Liverpool's status as the European Capital of Culture is giving the city a chance to present a fresh face to the world - all shiny new shopping centres, boutique hotels and a cultural experience around every corner.
But it wasn't always like this - it's only in the past 10 years that the city has started to emerge from a period of dramatic economic decline that started after the second world war.
The city's biennial, an international festival of contemporary art, is part of the new Liverpool. It was started in 1998 by James Moores, a member of the wealthy Moores family, and will take place for the fifth time from 20 September to 30 November.
The biennial's director, Lewis Biggs, is aware of how the event has benefited from the legacy of a period when the city was a more confident and assured place, made rich on the proceeds of the international slave trade.
"The cultural infrastructure was set up when Liverpool was a rich city, and although the past 50 years have been an economic disaster, at least that infrastructure was there. This meant it was possible to revive something, rather than create an event from scratch."
Biggs points to it being unusual for a metropolitan city in the UK to have two national art collections - at the Walker and Tate Liverpool. It also boasts a specialist photography gallery in the Open Eye; the Bluecoat, the country's oldest arts centre; and a leading multimedia venue, FACT. The city is home to the John Moores contemporary painting prize, which has been held every other year since 1957 and is now an important part of the Liverpool Biennial.
And even during the period before the city's cultural regeneration really kicked off, there were still a number of grassroots arts festivals such as Video Positive and Vision Fest that fed the local artistic community.
"All these things are important," says Biggs. "Liverpool is not a big city, but in visual arts terms we punch way above our weight."
But while a strong cultural infrastructure is one thing, it took a leap of faith to launch an event that would make the most of Liverpool's artistic roots.
Biggs, who has been working in the city for 20 years, must have been confident about the event's potential, because he left his post as director of Tate Liverpool in 2000 to lead its development.
"A lot of people thought I was completely mad when I left the Tate," says Biggs. "And when I was sitting in an office licking envelopes on my own, I began to think I might be mad, too. But it didn't take long for it to take off. And in a way it was a job that only I could do, as I carried sufficient credibility in the region."
Commissioning for a purpose
The Liverpool Biennial now consists of three core areas: an exhibition of commissioned work from mostly overseas artists, half of which are displayed on the city's streets; the John Moores contemporary painting prize; and New Contemporaries, which showcases the work of students and recent graduates of UK fine-art colleges.
For the first time, this year the commissioned work has a theme: Made Up. This combines a common Liverpool saying with a nod to a particular way of making art - with imagination and a sense of fun, according to Biggs.
The biennial also has a year-round role commissioning art for the public realm, with past projects including Antony Gormley's work Another Place at Crosby beach, and Turning the Place Over by Richard Wilson.
It is the commissioning element that Biggs feels is the most important aspect of the biennial and separates it from mainstream museum practice and other biennials.
"If you are curating, you are choosing art to illustrate a theme or an argument, but if you are commissioning you don't know what you are going to get, so the emphasis is on working as a producer with the artist. It is an adventure, and is an experience that we love and feel is appropriate for what we have here."
Biggs believes commissioning work and showing it on the streets allows the biennial to escape the constraints of the museum environment and offer the biennial's audience a different experience.
"Whenever you see any work of art in a museum context, you are also looking at the history of art. I do think the framing that happens when you walk through the doors of a museum is restrictive in one way. It opens history, but closes down on contemporaneity."
It is also the ephemeral nature of much of the art produced by the biennial that appeals to Biggs. "I spent long enough working in museums to be devoted to objects, but at the same time I know how caring for them is so time-consuming and restrictive that it can drag people down.
"It should never be either there should be museums or there should be biennials, but festivals are a fantastic way to involve people in debate, culture and history without carrying the burden of collections of artefacts."
Despite these views, Liverpool's museums and galleries are key parts of the biennial and half of the 40 works from the international strand will be shown within their walls. The curators for the programme, who are led by Biggs, are drawn from Tate Liverpool, the Bluecoat, FACT and the Open Eye Gallery.
"Lewis is very much a facilitator," says Laurence Sillars, a curator at Tate Liverpool. "He is very supportive of different voices coming out, which is what makes the event as rich as possible."
