Many people only know L8 for the riots that broke out there in 1981 when this area of Liverpool, which includes Toxteth, came to signify all that was wrong with inner-city Britain.
But two exhibitions about this much-misunderstood place are presenting a more balanced and in-depth view of this long- established multicultural community. They are both part of the third Look/15 photography festival (1-31 May), which this year focused on three subjects: women, migration and memory.
All three topics are relevant to L8 Unseen at the Museum of Liverpool, and Tricia Porter: Liverpool Photographs, 1972-74 at the Bluecoat. And the two exhibitions contrast nicely with each other. Porter’s black-and-white photographs show everyday life in Toxteth in the 1970s, while L8 Unseen, which places the subjects firmly in the history of the area, reveals the stories of residents today.
L8 Unseen features a series of large-scale photographs by Othello De’Souza-Hartley, a visual artist who looks at issues of identity. They were taken in buildings and places that are significant to L8, some with links to the city’s international trading links and the transatlantic slave trade. The venues featured include the Florrie, a Grade II-listed Victorian building that was recently restored and now provides a community resource for today’s L8 residents.
There are also interviews filmed by B3 Media, a creative community networking organisation that worked with people from the area to uncover a range of different stories from some of the 54 nationalities who live in L8 today.
Those profiled include Sandi Hughes, a DJ, filmmaker and visual artist who was born in Bristol and moved to the L8 area in 1970; Nigerian-born Tayo Aluko, who trained and worked as an architect in Liverpool, before giving this up to travel the world performing his one-man play about Paul Robeson; and Ann Lopez, a poet born and bred in the Granby Street area. Other interviewees include a trade union official, religious and community leaders, and even a karate champion.
L8 pride
The photographs are intriguing but many visitors to the exhibition are drawn to the films. These can also be seen in full on the L8 Unseen website and a free smartphone app plays extracts from them.
Pride in the L8 area shines through in many of the interviews. L8 Unseen also offers an initiative where people can share their own photographs and stories. Visitors are also pointed to a series of historical images of Toxteth on the L8 Old Photographs Facebook group.
The Bluecoat exhibition is much more straightforward: a series of black-and-white images, virtually unseen for 40 years, taken in 1972 and 1974.
Porter was an outsider, having come to the city from London where she met her husband, a student at the University of Liverpool at the time, and had to gain acceptance by the community to work there as a street photographer.
The first series, Bedford Street, was taken at a time when the area was undergoing significant development and its tight-knit communities were being broken up. The success of this project led to funding to support a second series, Some Liverpool Kids.
This focused on the children who played in and around Windsor Street. Both exhibitions have to be seen in the historical context of race relations in Liverpool. L8 has been a multicultural area for more than 250 years, before many other areas of the UK were changed by successive waves of immigration during the 20th century.
But despite being home to black, Asian and other ethnic minority communities for so long, this has not translated to widespread acceptance and tolerance within Liverpool as a whole. Some of the issues faced by L8 communities are highlighted in a book published last year by John Belchem, Before The Windrush: Race Relations in 20th-century Liverpool.
Belchem writes: “Despite the absence of significant new immigration, despite the high levels of mixed dating,marriages and parentage, and despite pioneer initiatives in race and community relations, black Liverpudlians encountered racial discrimination, were left marginalised and disadvantaged and, in the aftermath of the Toxteth riots of 1981, the once proud ‘cosmopolitan’ Liverpool stood condemned for its ‘uniquely horrific’ racism.”
In the late 1980s I moved from London to Liverpool to study at the university. While I would never maintain that London represents the perfect example of a multicultural society, I was surprised at how divided Liverpool was in comparison and the fact that you rarely saw black people outside of Toxteth itself.
This division is highlighted in a short article in a publication that accompanies the Porter exhibition. “We residents of Berkley, and L8 in general, did not venture much outside the area unless we had to,” writes Kevin Davies, looking back at life in L8 in 1974.
“Ask anyone of that time who dared to go and watch Everton and Liverpool how ‘welcome’ they were made to feel for not being white.
This did not just apply to Anfield or Walton, where the clubs’ grounds are, but anywhere in Liverpool outside L8. Here we were safe, nobody did a double-take when you walked into a shop or doctor’s.”
In the early 1990s I left the city and now no longer know it well. But I get the impression from walking around the centre that things have changed since I studied there.
Liverpool still has a strong sense of identity, but the growth of its higher education offer has obviously had an impact, as students from all over the UK and overseas have changed the demographics of the city.
The L8 Unseen and Tricia Porter exhibitions are also a sign that Liverpool has changed. In some senses, the L8 community was largely unseen for many years, but for the community to have a presence in two of the city centre’s cultural venues is surely significant.
Both exhibitions, in their different ways, go beyond the stereotypes in an attempt to show people as they really are and to tell stories that we can all relate to.
In the exhibition publication, Porter writes: “I particularly wanted to use my photography to portray our individuality, our unique personalities – a special and important aspect that the media and government bodies too readily ignore.
"I hope that in some small way my pictures of people going about their everyday lives convey something of who we all are, wherever we live.”
Cost: £79,500
Main funder: Heritage Lottery Fund; National Museums Liverpool Partner B3 Media
Producer: Marc Boothe
NML curator: Kay Jones Photographer Othello De’Souza- Hartley
Exhibition design: Coldlight
Creative: Olivia Du Monceau Exhibition ends 6 September
Cost: £4,898
Main funder: L8 Legacy Project
Curator: Bryan Biggs Exhibition ends 5 July
But two exhibitions about this much-misunderstood place are presenting a more balanced and in-depth view of this long- established multicultural community. They are both part of the third Look/15 photography festival (1-31 May), which this year focused on three subjects: women, migration and memory.
