A Liverpool City Council cultural project has scooped a sought-after national broadcast accolade.
Statues Redressed took gold in last night’s Broadcast Digital Awards in the Best Content Partnership or AFP category, pipping the likes of ITV’s Cooking With The Stars, Channel 4’s Cook Clever Waste Less and BT’s FA Disability Cup coverage to the title.
The Liverpool project saw Culture Liverpool join forces with Sky Arts and production company Northern Town in a campaign which brought together 20 artists to challenge and celebrate the role of the city’s statues in modern times. This formed part of the ongoing debate around who and what should be immortalised as public monuments.
Some of the artists’ interventions ranged from the celebratory to the confrontational, with the statues gradually revealed to the public throughout the summer of 2021. Those artists involved included heavyweights in the public art scene, as well as rising stars, local artists and designers.
The reimagined statues included:
Artist Bob and Roberta Smith boldly placed a ‘We will get through this with art’ banner underneath Jacob Epstein’s famous Liverpool Resurgent sculpture, reinforcing the statue’s original post-war message of hope and giving it new meaning following the impact of the pandemic
Designer Daniel Lismore gave the statue of Victorian statesman Benjamin Disraeli a whole new look with a Pride-themed Empress of India dress. The redressing was a commentary on Disraeli’s reputation as a flamboyant dresser and a dandy who wrote love letters to men, and on the fact that Victorian anti-homosexuality laws were imposed by Britain across the Empire. In many ex-colonial countries today, those laws still apply.
Taya Hughes dressed statues of Christopher Columbus, Captain Cook and Henry The Navigator in elaborate Elizabethan-style ruffs made from fabrics associated with indigenous populations in Africa, New Zealand and Australia as a commentary on these explorers, who claimed to ‘discover’ these parts of the world.
Designer Stephen Jones gave The Beatles statue on the Pier Head a new look, creating four spectacular hats, each inspired by a different Beatles song to celebrate the iconic band.
As a legacy of the project, the Columbus and Captain Cook redressed statues have become a permanent fixture of Sefton Park. The hats which were made for the Beatles statue are also on display in the British Music Experience.
The judging panel described Statues Redressed as “a brave and topical documentary highlighting many unknown complexities in our town.”
The two-hour documentary was broadcast on Sky Arts last October.
The win comes just weeks after another Culture Liverpool project – Liverpool Together won Gold for ‘Best Coverage of an Event’ at the ARIAS. This project marked the first anniversary of the first lockdown which remembered those who lost their lives but also celebrated the incredible community spirit and resilience shown by the people of Liverpool.
For more information about the project, head to www.statuesredressed.com