic review of ’08 that uses the recently-clad, £70m Museum of Liverpool’s gigantic waterfront window as a 27 ft by 80ft cinema screen.  There will also be screens at the New Mersey Ferry terminal and at the ECHO Arena Liverpool on Kings Dock.

The event will involve artistic interludes such as a lantern installation of the new Leeds-Liverpool canal link, an arts and crafts market along the piazza at Mann Island and drum and dance performances.

There will also be ceremonial handovers to the cities of Linz and Vilnius, the European Capital’s of Culture ’09, and to representatives from London 2012 to mark the launch of Britain’s Cultural Olympiad, as well as a mass sing along of the anthemic ‘All Together Now’. The show concludes with a pyrotechnic finale fired from ships on the river.

The 7pm finale signals the start of Liverpool’s Transition Light Night with many of the city’s world renowned cultural facilities offering visitors and residents a unique and largely free late night experience.

The Merseyside Maritime Museum, Tate Liverpool, the Bluecoat, Open Eye, FACT, Liverpool Biennial, the Contemporary Urban Centre and The Flying Picket will all be open, and the city centre’s high quality range of restaurants, bars and clubs will be geared up and ready to receive the huge numbers expected in the city on this significant night.

Especially commissioned street theatre, music and dance performances will bring an extra buzz of excitement to the city’s public spaces, pedestrian and shopping zones.

• Venues participating in Liverpool ‘s  Transition Light Night (all events free unless otherwise stated): 

Tate Liverpool – The Fifth Floor: Ideas taking space – open all day until 10pm.

Merseyside Maritime Museum and International Slavery Museum – open through the day and closes at 10pm.

The Beatles Story – Special 2 for 1 offer. Last admission 8.30pm, open until 10pm.

Open Eye Gallery – David Goldblatt; Intersections Intersected – all day to 10pm.

The Bluecoat – Galleries open to 10pm, the building till 10.30pm.

FACT open until 11pm – DING>>D0NG: open until 9pm

Wolstenholme Projects – After the Curtain Falls exhibition – 7pm – 10.30pm

3345 Parr Street – Terry Cryer Exhibition – Open until 2am

The new Picket – FUSED – tomorrow’s people! 7pm – 10.30pm. 14+ gig

Leaf – Leaf Unplugged 7.30pm till late.

Contemporary Urban Centre – Family fun day – 11am-6pm. Music night from 7-11pm.

I’ve been pondering the likely benefits and ramifications of Liverpool’s experience of being Capital of Culture for 2008 and the passing of that honour in 2009.

At some point in the future I’ll probably contemplate a much more sober and boring article on the subject, but for now I’m looking back at some of the best bits of Liverpool’s CoC year.

The potential list is probably endless and I suspect most people failed to attend as many events, plays, exhibitions and general happenings as they would have liked. Certainly I did but when you juggle a full-time job, freelance work, blogs, a darts league and a full cricket season there’s not a huge amount of time left. During one rainy day I managed to visit a couple of dozen Superlambananas and enjoyed them, rather too much as it goes.

But I didn’t get to experience as much as I would have liked, so as a result I asked a few friends and colleagues to give me theirs. If your own personal favourite isn’t on there please do let me know what your choice is below.

As for my favourite, it’s fairly obvious and hardly original, but it’s La Machine and that weekend of mayhem around the city, simply for the way it affected people of all ages and backgrounds was my favourite.

In all honesty I’d've liked to have chosen something bafflingly obscure or wilfully highbrow like the Corbusier exhibition just to show off, but in the end the Big Mechanical Spider won hands down.

King Lear

I loved King Lear at the Everyman theatre. Not so much for the way they handled the play – the Thatcher’s Britain setting, riot gear, and Goneril toting a rifle while pushing a pram were short of the mark to my mind.

But it was great to be reminded how many fantastic insults there are in the play, and to hear them delivered with such relish by Pete Postlethwaite and the supporting cast.

I will be insulting my enemies in 2009 with ‘You base football player’, ‘beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave’ and ‘You whoreson cullionly barber-monger’ – to name but a few.

Nick Holloway, Mercy

Mello Mello

The best thing I’ve seen in Liverpool is the emergence of the Mello Mello venue on Slater Street. It seems to be run by some kind of arts collective. Being a member of the blank generation I initially thought there might be just a bit of hippy bollocks going on there, especially after the first time I went there, there were tree crusties knitting on the step!

But they have really got their act together with a lot of different arts stuff on not just music. It’s a really friendly vibe and not since I went to Eric’s have I been somewhere, where you genuinely don’t know what’s going to happen next. At the last gig I went there, about 1am when everything was winding down, a bloke comes walking through playing the bagpipes.

