Picture of the Day: Do you want chips with that? (1984)
1984 - a time before internet. A time before social media and mobile phones. A simple time. The government assault on the city of Liverpool had cut deep on employment prospects for the youth and civil unrest amidst the bleakness had raised its head in the form of riots only a few years earlier. Abandoned post-industrial brown field sites lay undeveloped with little in the way of change until carrot dangling Michael Heseltine arrived in the area on a mission to improve the city.
What better way to whip up civic pride and ignite the fires of redevelopment but to create a festival to showcase the city and draw tourists from afar to the city. Thus the International Garden Festival was dreamt up. A 6 month festival celebrating the city’s strengths and inviting gardeners and sponsors to design and layout fancy gardens over an extensive area of the south of the city where previously only landfill and industry had held prominence.
The site included a miniature steam railway, corporate sponsored gardens such as the BBC gardens, the Robinson Jam garden, a festival dome and a laser show which never worked. The project created much welcomed short term employment and a sense of optimism for what could be.
Today’s photos come from one of my regular visits to the site with my Aunt Joyce. It was a glorious time. A time of seemingly endless school summer holidays, sweets, fizzy pop and fatty foods. The featured image at the top of this post captures the zeitgeist of the time - my brother, selling ice cream at the Festival. Wishing he was somewhere else. >
The gardens also had a dome within which interesting gardening displays and exhibitions were held throughout the festival including a tractor display and some other interesting things. After the closure of the festival the dome would later reopen as a “pleasure dome” refitted with a skating rink, laser quest and a bowling alley before closing for good in the early 90s and eventually accidentally catching on fire on purpose before being bulldozed to make way for nothing much in particular. >
For more on the International Garden Festival Liverpool 1984 see this article in the Liverpool Echo
And for more insight see my backup compost over at www.stegzy.co.uk where you won't see this bonus LJ picture :)
