As Liverpool Music Month gets under way, Liverpool’s Head of Unesco City of Music, Kev McManus, looks back five years this weekend to when the city led the way in restarting the events industry during the Covid pandemic.
With the launch of Liverpool Music Month, we are once again making a massive statement about the importance of music to Liverpool. This isn’t a one off for us though. Just a quick look back shows that we have an incredible track record of creating huge moments through music. Think about when we hosted Eurovision on behalf of Ukraine we delivered an event which didn’t just transform the city for 10 days but showed the rest of the world we are a city that knows how to throw a party.
And probably even more significant than that, in 2021 we had the eyes of the world on us as we hosted the first large scale music events during the pandemic. It was a genuinely unique moment in time which still seems vaguely unreal looking back but it definitely happened. On the Friday and Saturday of that Bank Holiday weekend several thousand people were having their first proper night out since the lockdowns began in March 2020. Two memorable nights at Circus kicked it all off with an amazing line up for The First Dance, put together by local legend Yousef. Over the two nights some of the biggest names in the DJ world graced the stage and had an absolute ball being able to play to real people for the first time in over a year. Anyone who is there will never forget the sheer joy of those nights – a very real reminder of the power of music and how it’s better when you are sharing it with others.
On the Sunday it was over to Sefton Park for what was the first live music gig anywhere in over 12 months with a headline set by The Blossoms. The sun shone and for a few hours all seemed good again with the world.
These three nights were different to any other gig in loads of ways. Because of the pandemic, the shows were only open to people with a local postcode and you could only get entry if you had evidence of a negative covid test.
Why did this happen in Liverpool? The main reason is that we put our hand up when the Government and music promoters were looking for an opportunity to see if it was possible to put on gigs which were safe for artists and audiences. The live music industry was amongst the first to be hit when lockdowns began and it wasn’t an industry able to function again until people could mix freely. Live music venues and clubs were shut and festivals were cancelled. In short the future for live music looked bleak.
The first live gig in more than a year at Sefton Park
Then some clever people came up with the idea of the Events Research Programme to work out if it was possible to put on large scale music events safely, if there were some controls in place.
Never a city to shirk a challenge, Liverpool stepped forward where other cities feared to tread. It was a massive undertaking involving Government, the University of Liverpool, the Public Health team in the council, Culture Liverpool, the COVID testing facilities, the artists themselves, the promoters of Circus and the Sefton Parks gig and many, many more.
It was never easy to make this happen at such a difficult time. I remember Yousef telling me that even on the day of the first show he still wasnt sure they would get the final go ahead until just a couple of hours before the doors opened.
Of course there was a large element of risk involved in agreeing to be part of this research. Local authorities are normally incredibly risk adverse so I think this is a case where the council should definitely be applauded because they recognised the importance. And of course we are a City of Music, so where better?
The media around the world that weekend had Liverpool front and centre and the association was Liverpool as a place where music matters. Just as it is this weekend at the start of Liverpool Music Month.
Since then, the city has continued to pioneer. The Bramley Moore site where the First Dance took place is now The Hill Dickinson Stadium, home of Everton FC.
The city has established The Pandemic Institute (TPI), and is pioneering work to help prevent and tackle future pandemics.
And we became the UN’s first Accelerator City for climate action, running projects examining how to decarbonise large scale music events.
Five years on since The First Dance, Liverpool continues to lead the way in music and events.