Then a few percussionists got up and the next thing you know there’s a full scale ‘bag pipe rave’ going on. I turned to Chris the bass player from Blue Demon who was sat next to me and we both agreed it was the maddest thing we’d ever seen. I guess that makes me a hippy now. Peace & Love.

Pete Bentham, The Dinner Ladies

Long Night of the Biennial

My favourite event of the past year was the Long Night of the Biennial. The Biennial is a world renowned event, but quite asides from the quality of the works and the galleries involved, the Long Night fostered a real sense of excitement amongst Liverpool galleries and audiences alike.

Walking around the city, the number of pink glowsticks hanging around peoples’ necks that had been handed out for the event showed just how many people had turned out for it and was testament to how well Liverpool arts organisations work together and how passionate the city really is about its culture.

Stu Robarts, FACT

Superlambanas

In the run up to 2008 I wondered whether the city would ever be able to match the excitement of the day, back in 2003, when Liverpool was awarded the title. People carried radios with them on the train into work to hear the result and hundreds of people spontaneously turned up at Lime Street Station to greet Tessa Jowell and culture judge Sir Jeremy Isaacs and personally thank them for choosing Liverpool.

The one event that, I feel, has harnessed people’s excitement in the same way was Go! Superlambananas. It may not have the longevity or international appeal of the Klimt exhibition or La Machine, but it got people interacting with their city and its culture.

They felt that the superlambs belonged to them in a way that they might not feel about public works of art, even though, in a way, they own those too. It showed how the people of Liverpool are capable of great enthusiasm and, excuse the corporate jargon, of “taking ownership” and we embrace this in the city’s future.

Laura Davis, Columnist, Liverpool Daily Post

Atmosphere

The best thing in Liverpool this year and, for me, the most memorable, wasn’t an event – it was an atmosphere. There was a palpable buzz about the city; it felt like the Place to Be – a destination.

On any given weekend there was something to do (usually for free) whether it was following the Go Superlambananas! map, watching the Brouhaha or La Princess, or exploring the Ark Royal.

To be in Liverpool in 2008 was to experience an excitement and an optimism in the air which, ultimately, came from people enjoying and being a part of Culture Year. That’s what makes it unforgettable for me.

Alison Gow, Editor

Joseph Wright and Jamie Carragher

At the start of 2008 an exhibition was running at the Walker with a stupefyingly un-snappy title: ‘Joseph Wright of Derby in Liverpool’.  Who says gallery directors aren’t down with the txt msg generation? The names of the works on show were equally unpromising. ‘An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump’ vied for attention on the catalogue list with ‘A Philosopher Giving a Lecture on the Orrery.’ 

But the linguistic trials seemed worth it once you found yourself standing in front of Wright’s canvasses, gaping at paintings that were dark-yet-luminous, simple-yet-layered, both of the establishment and at the same time screaming with seditious social commentary. This was extraordinary art. 

I’d heard of Wright but knew almost nothing about him before sloping into the Walker, with an hour to kill between shopping and the pub, on a February day.  He was one of Britain’s leading paintings of the mid-to-late 18th century and worked in Liverpool for three years from 1768 to 1771, arriving in the city disillusioned and out-of-pocket after failing to sell ‘An Experiment on a Bird’.

As a reaction, he had plainly decided to ‘go commercial’. Liverpool was at the peak of its slave-trade prosperity and Wright offered himself as a portrait painter to the city’s slavers, merchants and politicians, churning out a picture every two weeks. 

Many of those whose names are preserved in Liverpool’s streets and shopping areas, such as Sarah Clayton, were depicted, and it was amazing to look at their faces: Wright didn’t do flattery when he painted a subject, there was a directness and honesty not usual with old portraits.

But what he painted away from the day job were the works which truly stunned. Here was a gothic, mad-scientist scene of an alchemist discovering phosphorus. Another featured a blacksmith working an iron whose white heat almost seemed to radiate from the canvas.

There was an odd picture of two boys blowing up a pigs bladder and a remarkable one: two middle-class, apple cheeked girls playing by a fountain with a beautiful black child, the daughter of a slave. This was 1770. It was a startling reminder of how long Liverpool has been a multi-cultural place – and that the city did not just facilitate the slave trade, slavery existed in the city itself.   

Wright seemed nothing short of a English regional Rembrandt. Jamie Carragher is a provincial Pele. No scouser could be scouse-er and, oddly, outsiders who otherwise malign Liverpool love Carragher for it.

