LIVE PROJECTS

Look11 Photopoints are located throughout the Liverpool City region and call for all visitors and Liverpool city dwellers to stop, think, examine and debate upon the many side of this great city.

We want everyone from the mobile snapper, to the serious shooter to respond to these photopoint locations and the ‘call to action’ theme in their own creative and individual way.

All the points on the streets have been chosen because of their connection to social justice in Liverpool or because of their iconic and aesthetic surroundings. There are 18 locations around the city and routes offer a healthy, interesting and creative activity for all the family, and it’s free to participate. With a camera in your hand along the route look at your surroundings from a different viewpoint and see what interesting sites you discover through the camera lens.

All you need to do is pick up a resource pack at the Bluecoat or visit the photo-points page on the Look11 website to download the maps and guides. Look11 has also teamed up with magazine Black and White Photography to bring you resources that include creative ideas for all ages to explore the locations with a camera, and help develop your photographic inspiration.

For all you snappers with a smart phone why not try linking your photograph to each photopoint location creating a photo based Geo map for others to follow. Our online gallery and forum are open to all to upload a selection of your photographs, ideas and feelings about each photopoint.

Take your camera on tour of the city-scape and you can ‘have something to say’ and be a part of Look11’s progressive drive for photography.

Individual Photopoint Descriptions

1.The Bluecoat Chambers

We have chosen The Bluecoat to be one of the Look11 photopoint not only due to it being the oldest building in Liverpool’s city centre but as it is also the Hub of the Look11 International Photography Festival, linking with Look11s theme of “Stop, Think, Examine and Debate” The Bluecoat provides a creative hub for people to meet, talk, work, perform, question, create, display and enjoy themselves.

2.The Cavern Club/Mathew Street

Mathew Street has been selected to be a Look11 photopoint as it holds a selection of the city’s most famous cultural landmarks such as The Cavern Club, where the Beatles regularly played, having a huge influence on the city’s tourism.

3.Exchange Flags

Dating back from 1939 merchants and bankers gathered to trade deals on the flags behind the town hall, this historic location has been a focal point for the city’s commercial activity ever since which is one of the reasons why it is a Look11s photopoints. Other reasons for the photopoint are to bring people’s awareness to the memorial to Horatio Nelson at the centre of The Flags, the bronze casting of four prisoners represent French sailors in torment, thousands of French sailors were held in the city as prisoners of war during the Napoleonic war. Also in 1941, in a move instigated by Winston Churchill, the headquarters of Central Operations was moved to Exchange Flags and a secure bomb and gas proof fortress was created within.

4.Capital Building

Look11 have chosen to play a photopoint in the Capital building as this is the hub of the commercial district. It represents the call to action theme of look11 through the journalism and the media and provokes the want for debate on discussion.

5.Stanley Dock Clock Tower

The Stanley Dock Conservation Area represents a highly significant and visually dramatic part of Liverpool’s historic dockland which is why Look11 felt it was important to have a photopoint located there. Much of the Stanley Dock Conservation Area is characterised by large structured such as warehouses and docks as well as smaller dock related structures such as bridges, canal locks and the Victoria Clock Tower, which itself is a dominant focal point from both land and the river. The combination of different surfaces, structures and environments creates an interesting landscape to capture.

6. Old Picket Hardman Street

This Grade ll listed sandstone faced Georgian terrace has been chosen as one of the Look11 photopoints due to the buildings history. It was formally the Trade Union and Unemployment Resource Centre which links with “A call to action” looking at rising unemployment and redundancy levels. It was used as a community access recording studio established in 1986 known as The Picket Music Venue. The Picket provided a professional music venue for new and established bands to record, rehearse and play.

7.Chinese Arch

Liverpool is home to the oldest Chinese community in Europe, Look11 would like to celebrate this diversity but locating one of its photopoints by the Chinese Arch which acts as the gateway to this community and is the largest, multiple-span arch of its kind outside of China. The first presence of Chinese people in Liverpool dates back to 1834 when the first vessel direct from China arrived in Liverpool’s docks to trade such goods as silk and cotton wool. The commercial shipping line created strong trade links between the cities of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Liverpool. In 2007 estimates state 1.7% of Liverpool’s population as being of full Chinese descent (some 7,400 people), making it the city’s single largest non-White ethnic group.

