Success for ASAP!’s Keep Streets Live campaign in Liverpool!

Success for ASAP!’s Keep Streets Live campaign in Liverpool!

Christian and Jonny present David Kirwan, Senior Partner of Kirwan’s Soliciters, with a gift on behalf of street artists and performers in Liverpool whose livilihoods his public-spirited legal support has helped to safeguard.

(Cross-posted from The Association of Street Artists and Performers)

There is an autumnal chill in the air and the nights are drawing in, already the memories of summer are fading and winter looms ahead, a time when most buskers have to dig out their thermals and fingerless gloves. But despite the colder weather and the diminishing hours of sunlight, our spirits are high. More than three months after its introduction, and under threat of legal action initiated by the Keep Streets Live! campaign, Councillor Stephen Munby announced Liverpool City Council’s decision to abandon their contentious busking at a recent cabinet meeting. This climbdown is hugely welcome and highly significant. It demonstrates that a constructive campaign of opposition can make a difference, and represents a significant moment in the ongoing campaign to protect street culture. At long las common sense has prevailed. We hope that this council reversal represents the beginnings of a new culture of cooperation and compromise between street performers and the powers that be.

Early on into the campaign, Kirwans Solicitors offered pro bono legal support to our cause, and began a legal challenge which was instrumental in the policy’s downfall. David Kirwan, Senior Partner at the firm, described Liverpool’s scheme as “oppressive, irrational and disproportionate“. At our campaign’s invitation, Kirwans initiated a formal legal challenge in the form of a judicial review application on behalf of Liverpool busker Siobhan McDermott. We know that the legal pressure applied by Kirwans helped to focus the minds of the council, and hope that they will now abandon the use of coercive measures like threats of trespass prosecutions and restrictive license schemes. We look forward to helping them draw up a system which genuinely enhances city life, and doesn’t smother spontaneity with spirit-sapping regulations.

Nonetheless, there are still unanswered questions about the council’s attitude to our legal challenge. Why, for instance, did the council claim that they were always going to review the policy after a three month period? This claim is nowhere to be found in the notes from the cabinet agenda at which the policy was announced  and talk of ‘internal reviews’ only emerged after the scheme came under heavy criticism from Keep Streets Live!.  The legal challenge we launched by judicial review had to be done in the first three months of the scheme’s introduction or it would have been invalid. We think it is a little bit suspect that the proposed internal council review was to be after three months, precisely after a legal challenge would have been ruled out.

We are also disappointed that the Mayor of Liverpool is still maintaining that the policy was ‘lawful and reasonable’, despite the information that the Keep Streets Live! campaign helped bring to light, and the many contentious points we drew attention to (such as the Simon Cowell clause, threats of trespass prosecutions in public space, the unlawful ban on under-18s and the small issue that the 2003 Licensing Act was never intended to cover busking).  The council are continuing to send out mixed messages about the real reasons they dropped the scheme.  We hope they come to see just how unreasonable their proposals really were and how troubling were the implications for how our shared public spaces are managed. This will be particularly useful if any new policy that emerges from this episode is to have real credibility.

So how did we arrive at this victory? Beginning life as a petition, growing into a website, taken up by the large number of affected parties, and so ending, finally, in the High Court, the campaign could not have succeed without the generous input and dedication of a wide variety of people who lent their support over the course of the summer.

From the supportive members of the public who turned out en-mass on the streets of Liverpool for celebratory busks to help raise awareness for the campaign, to the devoted members of our legal team, to the many individual buskers and performers who wrote and spoke out with passion and eloquence about the injustice of the council’s decision, people from all walks of life came together in a common effort to stand against an unfair decision. We owe a debt of gratitude to the thousands who signed the petition, to the street performers who turned up to the celebratory busks against the policy, to those who took photographs and made videos, designed websites and flyers, or lent their supportive presence to our various events, to sympathetic members of the public and supportive voices in the cultural and artistic communities of the city, to our dedicated and tenacious legal team, and those journalists who took the time to uncover the real issues at stake in Liverpool. We could not have achieved this without you.

To date, the campaign has attracted coverage from online, print, radio and television media outlets. Early on the Musician’s Union gave us their support and offered to help Liverpool City Council draft a fairer street performance system. This was enormously helpful. The staff at Change.Org also provided valuable advice and insight throughout the campaign.

Liverpool’s restrictive policy on street entertainment touched on many wider issues, and these issues are not going away. What, for example, are our public spaces for? Who are they for and who decides what happens in them? To what extent should narrow private interests be allowed to dictate public policy, in other words? All these questions touch upon the basic issue of what we want our streets to be like.

Street artists and performers are just one group amongst many different users of our shared public spaces. We could also mention political activists, street evangelists, shoppers, skateboarders, street traders and many, many more. All have their unique part to play in the tapestry of our shared urban lives. We agree with Mary Portas when she says in her well-publicised report that

Our high streets can be lively, dynamic and social places…that give a sense of belonging and trust to a community1

We believe that street art and performance adds colour and life to our public spaces and needs to be encouraged and protected.

