Week 17 [UNAC and The Economic Modelling Conundrum]

Well, that was a week.

Outside of spending three days in Scotland taking meetings in Glasgow (on Vice-Chair duties for the Musicians’ Union Members’ Assembly), Falkirk (with GECoP, meeting with council staff at The Kelpies) and Dundee (GECoP again) – I bookended my trip with Liverpool time!

As I increasingly find my feet in the city, it was lovely to spend some more time on the campus and meeting with council representatives to discuss the upcoming work we will need to undertake together. My first meeting was with academic colleagues and the council was about enacting the legacy of the UN Accelerator City projects in the city, of which my PhD is essentially entirely focussed in producing a unifed artefact to achieve this. As such I have received early insights into findings from the past year of work around the various projects strands that were explored. There is some good stuff in there, the pledge and broadcast/production standards in particular – part of which I was pleased to be able to support development in latter stages of delivery.

Liverpool at sunset, as viewed from the 7th floor of the Novotel in Edge Hill

The work around live events and land use presents some interesting insights into how an isolated approach to building environmental standards for events can be expressed, but also acting itself as an exemplar of the issues of sector / state coherence that the live events industry has been trying to resolve elsewhere. It repeats (and perhaps enforces?) the issue of ownership around environmental solutions, which in itself causes onwards problems in policy socialisation, negotiation and translation.

Having offered to share research and experience wholesale into the UNAC efforts previously, I must admit it was a little frustrating to see my own research and work referenced in these documents. There is precisely zero time for bitterness or annoyance here: I’m now engaged with all stakeholders, forward-looking and focussed on the challenge in front of me: helping to coordinate these factions and friends, state and sector, in coming together in shared ownership to achieve something much greater than any of us could ever do individually.

How am I going to do this? Well, it looks like it will start with making the economic and financial case for upgrading Liverpool’s energy infrastructure in public spaces, a project that looks set to be coordinated between council and academia, supported by community and commercial sectors, and delivered by yours truly.

Lucky it is that I did something rather similar for Manchester last year then!