Liverpool Leads the Way

Liverpool Leads the Way

Two years is a long time in street politics

What a difference a couple of years makes!

In the summer of 2012 Liverpool City Council caused consternation amongst the grassroots cultural community when they introduced a controversial busking policy placing severe restrictions on the right to perform music and art in public spaces within the city. Anybody wishing to busk in the city was to be required to pay a license and to purchase a minimum of £10 million worth of public liability insurance (Usually costing over £100). The policy included a ban on all under-18 performers and what was dubbed ‘the Simon Cowell clause’ which allowed any civic or police official the power to pull the plug on a performance on the grounds that ‘it was not of sufficient quality’. Most controversially unlicensed buskers were to be issued with threats of trespass prosecutions on the public highway for ‘unauthorised’ performances. The Keep Streets Live Campaign was born in opposition to these plans which would have made Liverpool perhaps the least-busker friendly city within the UK. Following a petition, street protests and a formal legal challenge, Liverpool Council listened to the concerns of the Keep Streets Live Campaign and dropped their old policy in September 2012.

Well over a year later in January 2014 the Keep Streets Live Campaign received an invitation from the City Council to participate in talks to design new guidance for busking in the city, this time with the full and active involvement of the wider busking community. An open invitation was issued to buskers to be part of the process and, over a period of 7 months, around 15 face to face meetings were held between buskers, the Musician’s Union, Liverpool BID Company and the City Council to produce guidance that all could agree upon.

One of the key aspects of the new guidance is the provisions for buskers to have regular open meetings both amongst the busking community and with the City Council to discuss issues as they arise. This is to help good relationships amongst buskers and to ensure that buskers and the Council remain engaged in a positive, ongoing dialogue.

Buskers will not be required to get a license before they perform in the city but instead asks them to be considerate and respectful of other users of shared public spaces, and in turn, asks businesses and public officials who have issues with buskers to let them know in a polite and considerate way. It marks a complete watershed in the way that busking is overseen within the City of Liverpool and ensures that this world famous music city is leading the way in its active encouragement of street culture.

Promoting Harmony on the Streets

The Guide to Busking in Liverpool has been produced as a joint initiative with Musicians’ Union (MU), Liverpool City Council, the Keep Streets Live Campaign and the Business Improvement District (BID).

The 12 page best practice guide advises buskers, council officers, businesses and residents on issues such as pitch selection, noise levels and the best way of resolving issues. A laminated advice card is also being produced which highlights guidance and recommendations.

This move represents a new approach to street entertainment in Liverpool. In 2012 a managed system of buskers with licensed pitches was to be introduced but was opposed by buskers and the MU and the idea was dropped.

It is anticipated that that the new guidance will help reduce the number of complaints and lead to those which continue being resolved amicably. It also sets out the procedures for enforcement should this prove necessary.

Morris Stemp, North of England Regional Organiser for the Musicians’ Union, said:

“This is a real achievement for all parties concerned, and I’d like to congratulate Liverpool City Council and the BID for engaging so actively with interested parties and organisations to be with us at the forefront of this initiative.

“The aim of the guide is to foster a vibrant street culture which allows for spontaneity whilst at the same time making provision for constructively resolving any issues that may arise using existing statutory powers, and is an example I anticipate many will want to follow. It also blows apart the myth that busking is in some way illegal.

“This is in stark contrast to some less pragmatic authorities and councils, where heavy handed regulation and over-zealous bureaucracy stifle self-expression. Buskers in Liverpool now have a guide that will help nurture music and other art forms on the streets, with all the benefits this will bring to the city, to buskers and to wider society.

“I believe that collaborations such as this, where street entertainment is rightly valued and encouraged, will be the future for busking in cities, towns and villages in this country. I would urge other authorities to follow Liverpool’s pragmatic approach and let us help them provide a landscape which nurtures the talents which our members can provide.”

Mayor of Liverpool Joe Anderson said;

“It represents an entirely new approach to busking in Liverpool, a city famous for its culture and music. By working together with the busking community we will bring our streets alive for the benefit of everyone.”