 

What Next?

The Association of Street Artists and Performers (or ASAP! for short)will continue campaigning for a vibrant street culture, and will stand against burdensome and unduly restrictive regulations whether in Liverpool, or elsewhere. ASAP! is a movement for all who have a shared interest in street art and performance, and who value our shared public spaces as places of community, interaction, diversity and spontaneity. We wish to draw our membership widely and work alongside all those who care about street culture. As long as you share our values and are in agreement with our aims, we are happy for you to call yourself an ASAP! member, and we are here to help and support you. There is no charge for membership, although we are preparing information packs that will carry a small charge to cover our admin costs to send out.

If you would like to join ASAP! please fill in this form, add a few words about yourself (if you wish), and we will be in touch.

Until then, Keep Streets Live!

 

Footnotes

  1. http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/regeneration/pdf/2081646.pdf, pp.3

Join us today to Celebrate Liverpool’s Street Culture

Join us today to Celebrate Liverpool’s Street Culture

Photo: Bad bokeh.

As of today, it will be illegal to busk in Liverpool without first signing up a to highly restrictive set of terms of conditions which Liverpool City Council have produced in what can only be described as a sham consultation.

Besides attacking the ‘soft‘ target of buskers – many of whom are vulnerable – in a time when real issues like social deprivation and street violence are on the rise, the enforcement of the Liverpool City Council’s new policy is a mis-allocation of scare council funds and resources at a time of European-wide recession.

If, like us, you value spontaneous street performance, then come join the swelling mass of people and media organizations who are set to converge on Church Street @ 12 noon where they will celebrate Liverpool’s vibrant street culture with a mass busk!

https://www.facebook.com/events/487067217985710/

With your help today we can challenge the council’s new policy in a peaceful and vibrant fashion, and help to keep spontaneous street performance alive!

Liverpool’s Policy and Our Objections, Part 4

Liverpool’s Policy and Our Objections, Part 4

Photo: jp3g.

 

They say:

15. The entertainer must take all reasonable steps to manage the audience to ensure that they do not block the highway or any public place including when appropriate reminding the audience to leave a clear access along the highway, footpath or pedestrianised area. The entertainer must stop the entertainment immediately if the highway is obstructed by the street entertainment or the audience or if a risk arises to the safety of any individual or damage to the highway or adjoining structures.

 

We say:

Most of this is common sense and we don’t take issue with it. However, we would point out that crowds take seconds to form and seconds to disperse. They are composed of people, dynamic living beings capable of moving quickly. A person is not an ‘obstruction’. In addition, in the absence of any other legal remedy, the Council will sometimes ask the police to threaten arrest for ‘causing an obstruction’ when no actual obstruction is taking place. This kind of abuse of the law does not help build good relationships between street performers and the relevant authorities.

 

They say:

16. The entertainer must maintain public liability insurance covering any performance and must, if requested to do so by a Police Constable or Council Officer (or to an officer of the land owner if performing on private land), produce proof of such insurance.

 

We say:

Public liability insurance is a good idea. It is often included with membership of other groups like the Musician’s Union (a group which we would strongly advice any serious musical performer to join). Other performing groups like Equity offer access to public liability policies too, or they can be bought through a broker. However, whilst we recommend that performers do get public liability insurance, we also ask for a common sense approach here. Does a squeeze box player or an acoustic guitarist on a side street really need £5 million worth of public liability insurance before they be permitted to play in public? In this matter we feel that a distinction should be made between performers using more equipment and playing on more prominent pitches, and those who are not using much equipment and are playing in less prominent locations. We would hope that common sense would prevail at all times and that public liability insurance does not become an absolute requirement for street performance of all sorts.

 

They say:

17. Amplification

  1. Amplification of music or singing will be permitted, but not such where the volume gives rise to complaint; entertainment must not be audible beyond 30 metres of the performance above the normal level of street noise.
  2. Where amplifiers are allowed, they must be battery powered; mains or generator powered amplifiers are not permitted.

We say:

Amplification raises many issues and divides opinions. In our view, amplification is not the major issue. It is what is amplified that counts. We don’t believe that amps are the enemy – after all, there are plenty of louder unplugged instruments like bag-pipes, drums and saxophones. The principal issue here is that of consideration. Performers should take account of the time of day, the street setting and the nature of the surrounding businesses when setting volumes. However, we do not find a specified distance limit to be useful. 30m is an arbitrary specification. Sound travels differently according to wind direction, height of buildings and volume of people in the vicinity. An agreed upper decibel level would be more useful. Furthermore, we cannot state strongly enough how unrealistic it is for a local council not to receive complaints about performers, whether about the volume or some other, more subjective, feature of a performance. We therefore urge to council to strive for a fair balance between a small proportion of expressed complaints, and the unexpressed enjoyment of the overwhelming majority.