In celebration of Liverpool Biennial 2018, we are shining a spotlight on a few of the brilliant Kickstarter campaigns that are currently live in the city, as well as looking back at some of the most notable and successful projects to recently come out of Liverpool.
Time Moves Quickly – Ryan Gander’s major project with Liverpool Biennial (23 days to go).
Time Moves Quickly is a major project by internationally-renowned conceptual artist Ryan Gander in collaboration with schoolchildren from Knotty Ash Primary School in Liverpool. It will involve the creation of a series of new public artworks for the city and an exhibition in Bluecoat, the UK’s oldest arts centre. This is the first time that Gander has collaborated with schoolchildren in the making of an artwork. The Liverpool Biennial 2018 team have launched a Kickstarter campaign to secure these public artworks for the city, and need to raise £10,000.
Knotty Ash Primary in Liverpool is a fully inclusive primary school where every child is taught British Sign Language (BSL). In working with the city to develop new ideas of social action and change through art, the project champions children as active contributors to the social fabric of the city, at a time where funding and provision of arts education programmes in UK schools is being drastically reduced.
Rewards include a Ryan Gander special edition ‘Building Blocks for Five Minds of Great Vision’ (wood, fabric, 2018), private tours, official Liverpool Biennial merchandise and digital images that teach you how to sign words related to the project. There is currently an early bird special on the Ryan Gander special edition – but they are vanishing fast!
Also live from Liverpool:
Make Melodic Distraction Radio 24 Hour (23 days to go).
Local Liverpool radio station Melodic Distraction has just launched a Kickstarter project with the goal of making the station run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year. As part of this they want to build a brand new website, serving as a gateway to the North West’s incredible music scene, and a mobile app to make the listening experience easier than ever before. They will also add extra studio equipment to facilitate interview-based shows plus plan to add more radio shows, parties, workshops, festival stage takeovers and other exciting community-focused projects to their roster. The Melodic Distraction team has worked with local businesses and artists to create a bespoke selection of rewards, including tee-shirts, slipmats, compilation CDs, radio hosting workshops and even a trip to Peru! So far they have raised over £2,700 of their £10,000 goal.
England: The Complete Record – Special Edition (19 days to go).
Liverpool-based deCoubertin Books are one of Britain’s leading sports publishers and this year they are publishing the first comprehensive statistical record of the England football team, England: The Complete Record. Through their Kickstarter campaign, they would love to produce a special limited edition clothbound version – the ultimate collectible edition of this in-depth account of the England football team. Backers will have the chance to add their name to the book’s Roll of Honour, to add a personalized nameplate, and they have also commissioned Subbuteo sets commemorating England’s 1966 World Cup winners, handmade and hand-painted in Liverpool. The final edition of the book will be fully updated to include the 2018 World Cup in Russia. So far they have raised over £800 of their £5,000 goal.
Previously successful Kickstarter projects in Liverpool:
In the past twelve months alone, a series of incredibly successful Kickstarter projects have emanated from Liverpool. Here are a few highlights:
Community Launderette in Liverpool (366 backers pledged £20,382 to help bring this project to life).
Kitty’s Launderette launched a Kickstarter project to build a new affordable, ecological launderette and community hub in North Liverpool. The launderette will provide affordable, environmental and essential services to the community while being a self sustaining business which underpins all other activity. They wanted to connect with the very social experience of wash houses and launderettes in years gone by as well as an amazing part of Liverpool’s history as the first place in the country to introduce public wash houses, to increase the health and wellbeing of the poor, catalyzed by the inspiring work of pioneering Irish migrant Kitty Wilkinson in 1832. The launderette will be named after her to celebrate her amazing contribution, and that of many other women, to the life of the city.
Granby Workshop is a Liverpool based manufacturer of architectural ceramics, founded by Turner Prize-winning design collective Assemble. The Workshop was set up as part of an effort to rebuild Granby, a Liverpool neighbourhood that was nearly made derelict by decades of poorly-planned regeneration initiatives. They launched a Kickstarter campaign to explore the use of splatware, an exciting new manufacturing process, to create colourful plates and cups by squishing clay in a hydraulic press. Each piece is unique. Backers could choose from plates or cups as rewards, and you only need to look at #splatware on Instagram to see happy backers’ images of their colourful bounty.
Wreckfish (1,522 backers pledged £208,956 to help bring this project to life).
After three successful restaurants, award-winning chef Gary Usher launched a Kickstarter project for a fourth restaurant – Wreckfish. The restaurant opened in October last year after a record-breaking campaign, raising the most money for a UK restaurant on the platform. Within its first 6 months it was nominated for Best Newcomer Restaurant of the Year at the Food & Travel Magazine 2018 Reader Awards and featured in Restaurant Magazine’s Top 100 Restaurants for 2018.
Bold Street Coffee (884 backers pledged £35,643 to help bring this project to life).
At the start of the year, Bold Street Coffee was made to leave their home at 89 Bold Street for six months, due to plumbing issues. A new interior layout provided an opportunity for Bold Street Coffee to return bigger and better than ever. They needed to raise £30,000 to renovate the new site, including a new kitchen, a disabled and baby-changing bathroom and a communal events space. After a hugely successful campaign, Bold Street Coffee will reopen in its original home later this year.
