Leeds and Liverpool celebrate their 800th birthdays this year. In November 1207, Maurice Paynel, the lord of the manor of the village of Leeds, was looking to boost his income, so he carved up his land along what is now Briggate into 'burgage plots', which he then rented out to traders and craftsmen. This new urban settlement developed over the centuries to become the modern business-friendly city of Leeds.
Over in the 'muddy pool' of Liuerpul a few months earlier, King John had granted a charter, or letters patent, inviting settlers to take up new burgages there. This small, scrappy town eventually grew into the major seaport of Liverpool, second city of the British empire until its decline in the 20th century.
The two northern cities, either side of the Pennines, are linked by a canal and are a similar size, but they have little else in common. In terms of museums and galleries, Leeds is council run and has struggled to fund any of the big projects that Liverpool, with national status and finances, is busy developing and delivering.
The two cities have also approached their octocentenaries in different ways. The official Celebrate Leeds 2007 organisation is run by the city council and the Royal Armouries Museum, which houses the majority of the collection of the national museum of arms and armour. There is an extensive programme of events throughout the year, but there is no major exhibition at either of the museums, as all resources are focused on several new building and refurbishment projects.
In Liverpool all hands are on deck for capital projects such as the £10m International Slavery Museum, which opens this August. But to celebrate 2007, National Museums Liverpool (NML) is running the Magical History Tour, a major exhibition about the city that will open at the Merseyside Maritime Museum in July.
There is no single organisation running 2007 festivities - rather a patchwork of all the various cultural venues and organisations staging their own events, supported to varying degrees by the Liverpool Culture Company, set up by the city council to manage the 2008 European Capital of Culture.
Museums and galleries are in a healthy position in Liverpool. In addition to the slavery museum, work has also started on the £65m Museum of Liverpool, which will open in 2010. Sudley House, the suburban home of the Holt shipping family, is undergoing a £700,000 revamp and will open in the summer, while the World Museum Liverpool has attracted excellent visitor numbers since its £35m redevelopment in 2005.
Leeds museums have been in a rather less robust state of health, but they are now abuzz with new cultural projects and programmes, albeit on a smaller scale than in Liverpool. These schemes will create much-needed space and access to collections. The major capital project is the £26.9m Leeds City Museum and discovery centre.
The museum will open in a Grade-II listed building on Millennium Square in 2008, although it has gone over-budget after dry and wet rot was found in the roof recently. The discovery centre will be unveiled later this year at Clarence Dock.
There is also a new visitor centre telling the story of the 12th-century Kirkstall Abbey and work has started on the £1.5m refurbishment of the Leeds Art Gallery. This has been supported by the city council and regional development agency Yorkshire Forward and the gallery will reopen in May.
But all this activity has little to do with the two octocentenaries. Official fanfares aside, how significant are the 1207 dates to the 21st-century inhabitants of Leeds and Liverpool? Even within the cultural sector, mention 2007 and most people will assume you are talking about the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade. '800 of what, exactly?' asked one (non-council) curator in Leeds.
The date is more than a useful tag to pin new developments on, insists Kate Vigurs, the festival coordinator for Celebrate Leeds 2007. 'There's a lot going on here and the whole thrust is to celebrate Leeds as a city, and to make people more aware of their history and culture generally - that it's not just a shopping centre. The museums are part of that profile-raising and will obviously benefit.'
Vigurs is on secondment from the Royal Armouries where she works as an historical interpreter, so understands the mutual benefits. 'While there may be no specific events around 2007 in the museums and galleries, the more visitors come, the more it will benefit the
museums, and once people have been, they are likely to come back.'
The Royal Armouries has provided funding as the main partner, with more support coming from the council and other institutions such as the University of Leeds and tourism promotion company Marketing Leeds. Other places such as Harewood House have provided help in kind.
'The idea is to enhance established events such as the West Indian carnival,' says Vigurs. 'There is a War of the Roses joust run by the Royal Armouries with a reenactment group at Kirkstall Abbey, and a series of lunchtime history lectures run by the Leeds Civic Trust.'
While the emphasis is on celebrating what Leeds already has, new events will also be introduced. The city hosted an International Holocaust Conference last month and will welcome the Genée ballet festival in autumn. A community grants scheme launched through the Yorkshire Evening Post has attracted interest from local history societies, horticultural groups and others. 'It's a chance for grassroots history to have a higher profile,' says Vigurs.