The collaborative nature of the event is one of the other things that Biggs is most proud of. "We love to work with partners, and we have chosen not to develop a gallery space of any kind of our own because that forces us to work with other people in their gallery spaces," Biggs says.
"It is particularly important with marketing and audience development as everybody has habitual audiences, but the magic is to mix those audiences so they learn about new spaces. I feel Liverpool is a shining example of collaboration and peer learning."
Avoiding surface change
If all this sounds like an unending upward spiral for the city and the biennial, there are some potential clouds on the horizon. While Liverpool has been transformed over the past five years, it could be argued that the new shopping complexes and hotels are just papering over the cracks.
There was a stark reminder in June that the city is still very impoverished, when a joint report from the Centre for Cities and the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion pointed out that Liverpool has more people on benefits than any city in England, with more than a quarter out of work.
There will also be the inevitable post-Capital of Culture hangover to nurse. Even before the biennial has started, 2008 has already been a success in terms of visitor numbers, with some 5 million people attending a cultural event or attraction in the city in the first six months of the year.
For Biggs, the trick will be to sustain the success of the biennial once the cultural spotlight moves elsewhere. But he is confident about the future because of the progress that has been made since the first biennial in 1999.
"When I first arrived, I remember very clearly needing to get out of Liverpool on a regular basis to go and see things," says Biggs. "Now there are five things I want to do on any given evening in Liverpool, and that is an astonishing difference. I think it is likely there will be some slipping back, but people would be very unwilling for it to slip back to where it was, because life now is so much more fun."
Made Up, the Liverpool Biennial, runs from 20 September-30 November, www.biennial.com
But it wasn't always like this - it's only in the past 10 years that the city has started to emerge from a period of dramatic economic decline that started after the second world war.
The city's biennial, an international festival of contemporary art, is part of the new Liverpool. It was started in 1998 by James Moores, a member of the wealthy Moores family, and will take place for the fifth time from 20 September to 30 November.
The biennial's director, Lewis Biggs, is aware of how the event has benefited from the legacy of a period when the city was a more confident and assured place, made rich on the proceeds of the international slave trade.
"The cultural infrastructure was set up when Liverpool was a rich city, and although the past 50 years have been an economic disaster, at least that infrastructure was there. This meant it was possible to revive something, rather than create an event from scratch."
Biggs points to it being unusual for a metropolitan city in the UK to have two national art collections - at the Walker and Tate Liverpool. It also boasts a specialist photography gallery in the Open Eye; the Bluecoat, the country's oldest arts centre; and a leading multimedia venue, FACT. The city is home to the John Moores contemporary painting prize, which has been held every other year since 1957 and is now an important part of the Liverpool Biennial.
And even during the period before the city's cultural regeneration really kicked off, there were still a number of grassroots arts festivals such as Video Positive and Vision Fest that fed the local artistic community.
"All these things are important," says Biggs. "Liverpool is not a big city, but in visual arts terms we punch way above our weight."
But while a strong cultural infrastructure is one thing, it took a leap of faith to launch an event that would make the most of Liverpool's artistic roots.
Biggs, who has been working in the city for 20 years, must have been confident about the event's potential, because he left his post as director of Tate Liverpool in 2000 to lead its development.
"A lot of people thought I was completely mad when I left the Tate," says Biggs. "And when I was sitting in an office licking envelopes on my own, I began to think I might be mad, too. But it didn't take long for it to take off. And in a way it was a job that only I could do, as I carried sufficient credibility in the region."
Commissioning for a purpose
The Liverpool Biennial now consists of three core areas: an exhibition of commissioned work from mostly overseas artists, half of which are displayed on the city's streets; the John Moores contemporary painting prize; and New Contemporaries, which showcases the work of students and recent graduates of UK fine-art colleges.
For the first time, this year the commissioned work has a theme: Made Up. This combines a common Liverpool saying with a nod to a particular way of making art - with imagination and a sense of fun, according to Biggs.
The biennial also has a year-round role commissioning art for the public realm, with past projects including Antony Gormley's work Another Place at Crosby beach, and Turning the Place Over by Richard Wilson.