Councillor Steve Munby, cabinet member for neighbourhoods said:

“I think visitors to the city would be surprised and disappointed if they didn’t find a lively street music culture, given the city’s reputation. But we also know there are complaints from business and visitors about noise and obstructions so we have tried to balance the needs of all parties.

“I don’t mind making mistakes as long as we learn from them. We recognised that an imposed solution was never going to work so we have brought together a range of organisations to produce this guide. This has been a unique partnership which bodes well for the future of street entertainment. I’m really grateful to everyone who’s been involved.

“The guide sets out a positive way forward and if everybody follows the guidance in it we can have a thriving street culture based on good relationships.”

Jonny Walker, Founding director of the Keep Streets Live Campaignsaid:

“The collaborative approach that Liverpool City Council have modelled in putting together this busking guidance makes it a pioneer amongst major cities worldwide in its active support for grassroots street culture.

“The busking community has had the unique opportunity of working alongside the local authority, the BID and the Musicians’ Union to preserve the spontaneity and informality which is intrinsic to the nature of busking, whilst actively seeking to build good relationships between all those who share public space in the city. It is right that buskers should be closely involved in decisions that affect them and it is to Liverpool City Council’s immense credit that they chose to include the busking community at all stages in the production of this guidance.

“The busking community will continue to cooperate with the local authority to ensure the ongoing success of this new approach, and will hold a regular open buskers’ meeting which all are welcome to attend. We are confident that this guidance will help to harness the capacity of busking to transform the experience of shared public spaces in the city, and to continue to play its part in what makes Liverpool such a wonderful place to live, work and visit.”

Bill Addy, Chief Executive of Liverpool BID Company, said:

“We welcome the introduction of this guide. It brings some clarity as to what is expected of everyone to ensure the vibrancy of Liverpool city centre is a cause for celebration and not consternation. Street entertainment can be a huge added bonus to the appeal of a city centre and this guide is a very encouraging step forward in ensuring Liverpool gets the balance right for all parties.”

The new guidance is being introduced in September with the first open busker’s meeting due to take place on the evening of Tuesday 23rd September at 7pm at the Lomax. On behalf of the Keep Streets Live Campaign I urge everyone who cherishes Liverpool’s vibrant street culture to come along, all are welcome.

Jonny Walker

Founding director, Keep Streets Live Campaign

A Significant Anniversary

A Significant Anniversary

 What a journey! The Keep Streets Live Campaign was born two years ago with a simple but vital mission to advocate for public spaces that are open to informal offerings of art and music and to seek to build positive relationships between local authorities and street performers whilst developing policies that support and sustain street culture. The campaign was a response to Liverpool Council’s plans to introduce one of the most restrictive busking policies of any major UK city in July 2012 which included threats of trespass prosecutions against unlicensed buskers on the public highway, bans on under 18s and huge restrictions on where and when people could perform. 2012-08-22 16.20.332012-08-22 15.14.12 http://www.liverpoolconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Ged-Gibbons-v-Johnny-Walker http://www.liverpoolconfidential.co.uk/News-and-Comment/Exclusive-Liverpool-busking-policy-thrown-out

Challenging their decision with creativity and passion Liverpool’s grassroots cultural community asked the council to work alongside them and not against them to design a policy based on preserving spontaneity and openness to public space for art and music and using dialogue and communication to resolve disputes. To their immense credit, the council listened and just two years later they have partnered with Keep Streets Live to introduce a scheme based on partnership between buskers, the council and local businesses which will make it a pioneer amongst British cities for the way it encourages and nurtures buskers. An open busker’s forum will be held in Liverpool to which everybody is welcome to discuss ongoing issues. We will also meet regularly with the council to maintain positive relationships.