But Joe Williams of the Leeds Bicentenary Transformation Project, a community group supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, says he has struggled to get the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade on the agenda for the 800th birthday celebrations.
'2007 would be a great time to mark the dependence of the Leeds cotton and wool trades on transatlantic enslavement,' says Williams. 'This has all been largely written out of history and particularly local history. Leeds as a clothing centre links directly back to the slave trade and forward to modern immigrant families who wouldn't be here without it.'
The city's birthday is an ideal opportunity to further exploit Leeds's cultural potential with obvious knock-on benefits for the museums, says John Roles, the head of heritage at Leeds City Council.
'We would love to be at the heart of it, but the priority has been to get the new venues up and running,' he admits. 'We are a key part of the council's agenda to broaden the audience base and reduce artificial barriers. But sometimes we are not very good at shouting our successes from the rooftops, because we are too busy moving onto the next project.'
There is little such reticence in Liverpool, where the museums and galleries have taken advantage of the planning for 2008. At first there was concern that the 800th anniversary celebrations would be overshadowed by next year's European Capital of Culture, but the Liverpool Culture Company has now woken up to the potential of 2007 and is working closely with NML and others to deliver a comprehensive programme.
'I liken 2007 to a family party, where you just have close friends and relatives, but 2008 is an open house where you go all out to present the best possible show,' says Graham Boxer, the head of heritage development at the Liverpool Culture Company. There are joint projects and independent ones, he says, but they all tie in to build audiences for all the cultural institutions as well as the city at large.
'It's never easy with two large organisations operating at many different levels,' says Boxer, 'but we have a very good relationship with National Museums Liverpool and we are a major partner with them for the Magical History Tour exhibition.'
Boxer is also working with the four other local authorities on Merseyside and a range of heritage bodies to make sure the programme is region-wide. Events will be coordinated across the boroughs, an example being the Heritage Open Days run by the Civic Trust, which this year will be extended as a national pilot to run for a month instead of the usual weekend, with flexible opening times.
'We are using websites to encourage expats to return for the celebrations and hoping to fuse together the academic and the more populist sides of history with a Big History Show and heritage trade fair in September at St George's Hall,' he adds.
The opening of the International Slavery Museum on 23 August is a key part of the 2007 celebrations. This will be followed by the city's actual birthday on the 28 August, when there will be a civic service at the city's parish church, pageants and firework displays, festivals and community parties. It will include the Mathew Street Festival, Europe's biggest free city centre music event, held annually on the bank holiday weekend.
Slavery was such an instrumental part of Liverpool's history that even without the abolition bicentenary it would be part of the 2007 programme, points out the NML director David Fleming. 'National Museums Liverpool is pressing to make sure people here appreciate the significance of the abolition of the slave trade in relation to Liverpool. It needs to be in the middle of the story, because 80 per cent of the British slave trade was managed from here in 1807.'
Fleming is a native of Leeds, but finds Liverpudlians have a stronger sense of place: 'Liverpool is a city catching up, and the capital of culture has focused a lot of attention on us. People are thinking about identity and history. It's an exciting time to be here.'
John Belchem, a history professor at the University of Liverpool, edited Liverpool 800: Culture, Character and History, which was published last year and charts the city since 1207.
'I managed to secure funding from the university and the city council before the capital of culture bid was even submitted,' Belchem says. 'The Big History Show initiative came out of the success of Liverpool 800, but here at last there is full cooperation between the Liverpool Culture Company, NML, the Liverpool Record Office, the universities and other local higher education institutions.'
Phil Olsen, a Tate Liverpool spokesman, says: 'One of the reasons why Liverpool won the capital of culture accolade in the first place was because there are so many cultural and arts organisations active here.'
Tate Liverpool has two major Liverpool-related exhibitions in 2007: Centre of the Creative Universe: Liverpool and the Avant Garde, which is on until September, and a major Peter Blake retrospective, the British pop artist whose connections with the city include his work with the Beatles.
'The Turner Prize will be here from winter 2007 and will act as a curtain raiser for 2008,' says Olsen. 'In terms of visitor numbers, we expect it to pick up this year, but the main focus for outside visitors will be on 2008.'