8.Blackburne House

Women’s Technology and Education Centre was established in 1983. The aim was to attract low paid or unemployed women and equip them with the skills to progress into employment in technical professions; an area in which women are traditionally under-represented. In 1991 the organisation moved into Blackburne house. Blackburne House Education, through the Women’s Technology and Education Centre, seeks to transform women’s lives and encourage their independence through the provision of education; training and opportunities of every kind in an environment of equality and inspiration. Look11 wanted to draw attention to this organisation that represents equality, education and the voluntary sector as well as the building it’s housed in and its surroundings such as John Moores College of Art and the concrete suitcase sculpture “A Care History” by John King by having it as a key photopoint.

9. Liverpool Anglican Cathedral

The building of the cathedral began just after the turn of the 20^th Century, through to its completion in 1978 after 74 long years this great cathedral, the largest in the whole of the UK and the fifth largest in the world was completed. In 1941 Solemn Entrance in Time of War’ was the name of the first service to take place in the vast Central Space below the still incomplete Tower. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, visited the Cathedral during the blitz and gave encouragement to the Cathedral community to keep building. It managed to survive 2 World Wars, periods of recession and great hardship in this once famous and important port of Liverpool to become a tribute to the dedication of a great many people and their skills. It is evident how important the Cathedral is to the heart and the life of the City of Liverpool bringing art, people and community together which is why it was chosen as one of the Look11 photopoints.

10. Conservation Centre

The Conservation Centre is a Grade II listed Victorian warehouse. In its previous life the Midland Railway Goods Offices - generally known as the Midland Goods Depot (MGD) - stored and dispatched parcels between Liverpool’s main freight terminals. It opened in 1874, a time of great prosperity for Liverpool. Its design made use of the natural slope of the site, with inclined loading bays running through the centre of the building, enabling wagons to be moved by the force of gravity. It continued in this use until the 1950s. National Museums Liverpool took over the building in the mid 1990s and it served a dual role – as a visitor venue and as a place for museum staff to carefully conserve and restore objects. The visitor part of the Conservation Centre closed to the public in December 2010 following government cuts. The behind-the-scenes conservation work still continues.

11.St Luke’s Church

It was designed by John Foster, and construction of the building began on 9 April 1811, with consecration taking place on 12 January 1831. On Monday, 5 May 1941, St Luke’s was hit and burned by an incendiary bomb. Today it still stands as a burnt out shell, commonly known locally as “the bombed-out church”, and its churchyard is a public park. A memorial to the dead of the Irish famine has been added to the grounds. From 2007 the low-tech music group Urban Strawberry Lunch have been artists in residence at St Lukes, hosting eclectic range of music, arts & film events. Additionally, since 2003 Urban Strawberry Lunch has been compiling sound archive oral histories of the Liverpool Blitz, the Finest Hour project. They also organise an annual event commemorating the anniversary of the bombing of St Lukes.

12. Mann Island

The Mann Island site is designed to complement and enhance existing and planned attractions on the Liverpool historic waterfront. It will form a pivotal point between the Three Graces and the Albert Dock, with the geometry of the new buildings reflecting this transition. It will create a destination in its own right and form a key link between the city centre, the riverfront and Albert Dock. The Mann Island residential buildings form overlapping wedges with the low points positioned to reveal important views of the Pier Head buildings. These wedges work together to form a changing composition of overlapping forms, creating valleys that frame views of the waterfront and beyond. The site will provide a landmark for the new public space and canal basin. The two buildings have their own contrasting styles, using materials that greatly differentiate them from the Three Graces making it an obvious point of interest for photographers and therefore a Look11 photopoint.

17. Irish Centre/Wellington Rooms

The building was designed by the architect Edmund Aikin and built between 1815 and 1816. It was originally used by high society for dance balls and parties. Neo-classical in style the building’s façade is Grade II listed, but it is now blackened and the building has laid empty for 9 years, a reflection on the changing wealth and fashions in the city

wealth and fashions in the city