 

In March 2013 the campaign successfully challenged York City Council’s restrictive compulsory license scheme which required performers to apply in advance, audition and pay £40 per day if they wished to make CDs available. York Council abandoned their license scheme in response to our challenge but there is much work still to be done there to improve relationships between the council and the busking community. An open busker meeting is going to be held at El Piano, Grape Lane, YO1 7HU, in York at 6pm on Monday 14th July to discuss these issues. All who care about preserving street culture are welcome to this open meeting. Feel free to join the facebook event page and to invite friends along: https://www.facebook.com/events/264543563738841/

Lastly, our challenge to Camden Council’s Cromwellian anti-culture law continues. Lib Dem Peer Lord Clement-Jones, a well-known supporter of live music who brought in the Live Music Act in 2012 as a private member’s bill, has proposed the effective repeal of the law underpinning Camden’s draconian busking legislation in the House of Lords. Meanwhile the Court of Appeal will consider our ongoing legal challenge on the 6th of October. We will not let this unjust and repressive law remain unchallenged. Read more here: http://keepstreetslive.com/blog/2014/07/busking-laws-and-the-lords The Keep Streets Live Campaign is part of a London mayoral taskforce with a mandate to, in the words of Boris Johnson, make the capital into the ‘world’s most busker friendly city’. We will keep you posted on all developments and have much work to do in the capital city where attitudes towards buskers are best described as medieval! Meanwhile if you have any questions or comments or want to get involved with the campaign in any way, please feel free to reply to this email. There are regional Keep Streets Live facebook groups which you are welcome to join to keep in touch with our work.

With thanks,

Jonny Walker

Director of Keep Streets Live Campaign

jonnywalker@me.com

http://keepstreetslive.com

Liverpool https://www.facebook.com/groups/keepstreetslive/

Camden https://www.facebook.com/groups/keepstreetslivecamden/

Yorkshire and Humber https://www.facebook.com/groups/KeepstreetsliveYorkshireandHumber/

London https://www.facebook.com/groups/keepstreetsliveinlondon/

Anderson & Munby’s Hard Council

Anderson & Munby’s Hard Council

Photo: sixeightthree.

The summer of 2012 will be remembered for many things, the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations, the Olympics and the continued stagnation of the UK economy, amongst other events. The street artists and performers of Liverpool will remember it for another reason, however: it was a time when a ragtag collection of artists, misfits, buskers and other concerned citizens stood up to Liverpool City Council and said a resounding ‘No!’ to their restrictive and coercive license scheme. Liverpool Council’s ‘Street Activity Management Plan‘ covered street preachers, skateboarders, political activists as well as buskers. The policy had sought to strangle the freedom of all those whose use of public space in Liverpool City Centre did not meet the council’s limited criteria of approval. Well-trodden streets were, at the stroke of a bureaucratic pen, turned into ‘regulated entertainment zones’ where impromptu performers faced the threat of trespass prosecutions if they dared to play without a council permit. The policy had been lobbied for by the City Central Business Improvement District (BID), an unelected, democratically-unaccountable, quasi-governmental body that represents the interests of major retailers in exchange for an additional layer of rates. For them, the urban environment is a space that needs to be tightly controlled and managed. In Councillor Stephen Munby, they found a local politician prepared to endorse their vision of a city centre that kept all ‘un-authorised’ street activity at bay and enabled the veneer of democratic approval to be placed upon a policy that was coercive, anti-democratic – not mention unlawful – to it’s very core.

Whatever it was that drew Stephen Munby into politics, and, by all accounts he was something of a marxist firebrand in his youth (he wrote for Marxism Today and Challenge, The Young Communist League’s Magazine amongst others), I doubt it was the desire to oversee and legitimise a heavy-handed clamp down upon street culture. When Joe Anderson joined the Labour party I’m sure that siding with the perceived interests of the rich and powerful against the marginalised and the vulnerable was not his primary motivation. In fact, I have no doubt that both men have, at times, been motivated by the genuine desire to serve the public and to make the world a better place. But when these elected politicians, however unwittingly, give legitimacy to policies that are coercive and soul-sapping in their assault upon freedom and creativity, they must be held to account. This is why the Keep Streets Live! campaign launched a legal challenge with the support of Kirwans Solicitors which saw the council withdraw their contentious legislation in September this year. That is why we were hoping that the council would take the opportunity presented by the abandonment of their scheme to work with the city’s street artists and performers, with the input of the Musician’s Union, to come up with a best practise guide that enhances the vibrancy of the city centre. We were still waiting for the council’s invitation to such a meeting when the next phase of their busker clampdown began.

