How can theatre promote or provoke a different way of seeing/using public space?

Polly Moseley, 2 October 2012

The reason I asked this question today is because there are so many wonderfully haunting disused spaces in Liverpool, both close to the centre, along the docks and out in the surrounding areas. On a good day these spaces feel like they have so many hidden stories and potential. On a bad day it feels like there is a sense of decline and a lack of care which is endemic in this city and embodied in the number of dead ends in some of the estates.

Since I have known the city and since I have lived here, there have been some inspiring examples of spaces which have become occupied by groups of artists and creative people: Wolthemstow Square, Meli Melo, Edge Hill Station, Camp and Furnace, Ceri Hand Gallery, the garden outside the Rotunda in Kirkdale and others…

Some have closed some have gradually flourished.

What is missing to me is that there are lots of spaces which are ripe for development and built into regeneration strategies which lie dormant and there has been a culture of security firms closing down spaces which suck life out of areas.

In the French budget last week, the French government levied a new tax on owners of properties or land which is not being used. Also in an interview about the Ile de Nantes, which is an area similar to the scale of the North Docks with much less iconic architecture, the Nantes Councillor for Culture said that within a 30-year development plan, it is really important to leave space for crazy ideas and invention to be realised in large empty spaces. This should inform future development. Some things which people may want to become permanent features could never be conceived if development companies moved in straight away.

The current stand-off by some development companies in the city because of the ‘economic crisis’ gives opportunity for different ways of thinking about development and space. This city has loads of it and this is capital which could be a major factor improving the quality of the life of people who live here and attracting people to come and live here. But the IF associated with this is an ‘if’ which needs a mixture of legislation and courage and scale of ambition to make a difference. I can see some seeds being sown.

I believe that theatre has a part to play in empowering people to think differently about the opportunities presented by this space, be it in terms of food production, architecture, renewable energies or in how public space engenders a sense of community in the 21st century.

Evidently, this is a topic which has bored people or has been perhaps ‘done to death’ in this city or whatever other reasons people have not chosen to come and talk about it with me today. Perhaps this is a time where theatre in buildings needs supporting to hold up or is gaining more agency..

I’m interested in networking some of these spaces and creating a residency programme which introduces worldclass artists into these spaces to reclaim and re-use spaces which have fallen into disuse or from which people have been forced out, to revive and appease some of the ghosts which inhabit them for now..


development, Development, decline, regeneration, potential, North Docks, seeds, care, ghosts, disused, hidden, endemic, public space