Despite the shared anniversary, the level of interaction between the two cities has been low. The natural link between them may be the canal that joins them, but plans for artistic events along its length have fizzled out. But whichever side of the Pennines you find yourself on during 2007, you can be sure you'll find a party somewhere.
Deborah Mulhearn is a freelance journalist
Over in the 'muddy pool' of Liuerpul a few months earlier, King John had granted a charter, or letters patent, inviting settlers to take up new burgages there. This small, scrappy town eventually grew into the major seaport of Liverpool, second city of the British empire until its decline in the 20th century.
The two northern cities, either side of the Pennines, are linked by a canal and are a similar size, but they have little else in common. In terms of museums and galleries, Leeds is council run and has struggled to fund any of the big projects that Liverpool, with national status and finances, is busy developing and delivering.
The two cities have also approached their octocentenaries in different ways. The official Celebrate Leeds 2007 organisation is run by the city council and the Royal Armouries Museum, which houses the majority of the collection of the national museum of arms and armour. There is an extensive programme of events throughout the year, but there is no major exhibition at either of the museums, as all resources are focused on several new building and refurbishment projects.
In Liverpool all hands are on deck for capital projects such as the £10m International Slavery Museum, which opens this August. But to celebrate 2007, National Museums Liverpool (NML) is running the Magical History Tour, a major exhibition about the city that will open at the Merseyside Maritime Museum in July.
There is no single organisation running 2007 festivities - rather a patchwork of all the various cultural venues and organisations staging their own events, supported to varying degrees by the Liverpool Culture Company, set up by the city council to manage the 2008 European Capital of Culture.
Museums and galleries are in a healthy position in Liverpool. In addition to the slavery museum, work has also started on the £65m Museum of Liverpool, which will open in 2010. Sudley House, the suburban home of the Holt shipping family, is undergoing a £700,000 revamp and will open in the summer, while the World Museum Liverpool has attracted excellent visitor numbers since its £35m redevelopment in 2005.
Leeds museums have been in a rather less robust state of health, but they are now abuzz with new cultural projects and programmes, albeit on a smaller scale than in Liverpool. These schemes will create much-needed space and access to collections. The major capital project is the £26.9m Leeds City Museum and discovery centre.
The museum will open in a Grade-II listed building on Millennium Square in 2008, although it has gone over-budget after dry and wet rot was found in the roof recently. The discovery centre will be unveiled later this year at Clarence Dock.
There is also a new visitor centre telling the story of the 12th-century Kirkstall Abbey and work has started on the £1.5m refurbishment of the Leeds Art Gallery. This has been supported by the city council and regional development agency Yorkshire Forward and the gallery will reopen in May.
But all this activity has little to do with the two octocentenaries. Official fanfares aside, how significant are the 1207 dates to the 21st-century inhabitants of Leeds and Liverpool? Even within the cultural sector, mention 2007 and most people will assume you are talking about the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade. '800 of what, exactly?' asked one (non-council) curator in Leeds.
The date is more than a useful tag to pin new developments on, insists Kate Vigurs, the festival coordinator for Celebrate Leeds 2007. 'There's a lot going on here and the whole thrust is to celebrate Leeds as a city, and to make people more aware of their history and culture generally - that it's not just a shopping centre. The museums are part of that profile-raising and will obviously benefit.'
Vigurs is on secondment from the Royal Armouries where she works as an historical interpreter, so understands the mutual benefits. 'While there may be no specific events around 2007 in the museums and galleries, the more visitors come, the more it will benefit the
museums, and once people have been, they are likely to come back.'
The Royal Armouries has provided funding as the main partner, with more support coming from the council and other institutions such as the University of Leeds and tourism promotion company Marketing Leeds. Other places such as Harewood House have provided help in kind.
'The idea is to enhance established events such as the West Indian carnival,' says Vigurs. 'There is a War of the Roses joust run by the Royal Armouries with a reenactment group at Kirkstall Abbey, and a series of lunchtime history lectures run by the Leeds Civic Trust.'
While the emphasis is on celebrating what Leeds already has, new events will also be introduced. The city hosted an International Holocaust Conference last month and will welcome the Genée ballet festival in autumn. A community grants scheme launched through the Yorkshire Evening Post has attracted interest from local history societies, horticultural groups and others. 'It's a chance for grassroots history to have a higher profile,' says Vigurs.
But Joe Williams of the Leeds Bicentenary Transformation Project, a community group supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, says he has struggled to get the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade on the agenda for the 800th birthday celebrations.
