A few weekends ago Liverpool hosted the French street theatre company Royal de Luxe and their giant marionettes for the ‘Sea Odyssey’ show. The spectacle was designed as a tourist event, coinciding with the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic. Over three days a drama unfolded across the city, in which three giant puppets played out a story of loss and hope. The beautiful architecture of Liverpool was the backdrop to the event and an area about three miles square was the stage. According to official estimates, over 600,000 people turned out to take part in the giant spectacular. As a tourist event it was a huge success.
Liverpool Council and its partners and sponsors paid £1.5m to create the event. As the weekend closed the city’s PR machine went into overdrive. ‘£12m generated for the economy’ was the main headline. The press stories continued in that vein, focusing on the economic benefits and the volumes of tourists who had visited the city. The story was all about the selling of Liverpool and the consumption this generated.
The spectacle could have been reported as a huge civic success too. The weekend was a great reminder that we are social beings, that we like to do things together as a community, sometimes as a city. It was an amazing civic experience shared by a significant part of Liverpool’s population along with the visitors who came to the city. This was a lost opportunity to talk about the city as a community; as a civic economy; a place in which more than monetary activity takes place. It was an opportunity to engage the city’s residents in moment of reflection on the city as a shared venture, on the city as a co-production of community.
I spoke to dozens of people over the three days, including strangers and friends, and a good number more in the days after. We shared our awe at the size of the giants and the amazing co-operative act of the tens of people who manipulated the puppets and brought them to life. We talked of the spectacle and observed the wonderful carnival atmosphere it had created. We revelled in the magic of the appearance of a civic imagination, huge crowds sharing in the make-believe tale of a little girl reunited with her uncle after his 100 year search for her father who had stowed away on the Titanic. And I saw thousands of comments in social media expressing similar sentiments. Few talked of the money being spent.
These conversations stood starkly against the council’s focus on the monetary value. This reminded me of how readily we split the monetary economy from the core economy. So much we do now is defined by its monetary outcome when it creates other value too. Money is an essential grease that makes the world turn, but it’s not the only lubricant required. While we should encourage popular understanding of the price of public investments and the economic return it generates, we should not do so at the expense of other forms of value creation.
Last week I had the pleasure of organising an un-conference on Timebanking that featured Dr Edgar Cahn, one of the world’s great social innovators. A key observation he made was how the monetary economy has come to dominate every sphere of life. He suggested it was imperative we should find a way of reclaiming attribution for the core economy. We should, he urged, insist that credit is given where credit is due.
The monetary economy has made the production of society into a competition. In reality, society works because of the invisible and symbiotic co-operation between different types of economic activity, much of which is played out in civic spaces. We need a greater recognition in public policy that society is an integrated co-production between all of us, often happening instinctively across a number of domains. If we were to focus on understanding, appreciating and developing this approach we might co-produce a society much better than the one we have now, including a better monetary economy.
In a place like Liverpool, where there remains a real and pressing need to resolve issues in the monetary economy, it is imperative that we do not lose focus on the core economy. Nobody who came to Liverpool to visit the giants came to spend money, that was a by-product of their participation. Everyone came to see an amazing spectacle and to take part in a grand co-production of civic imagination. Events like ‘Sea Odyssey’ are a huge opportunity to attribute the civic return to community alongside the monetary return on investment. Getting this right should only be small step for our city stewards, but a giant step for humankind.
Excellent blog Garry and food for thought. It’s easy to see why the monetary economy dominates so much of what we do: It can be measured and used to attract more funding. With that funding drying up, we have a golden opportunity to push social benefits up the agenda and keep up the positive momentum from fantastic events like Sea Odyssey. We might as well do things the sensible way as we haven’t got any money to worry about!
I’m interested in how culture-led regeneration is benefiting local communities, and this event has been a fascinating case study.