Media enquiries

What is Impacts 18?

Impacts 18 is a programme of research that traces the ten year legacy of hosting a European Capital of Culture in Liverpool. No other city has documented the journey surrounding a major cultural intervention and its multiple impacts as extensively as Liverpool has done. Research started with the pioneering Impacts 08 programme, charting the city’s cultural renaissance from 2000 to 2008 and the way this manifested across five main areas of impact. Impacts 18 follows on this evidence base to assess what has sustained from 2008 to 2018 across the same thematic clusters.

What are our leading projects?

Dedicated projects explore the evolution of UK press references to the city and its cultural assets over a 22 year period; changes in resident levels of cultural participation and engagement at neighbourhood as well as city level; changes in resident perceptions of Liverpool and their own community; changes in visitor perceptions and tourism engagement patterns; developments in Liverpool’s community cultural offer; developments in the use of culture as a catalyst for wellbeing; changes in the city’s vision for culture at large; and variations in the way key cultural stakeholders relate to each other, collaborate and push the city’s cultural agenda forward.

Early findings: representing Liverpool

Early findings provide evidence of a remarkable change in the way Liverpool is positioned and talked about in the UK. Football, creativity and crime have dominated press narratives about the city for decades, but the balance between these areas and the diversity of angles within them has evolved considerably since 1996. By 2018, positive discussion on the city’s character and its cultural offer is as dominant as discussion on social issues, such as crime, which was by far the dominant topic in the 1990s, after football.

Click here for more details about press narrative findings and what this means in terms of Liverpool’s national positioning.

International Symposium

Findings relating to other projects were presented during our two day international symposium on 18-19 October.

For any urgent media enquiries, or for requests for interview with Dr Garcia, please contact the research team at: +44 (0)151 231 5123

Alternatively, you can email us at icc@liverpool.ac.uk.