ABSTRACT
In 2003 Liverpool beat five other short-listed cities to be nominated as Britain’s contender for the title of the European Union’s ‘Capital of Culture’ for 2008. The director of National Museums Liverpool, Dr David Fleming, welcomed the win – ratified by the European Union in 2004 – as providing Liverpool with the opportunity to create ‘the finest city museum service in Europe’, and, as a direct corollary, the circumstance that the city could now expect ‘more investment, new jobs, new projects of benefit to local people, and a massive boost to the region’s tourist industry’.1 Only a decade earlier Liverpool had still been spectacularized as the ‘showcase’ of Britain’s post-industrial decline.2 So what happened between the dour forecasts of the 1980s and 90s and Liverpool’s urban renaissance as the ‘Barcelona of the north’ in 2008?