All three topics are relevant to L8 Unseen at the Museum of Liverpool, and Tricia Porter: Liverpool Photographs, 1972-74 at the Bluecoat. And the two exhibitions contrast nicely with each other. Porter’s black-and-white photographs show everyday life in Toxteth in the 1970s, while L8 Unseen, which places the subjects firmly in the history of the area, reveals the stories of residents today.
L8 Unseen features a series of large-scale photographs by Othello De’Souza-Hartley, a visual artist who looks at issues of identity. They were taken in buildings and places that are significant to L8, some with links to the city’s international trading links and the transatlantic slave trade. The venues featured include the Florrie, a Grade II-listed Victorian building that was recently restored and now provides a community resource for today’s L8 residents.
There are also interviews filmed by B3 Media, a creative community networking organisation that worked with people from the area to uncover a range of different stories from some of the 54 nationalities who live in L8 today.
Those profiled include Sandi Hughes, a DJ, filmmaker and visual artist who was born in Bristol and moved to the L8 area in 1970; Nigerian-born Tayo Aluko, who trained and worked as an architect in Liverpool, before giving this up to travel the world performing his one-man play about Paul Robeson; and Ann Lopez, a poet born and bred in the Granby Street area. Other interviewees include a trade union official, religious and community leaders, and even a karate champion.
L8 pride
The photographs are intriguing but many visitors to the exhibition are drawn to the films. These can also be seen in full on the L8 Unseen website and a free smartphone app plays extracts from them.
Pride in the L8 area shines through in many of the interviews. L8 Unseen also offers an initiative where people can share their own photographs and stories. Visitors are also pointed to a series of historical images of Toxteth on the L8 Old Photographs Facebook group.
The Bluecoat exhibition is much more straightforward: a series of black-and-white images, virtually unseen for 40 years, taken in 1972 and 1974.
Porter was an outsider, having come to the city from London where she met her husband, a student at the University of Liverpool at the time, and had to gain acceptance by the community to work there as a street photographer.
The first series, Bedford Street, was taken at a time when the area was undergoing significant development and its tight-knit communities were being broken up. The success of this project led to funding to support a second series, Some Liverpool Kids.
This focused on the children who played in and around Windsor Street. Both exhibitions have to be seen in the historical context of race relations in Liverpool. L8 has been a multicultural area for more than 250 years, before many other areas of the UK were changed by successive waves of immigration during the 20th century.
But despite being home to black, Asian and other ethnic minority communities for so long, this has not translated to widespread acceptance and tolerance within Liverpool as a whole. Some of the issues faced by L8 communities are highlighted in a book published last year by John Belchem, Before The Windrush: Race Relations in 20th-century Liverpool.
Belchem writes: “Despite the absence of significant new immigration, despite the high levels of mixed dating,marriages and parentage, and despite pioneer initiatives in race and community relations, black Liverpudlians encountered racial discrimination, were left marginalised and disadvantaged and, in the aftermath of the Toxteth riots of 1981, the once proud ‘cosmopolitan’ Liverpool stood condemned for its ‘uniquely horrific’ racism.”
In the late 1980s I moved from London to Liverpool to study at the university. While I would never maintain that London represents the perfect example of a multicultural society, I was surprised at how divided Liverpool was in comparison and the fact that you rarely saw black people outside of Toxteth itself.
This division is highlighted in a short article in a publication that accompanies the Porter exhibition. “We residents of Berkley, and L8 in general, did not venture much outside the area unless we had to,” writes Kevin Davies, looking back at life in L8 in 1974.
“Ask anyone of that time who dared to go and watch Everton and Liverpool how ‘welcome’ they were made to feel for not being white.
This did not just apply to Anfield or Walton, where the clubs’ grounds are, but anywhere in Liverpool outside L8. Here we were safe, nobody did a double-take when you walked into a shop or doctor’s.”
In the early 1990s I left the city and now no longer know it well. But I get the impression from walking around the centre that things have changed since I studied there.
Liverpool still has a strong sense of identity, but the growth of its higher education offer has obviously had an impact, as students from all over the UK and overseas have changed the demographics of the city.
The L8 Unseen and Tricia Porter exhibitions are also a sign that Liverpool has changed. In some senses, the L8 community was largely unseen for many years, but for the community to have a presence in two of the city centre’s cultural venues is surely significant.
Both exhibitions, in their different ways, go beyond the stereotypes in an attempt to show people as they really are and to tell stories that we can all relate to.
In the exhibition publication, Porter writes: “I particularly wanted to use my photography to portray our individuality, our unique personalities – a special and important aspect that the media and government bodies too readily ignore.
"I hope that in some small way my pictures of people going about their everyday lives convey something of who we all are, wherever we live.”
Project data – L8 Unseen
Cost: £79,500
Main funder: Heritage Lottery Fund; National Museums Liverpool Partner B3 Media
Producer: Marc Boothe
NML curator: Kay Jones Photographer Othello De’Souza- Hartley
Exhibition design: Coldlight
Creative: Olivia Du Monceau Exhibition ends 6 September
Project data – Tricia Porter
Cost: £4,898
Main funder: L8 Legacy Project
Curator: Bryan Biggs Exhibition ends 5 July
