Birkenhead, a town on the left bank of the Mersey, has been shortlisted for UK Town of Culture, a recognition that would have seemed unlikely just six years ago when its slogan 'The Future is Birkenhead' was meant as a joke.
The slogan first appeared in five-foot-tall pink neon letters on the front of a former nightclub in the winter of 2020. Architect Craig Pennington, who came up with it, said: "We came up with the slogan originally because we thought it was tongue-in-cheek. But then we put it on a t-shirt we thought no-one would wear, and we sold 100 of them. Sometimes the world wants to tell a different story about Birkenhead. But that underdog story is part of us – the ugly cousin over the water. The confidence is the point."
A town transformed by community builders
Craig and his team have transformed the former site of Rocky's nightclub into Future Yard, a state-of-the-art, carbon-neutral live music venue and arts hub. It draws bands from around the world and visitors from across the North-West. "To make this work, Future Yard has to be better than Liverpool," Craig says. "For people to bother to get on a train, it's got to be truly amazing."
The Left Bank Collective, which led the culture bid, includes Start Yard, which provides start-up space, Make CIC, which runs community creative hubs, and Make It Happen, which leads sustainable regeneration via social supermarkets and 'citizen stewards'. CEO Amy Butterworth says: "We want to be the golden thread that connects people in the local area."
Joy: reimagining mental health
Craig's brother Lee and his colleagues have transformed an old tenement block into 'Joy', a mental health support, social action, arts and culture third space. It aims to rebuild the mental health of local people, many of whom are at the bottom of deprivation indices. Lee, who runs Open Door charity, says: "Our aim is to build the most progressive mental wellness space in the country, changing the NHS in a positive way and setting a national example of how we can work differently."
Joy offers a range of mental health provisions from NHS services to art therapy, alongside a community cafe and space for weddings and events. It also hosts 'Branch', an online mental wellbeing hub for children and young people in Wirral. Lee says: "We look different at Joy, because want people to think, 'what on earth is this place'? We want to intrigue people enough that they want to explore. That's what retail does - why not mental health?"
Connected places, stronger futures
The Mirror will be part of a special event in Birkenhead, 'Connected Places, Stronger Futures', celebrating the town's renaissance, in collaboration with UCL Policy Lab, Open Door Charity and Future Yard. The event coincides with a new report from UCL Policy Lab, Demos and the 'Nation of Neighbours' advisory group, which argues that community organisations rebuild trust and connection in civic space.
The report, 'Becoming a Nation of Neighbours - The political story for neighbourhood renewal, told from the ground up', says the way to start a "hope loop" is for the state to "invest in, listen to, and share power with the people and organisations already doing the work of holding local life together." Chris Lee from Start Yard adds: "All of us in the Left Bank Collective do genuinely have the spirit of 150 to 200 years ago, looking for gaps and opportunities, and building a future that gets us back to where we should have been if we'd kept on going."