It is the commissioning element that Biggs feels is the most important aspect of the biennial and separates it from mainstream museum practice and other biennials.
"If you are curating, you are choosing art to illustrate a theme or an argument, but if you are commissioning you don't know what you are going to get, so the emphasis is on working as a producer with the artist. It is an adventure, and is an experience that we love and feel is appropriate for what we have here."
Biggs believes commissioning work and showing it on the streets allows the biennial to escape the constraints of the museum environment and offer the biennial's audience a different experience.
"Whenever you see any work of art in a museum context, you are also looking at the history of art. I do think the framing that happens when you walk through the doors of a museum is restrictive in one way. It opens history, but closes down on contemporaneity."
It is also the ephemeral nature of much of the art produced by the biennial that appeals to Biggs. "I spent long enough working in museums to be devoted to objects, but at the same time I know how caring for them is so time-consuming and restrictive that it can drag people down.
"It should never be either there should be museums or there should be biennials, but festivals are a fantastic way to involve people in debate, culture and history without carrying the burden of collections of artefacts."
Despite these views, Liverpool's museums and galleries are key parts of the biennial and half of the 40 works from the international strand will be shown within their walls. The curators for the programme, who are led by Biggs, are drawn from Tate Liverpool, the Bluecoat, FACT and the Open Eye Gallery.
"Lewis is very much a facilitator," says Laurence Sillars, a curator at Tate Liverpool. "He is very supportive of different voices coming out, which is what makes the event as rich as possible."
The collaborative nature of the event is one of the other things that Biggs is most proud of. "We love to work with partners, and we have chosen not to develop a gallery space of any kind of our own because that forces us to work with other people in their gallery spaces," Biggs says.
"It is particularly important with marketing and audience development as everybody has habitual audiences, but the magic is to mix those audiences so they learn about new spaces. I feel Liverpool is a shining example of collaboration and peer learning."
Avoiding surface change
If all this sounds like an unending upward spiral for the city and the biennial, there are some potential clouds on the horizon. While Liverpool has been transformed over the past five years, it could be argued that the new shopping complexes and hotels are just papering over the cracks.
There was a stark reminder in June that the city is still very impoverished, when a joint report from the Centre for Cities and the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion pointed out that Liverpool has more people on benefits than any city in England, with more than a quarter out of work.
There will also be the inevitable post-Capital of Culture hangover to nurse. Even before the biennial has started, 2008 has already been a success in terms of visitor numbers, with some 5 million people attending a cultural event or attraction in the city in the first six months of the year.
For Biggs, the trick will be to sustain the success of the biennial once the cultural spotlight moves elsewhere. But he is confident about the future because of the progress that has been made since the first biennial in 1999.
"When I first arrived, I remember very clearly needing to get out of Liverpool on a regular basis to go and see things," says Biggs. "Now there are five things I want to do on any given evening in Liverpool, and that is an astonishing difference. I think it is likely there will be some slipping back, but people would be very unwilling for it to slip back to where it was, because life now is so much more fun."
Made Up, the Liverpool Biennial, runs from 20 September-30 November, www.biennial.com
Lewis Biggs at a glance
Lewis Biggs was a founding trustee of the Liverpool Biennial in 1998 and became its director in 2000. He joined from Tate Liverpool, where he had been director since 1990, after spending three years there as the curator of exhibitions.
Before this, he was an exhibition officer at the British Council visual arts department from 1984-87, and the gallery coordinator at Arnolfini, Bristol from 1979-84.
He is the general series editor of Tate Gallery Publishing's Modern Artists series.
He was born in 1952 in London
Lewis Biggs was a founding trustee of the Liverpool Biennial in 1998 and became its director in 2000. He joined from Tate Liverpool, where he had been director since 1990, after spending three years there as the curator of exhibitions.
Before this, he was an exhibition officer at the British Council visual arts department from 1984-87, and the gallery coordinator at Arnolfini, Bristol from 1979-84.
He is the general series editor of Tate Gallery Publishing's Modern Artists series.
He was born in 1952 in London