Historic Liverpool building opens after-hours to celebrate Toxteth's Black music scene

One of Liverpool’s most beautiful historic buildings is opening after-hours to celebrate the city’s influential Black music scene.

Victoria Gallery & Museum will stay open late on Thursday April 30, from 5pm to 8pm, as part of a programme of events around its current exhibition Toxteth: The Harlem of Europe.

There’ll be DJ sets from Kerri Ankrah-Lucas and Decks in the City, a vinyl record fair, and live performances from University of Liverpool music students as well as a talk on Liverpool-born jazz pioneer Gordon Stretton.

Visitors to the free VG&M Late: A Music Celebration will also have a rare opportunity to work with the Institute of Popular Music (IPM), explore its archive collection and help catalogue records in a pop-up cataloguing session.

And the gallery will have hands-on activities for families including a badge-making station and space to craft.

Janaya Pickett says the drop-in event is all about bring the sounds, stories and spirit of Toxteth’s Black music scene to life and encouraging more people to experience the VG&M which is one of the city’s cultural gems.

She explained:

“Liverpool was known as the Harlem of Europe from back in the 1940s because at that time Harlem was the centre of jazz, poetry and literature”

“We currently have an exhibition which runs until August called Toxteth: The Harlem of Europe that features images of musicians from the era and portraits of their descendants captured by photographer Ean Flanders.

Ivan Stax, Ramon Sugar-Deen, Paul McCartney and Joey-Ankrah.

“The exhibition celebrates Black musicians from Toxteth in the 1950s and 1960s, who inspired The Beatles and so many other groups.”

One of the key characters whose photograph appears in the exhibition is singer Ramon “Sugar” Deen, who’s an L8 music legend and former member of The Harlems.

He will be a special guest at VG&M Late, in the gallery chatting to visitors about his career and the powerful musical movement which was born in L8.

“We’ll have DJ sets from Decks in the City in the gallery’s cafe, with Kerri who’s also featured in the exhibition because her family, the Ankrahs, were very prominent in the Toxteth music scene,” says Janaya, a research associate for heritage collections and archives.

“In the main theatre we’ve got Dr Mike Brocken who has written a book on Liverpool-born jazz pioneer Gordon Stretton. He’ll be giving a 45-minute talk about Gordon Stretton’s life and the book, and after that we’ll have a music performance from music students.”

Janaya says VG&M Late is like an open house, to showcase not only the exhibition – which runs until August 1 and is free – but to introduce the gallery to a wider audience.

“We already try to accommodate community events and we’re starting to do more after-hours events which feel a bit special because we want to encourage as many local people as possible to come here.

“Because we’re on Brownlow Hill, not right in the city centre, and we’re part of the university people often do think it’s just a university building. We get so many visitors who’ve never been in before or didn’t even know it existed.

“It’s a gorgeous space and we’ve got fascinating collections so we just want to grow that potential and make ourselves as accessible as we can to everybody.”