The footballer’s autobiography, ‘Carra’, has not only been topping the local book charts but the national ones, selling heavily from Penzance to London to Newcastle. Fans of rival clubs may hate Liverpool but see a genuineness in Carragher they wish from their own local heroes.

Going to Jamie’s book launch at his Sports Cafe in Stanley street was my other 2008 highlight. Almost no press was invited (there were more of Carragher’s large and colourful extended family present than media types); instead of champagne glasses people clinked bottles of Peroni and alcopops; the one attempt at formal entertainment, a performance of Ring of Fire by the bloke from Starsailor, was drowned out by the babble of Bootle voices swapping footie chat.

The ‘celebs’ present, Steven Gerrard and Albert Riera, loitered in the corner not wishing any attention upon themselves. Carra blushed every time someone asked him to sign his book, or told him it was a brilliant read and afterwards confessed he “only did the launch because the publishers asked” and didn’t “want any fuss or for people to think I’m trying to flog copies”. Hence the lack of media. Carra: down to earth to the last.

Joseph Wright and Jamie Carragher were the best things about Liverpool this year and coincided rather than were part of the Capital of Culture event. Cultural Liverpool, as represented by the world-class Walker, will prosper long after 2008 and so will Liverpool culture because of world-class locals like Carragher.  

Jonathan Northcroft, Journalist

Bar Burrito

I guess on a personal level, the best thing to happen in Liverpool this year was the completion of Liverpool One. Not for all the jobs it created, rejuvenating the city centre, sticking a jaguar on a roof in chevasse park yak yak yak…but because Bar Burrito opened.

The little wraps of fiery heaven and hell that I grew up on in Mexico City can now be purchased on my doorstep! Anyone who has not tried one of these little bastards has to immediately, and with the extra hot salsa too…the hint of lime in that little number is fantastic. Dead hot too.

Oh and if it’s of an afternoon betweeen 3-7pm, you can then saunter round to Las Iguanas and enjoy Caipirinhas, the greatest drink known to man, 2 for 1! Why not wear a white suit and pretend you’re in a cramped version of Scarface? (though maybe wear a napkin whilst eating the burrito, as you’re bound to spill some).

Simon Ryder, Tour Manager

Looking back over the weekend and the visit of La Princesse to the streets of Liverpool, it’s hard not to be impressed at how well everything went.

For a city that’s taken a fair bit of flack of its Capital of Culture celebrations and an under-fire council derided as the worst in the country, La Machine’s giant mechanical spider brought some welcome relief, and as a major source of traffic chaos was a lot more welcome than the Big Dig.

The more cynical among friends of mine were blown away by the spectacle when they got round to seeing La Princess in the, er, flesh and several friends confessed to being rather moved by their sight of the big beast.

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t consider the mooted price tag of £1.6m to be anything to get remotely worked up about – the council and culture company have wasted far larger sums on far less successful projects and the PR generated must far outweigh that measly sum.

For a long weekend everyone stopped thinking about the evil cabal, Warren Bradley, Everton and groundshares, the fourth grace, that report on the council, Pete Price, Harry Enfield, thieving scousers and everything else that tarnishes the city.

Liverpool was making new around the world, and not for some tawdry Beatles Day nonsense.

There was a glorious mechanical giant fucking spider walking around the city amid fire, hoses, fights with diggers and a huge firework display – backed by a superb group of musicians.

It cut through class, religion, race, background, attitudes, interests. It moved children to squeals of delight and adults to tears. It was superbly accessible public art.

I watched on Sunday night quietly rapt as La Princesse disappeared into the tunnel, alongside thousands of others. I wished it could have gone on all week.

Well done to La Machine, Artichoke, the council and the Culture Company. For once, everyone got it right.

My last set of La Princesse photos are on Flickr. Do leave a comment or I won’t feel validated.

Having returned from being soaked at the Albert Dock I’ve uploaded some photos of La Princess – La Machine’s giant spider that has been ‘terrorising’ Liverpool.

As I mentioned yesterday La Princess looks much more imposing in the, er, flesh and really should be seen over the weekend if you’re in Liverpool.

There’s been some talk about the price tag for the giant spider – and at £2m it wasn’t cheap, but set against almost £750,000 to gag two ex-council bigwigs it doesn’t look too shabby, especially when the thousands of Liverpudlians that braved the storms are taken into account.

With two more days to go there’s plenty of rumours about the Sunday night finale, which involve the Mersey Tunnel.

After a day of clinging to the side of a tower block in Liverpool, the La Machine spider made its way through the streets of Liverpool in preparation for its unveiling tomorrow.