Over the past three weeks Liverpool Council have conducted an operation that involved council officials, accompanied by police officers, approaching every street performer in the city and asking them for their names and addresses. We at ASAP! believe that in a free society it is an act of intimidation to approach a person who is behaving lawfully with uniformed officials and to ask for names and addresses, so we advised street performers to politely decline such requests. When performers did decline they were told to move on, that they were causing an obstruction and, in some cases, vague threats of arrest were made. When our solicitor David Kirwan wrote to the Council’s solicitor to ask for an explanation of their behaviour he received an evasive and dissembling reply:

The City Centre Management Team conducted a joint exercise with Merseyside Police and Environmental Health over two weekends to ensure that all busking activity in the City Centre was being conducted without causing any issues in relation to noise nuisance or obstruction and also to ensure that all buskers were aware of what is required of them to ensure vibrant city centre entertainment which works for all stakeholders.

To people on the ground it was experienced more as a coordinated campaign of harassment and intimidation, especially as no-one who was approached was doing anything unlawful or disruptive. The reply continued:

As part of the activity, buskers were approached and were given advice and guidance in relation to issues such as noise nuisance and obstruction. As a local authority, we have a statutory duty as regulators to ensure that we evidence any advice and guidance that we distribute prior to implementing any enforcement which may prove necessary. It was pursuant to this requirement for evidence that names and addresses were sought so that the Council would have to hand details of those to whom we had spoken and the information with which they had been provided.

When you cut through the thick layer of jargon and bureaucratic language, this makes it sound like it was no more than a council outreach program on behalf of buskers. It was no such thing. It was a coordinated attempt to intimidate street artists, and to show them who was in charge following the council climbdown over the summer. We received many reports of buskers being threatened with arrest, moved on by the police, and even being told by council officials that details of who was performing on ‘Liverpool Council’s property’ would be passed on to the Inland Revenue and Benefits Office to ensure that no benefits claims were being made. This is unnacceptable behaviour designed merely to cause fear and uncertainty.

These are hard times. We have a national government who are cutting the benefits of the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society and starving local authorities of the money they need to carry out their statutory duties. Jobs and money are scarce, people are suffering. In this light, is it acceptable for the local authority to be diverting the scarce time and resources of the police and other bodies for a Christmas clamp down on buskers, when budgets are already stretched to the limit? There are deep social problems in Liverpool, harsh budget cut-backs, a housing crisis, high unemployment, homelessness and widespread drug and alcohol dependency. With this in mind, it seems obvious that such issues that are genuinely caused by buskers are easy to deal with, without the need for heavy handed action against performers or spending scarce council time and money passing legislation that restricts street culture in a city whose very lifeblood is music. The Council observe that there are more buskers then ever before, but why this should surprise them at a time of high unemployment is beyond us. Why do they feel the need to make life more difficult for performers then it already is? The local authority are best understood as stewards and guardians of our public spaces. They should be celebrating the diverse talent that take to the streets to entertain the public, they should support those individuals who brave the elements with no guarantee of reward and animate the urban environment, and they should stand alongside all users of the shared public spaces of the city centre and work with us all to build community and resolve such issues as do arise amicably.

So Councillor Stephen Munby and Mayor Joe Anderson, let’s put a stop to this silliness. You both have better things to be spending your time on then worrying about buskers on the streets of Liverpool. There are a lot of people suffering right now. There is poverty all around us. The shiny new Waterfront developments and LiverpoolONE do not hide the fact that deeper problems face the Liverpool community then a few ‘pesky’ buskers. ASAP! wants to work with you, with the help of the Musician’s Union, to find creative ways of dealing with busking issues without resorting to coercive legislation or heavy handed council action. Liverpool is known worldwide for its culture and music, but also for its friendliness and openness of spirit. By working together, we can build on Liverpool’s growing reputation and enhance the life of the city. We are waiting for your call Liverpool City Council.