In collaboration with the Philosophy Department at the University of Liverpool, Liverpool Biennial 2026 has invited artists and thinkers to bring a new understanding of hospitality for our times in relation to humanism, economy and the media. Hospitality is the underlying theme of the next Biennial opening on 15 September.
This workshop discusses the relation of hospitality and economy in the context of terraced housing in North Liverpool and in particular what it means to live well.
Speakers: Jeanne van Heeswijk, artist, Owen Hatherley, writer & Jim Brown, social economy expert
Owen Hatherley was born in Southampton, England in 1981. He received his doctorate in 2011 from Birkbeck College, London for a thesis on ‘The Political Aesthetics of Americanism in Weimar Germany and the Soviet Union, 1919–34’. He works as a freelance writer on architecture and cultural politics, and is the author of four books – Militant Modernism (Zero, 2009), A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain (Verso, 2010), Uncommon – An Essay on Pulp (Zero, 2011), the forthcoming A New Kind of Bleak – Journeys through Urban Britain (Verso 2012), and a forthcoming e-book on squares in Eastern Europe, Across the Plaza (Strelka, 2012).
Jim Brown is the principal consultant at Baker Brown Associates, a policy research and development co-operative, based in Bristol. His main areas of interest are equity investment, community engagement, innovation, business strategy and training. He was the lead consultant for Community Shares, a two-year action research programme funded by the Cabinet Office and the Department of Communities and Local Government, which was completed earlier this year, and the author of The Practitioners Guide to Community Shares, published in July 2011. He is also an enterprise support consultant for Making Local Food Work, and has worked with numerous CSAs on community investment and business strategy issues.
Jim Brown
What do you think about the idea of 2Up 2Down?
2Up 2Down has plenty of potential. There has to be a better way of regenerating Anfield than the boarding-up and bulldozer approach currently being used. Home ownership is the key to this – at the workshop I attended there seem to be lots of local homeowners there. Property prices cannot really go any lower , so I think now there is an opportunity to inspire people to move into the area – to get employment renovating the houses and to become homeowners at the same time. Shared ownership schemes could provide the bridge for people who currently would have no other way of owning their own home. And the ownership should be shared with other people who come into Anfield and identify with the place: the two football clubs are central to the past, present and future of this area. The current state is all down to the way these two clubs have been allowed to set the agenda for the neighbourhood, and their on-off plans to build new stadia. Football will always be a part of the neighbourhood but it has to benefit local people. Both clubs rely on a strong sense of community identity and yet they’ve created conditions that are destroying the physical community in which they are located. The proposals to create a Football Quarter are absolutely essential – but it needs to reflect the character of the community identity – and not replace it with some sanitised corporate version of low budget regeneration homes. There needs to be a thousand 2Up 2Downs for a real transformation to take place.
The other thing I like about the idea of 2Up 2Down is the live-work aspect of the idea. In a modern version of Anfield, people need to live and work in the same place – that’s why the bakery is so important….I really want to taste its products!
What does it mean to live well?
In our post-industrial society living well is about spending your life earning a living doing what you find really interesting. Discovering what it is that really interests you is something that a lot of people never achieve; instead they settle for treating their work-life as a necessary chore with extremely low expectations, seeking satisfaction elsewhere from family, friends or even maybe football! I am 100% committed to creating conditions where people love their work, and can live well through their work.