Can we Live Without Mega-Events?

Open to: Students in host dept/school/institute/centre / Staff in host dept/school/institute/centre / Students from same Faculty as host dept/school/institute/centre / Staff from same Faculty as host dept/school/institute/centre / Students within this Faculty / Staff within this Faculty / Specific UOL Students (for details see 'Suitable For') / Specific UOL Staff (for details see 'Suitable For') / Any UOL students / Any UOL staff / Students from other HEIs / Staff from other HEIs/research institutions / Any potential undergraduate students / Any potential postgraduate students / Any potential international students / University of Liverpool Alumni / Business/industry / General Public

Type: Lecture

Contact: For more information contact Dr Helen Thomas (School of the Arts) at sotaev@liverpool.ac.uk

Website: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/can-we-live-without-mega-events-tickets-126053161399

About the event

Cities, major events and euphoria as platforms for story-telling, reinvention and identity building - with Dr Beatriz Garcia.

This event has been re-scheduled from 25 March 2020

This talk, originally branded ‘Every city tells a story’ marks the end of the University of Liverpool 2020 Public Lecture series on Beauty | Time | Utility.

The arrival of Covid-19 has transformed the world we live in and put all major cultural events and festivals on hold. The Tokyo 2020 Olympics have been postponed. The 2020 Edinburgh Festival has been cancelled. The hosting of European Capitals of Culture is in question. Fashion Weeks, Art Biennials, Theatre and Film Festivals everywhere are exploring their virtual options.

When may we gather in public again, to celebrate? Will city squares and iconic buildings recover their symbolic place as settings for major cultural interventions that can shape the collective memories of generations?

Beatriz Garcia takes us on a swift journey through over 150 years of major events and festivals that transformed the way we understand world cities and nations: from Universal Exhibitions to the Olympic Games and the European Capital of Culture initiative. Cities like Glasgow in 1990, Barcelona in 1992, Sydney in 2000, Liverpool in 2008, London in 2012 and Rio de Janeiro in 2016 used a mega-event to put new stories of place forward and reinvent their narrative, sometimes with mixed success.

Beatriz will also tell us the story of Tokyo, a city that was working on the ‘reconstruction Games’, using the 2020 Olympics as a platform to tell us of a new creative Japan. Now postponed into 2021 and with important question marks as to their feasibility, this may need to be a Games edition that tells the story of a whole world in reconstruction. Opening and Closing ceremonies are being rewritten. New global stories are being conceived.

In the meantime, in the UK, a new festival is being promoted: Festival UK * 2022, with the ambition to heal a nation divided by Brexit. How will this Festival be embraced? Who needs it? What stories can it tell?

In this public lecture we will discuss our human need for festivals and their importance to city life, city projection and city building. With or without a pandemic, can we live without festivals?

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