'2007 would be a great time to mark the dependence of the Leeds cotton and wool trades on transatlantic enslavement,' says Williams. 'This has all been largely written out of history and particularly local history. Leeds as a clothing centre links directly back to the slave trade and forward to modern immigrant families who wouldn't be here without it.'
The city's birthday is an ideal opportunity to further exploit Leeds's cultural potential with obvious knock-on benefits for the museums, says John Roles, the head of heritage at Leeds City Council.
'We would love to be at the heart of it, but the priority has been to get the new venues up and running,' he admits. 'We are a key part of the council's agenda to broaden the audience base and reduce artificial barriers. But sometimes we are not very good at shouting our successes from the rooftops, because we are too busy moving onto the next project.'
There is little such reticence in Liverpool, where the museums and galleries have taken advantage of the planning for 2008. At first there was concern that the 800th anniversary celebrations would be overshadowed by next year's European Capital of Culture, but the Liverpool Culture Company has now woken up to the potential of 2007 and is working closely with NML and others to deliver a comprehensive programme.
'I liken 2007 to a family party, where you just have close friends and relatives, but 2008 is an open house where you go all out to present the best possible show,' says Graham Boxer, the head of heritage development at the Liverpool Culture Company. There are joint projects and independent ones, he says, but they all tie in to build audiences for all the cultural institutions as well as the city at large.
'It's never easy with two large organisations operating at many different levels,' says Boxer, 'but we have a very good relationship with National Museums Liverpool and we are a major partner with them for the Magical History Tour exhibition.'
Boxer is also working with the four other local authorities on Merseyside and a range of heritage bodies to make sure the programme is region-wide. Events will be coordinated across the boroughs, an example being the Heritage Open Days run by the Civic Trust, which this year will be extended as a national pilot to run for a month instead of the usual weekend, with flexible opening times.
'We are using websites to encourage expats to return for the celebrations and hoping to fuse together the academic and the more populist sides of history with a Big History Show and heritage trade fair in September at St George's Hall,' he adds.
The opening of the International Slavery Museum on 23 August is a key part of the 2007 celebrations. This will be followed by the city's actual birthday on the 28 August, when there will be a civic service at the city's parish church, pageants and firework displays, festivals and community parties. It will include the Mathew Street Festival, Europe's biggest free city centre music event, held annually on the bank holiday weekend.
Slavery was such an instrumental part of Liverpool's history that even without the abolition bicentenary it would be part of the 2007 programme, points out the NML director David Fleming. 'National Museums Liverpool is pressing to make sure people here appreciate the significance of the abolition of the slave trade in relation to Liverpool. It needs to be in the middle of the story, because 80 per cent of the British slave trade was managed from here in 1807.'
Fleming is a native of Leeds, but finds Liverpudlians have a stronger sense of place: 'Liverpool is a city catching up, and the capital of culture has focused a lot of attention on us. People are thinking about identity and history. It's an exciting time to be here.'
John Belchem, a history professor at the University of Liverpool, edited Liverpool 800: Culture, Character and History, which was published last year and charts the city since 1207.
'I managed to secure funding from the university and the city council before the capital of culture bid was even submitted,' Belchem says. 'The Big History Show initiative came out of the success of Liverpool 800, but here at last there is full cooperation between the Liverpool Culture Company, NML, the Liverpool Record Office, the universities and other local higher education institutions.'
Phil Olsen, a Tate Liverpool spokesman, says: 'One of the reasons why Liverpool won the capital of culture accolade in the first place was because there are so many cultural and arts organisations active here.'
Tate Liverpool has two major Liverpool-related exhibitions in 2007: Centre of the Creative Universe: Liverpool and the Avant Garde, which is on until September, and a major Peter Blake retrospective, the British pop artist whose connections with the city include his work with the Beatles.
'The Turner Prize will be here from winter 2007 and will act as a curtain raiser for 2008,' says Olsen. 'In terms of visitor numbers, we expect it to pick up this year, but the main focus for outside visitors will be on 2008.'
Despite the shared anniversary, the level of interaction between the two cities has been low. The natural link between them may be the canal that joins them, but plans for artistic events along its length have fizzled out. But whichever side of the Pennines you find yourself on during 2007, you can be sure you'll find a party somewhere.
Deborah Mulhearn is a freelance journalist