As I’m now a full-fledged multi-media node I’ve uploaded a video I took of it onto Youtube, which is below. Later I may post a tweet, do some inbound linkage on Facebook and mess about on Flickr for a bit, just ‘cos I can.

Undoubtedly a more impressive sight than photos suggest, the La Machine spider looks like pure evil and some have wondered exactly what the mechanical arachnid has to do with the Capital of Culture, especially at a price tag of £2m.

Tish and fipsy, I reckon, so what if it’s just a bloody big spider. La Machine is clearly built to stalk the city over the next few days and I can’t wait.

Even though the beast was apparently dormant today it attracted crowds of hundreds, ready with camera phones and texting their mates.

And if I can go a bit low culture for a minute there really needs to be a bit of spectacle about Liverpool 08 after a wet 60 minutes watching the bloody Wombats and Ringo Bloody Starr last winter.

After all, what city isn’t enlivened by the sight of an enormous frightening eight-legged behemoth parading around its streets?

I only hope it breathes fire and makes a particular detour to locate Pete Price and messily devour him.

Update: Although the bad weather made me turn back in my dinner hour this morning there are plenty more opportunities to see La Princess – as the spider is apparently called – over the weekend.

Details seem bafflingly hard to find on the net, so I’ve posted them here:

Friday 5th September

• 11.30am – 1pm Outside the ACC, Albert Dock

• 6.30pm – 9pm From the ACC to the Cunard Building, via Salthouse Dock

Saturday 6th Sept

• 11.30am-12.30pm Cunard Building

• 3pm – 9pm From Cunard Building to Concourse House, via Water Street, Castle St, Lord St, Parker St, Ranelagh Place

Sunday 7th September

• 3pm – 4pm Concourse House • 7.30pm – 10pm Concourse House to Queensway Tunnel entrance

Visiting Madryn Street this week it’s hard not to reflect on what a shame this, not especially because Ringo was born there, but because the streets are the kind of terraced accommodation seen throughout Liverpool, and say so much about the city.

The street – part of the Dingle ‘Welsh streets’ – is now largely abandoned, but it’s easy to imagine a time when there were few cars, plenty of kids playing football and a thriving working-class community.

It aseems more unlikely than ever that Starr’s place of birth will be saved from the bulldozers, after his rather ill-conceived remarks about what he missed about the city

It’s easy to write these notions off as a kind of false nostalgia, but I remember streets like these in Hartlepool in the early 80′s, now gone to rack and ruin with ephemeral tenants and boarded-up houses the order of the day.

They were thriving places where everyone knew everyone, people would swap gossip on a daily basis and kids ran riot. They seemed like happy places to me.

Looking at those 19th Century Madryn Street houses now it’s sad to imagine the place bulldozed to make way for identikit estate houses with their individual rubbish bins and car ports.

Madryn Street shouldn’t be saved because Ringo lived there, they should be saved because those streets as as much a part of Liverpool as The Beatles.

In the absence of a Liverpool Google Maps mash-up I’ve uploaded some photos of a Superlambanana hunt to a Flickr account, as I’ve recently become a multimedia node.

A tour around the SLBs around the Albert Dock area indicates that they really are a hit among locals and tourists alike. All of which made me wonder whether there’s really anything cultural about them, given that the concept behind them is rather feeble in itself.

My second thought was whether any of that really matters, when the SBLs are clearly such engaging installations.

My third thought was to get one one and pose as a surfer, which I suppose renders all the above questions rather redundant.

Superlambanana started life as some sort of blather from Taro Chiezo about the biotech corridor that runs between Manchester and Liverpool – a corridor I’d suggests 99.9 per cent of Scousers are blissfully unaware of to be honest.

What’s interesting is that everyone in Liverpool subsequently made up their own backstory to the ‘Lambanana, as Lewis Biggs told me a few years ago.

The multiplication of the creatures across Liverpool, in a city that can be pretty scathing of anything that reeks of pretence or affectation, is a good example of Liverpool grabbing the Capital of Culture thing by the horns, as it were, and stamping its own mark on it.

With that in mind, and on top of news that one has already gone missing, I thoroughly expect to see a site popping up on the net soon with topless scousers posing next them.

There are 119 of them across the region, with customised efforts from sponsors and community groups, including one on Rafa Benitez called Baa-nitez. I think that’s quite funny. As do all of the headline writers in Merseyside who’ve had a field day with the story.

If I were a more capable multi-media node I expect I would do a little Google Maps mash-up with mouse-over photos of the individual Superlambananas hosted on my Photobucket account. But since I’m not, here’s a link to a Facebook group that does something similar and a photo.