Performers wanted for public art project by Liverpool City Region

Artists will be able to play an interactive role in their six interlinked artworks.

The search is on for dancers, parkour performers, gymnasts, and street performers from across the Liverpool City Region as giant animated artworks, made entirely of sustainable bamboo, are set to come to life in this year’s Cultural Events programme.

The large-scale art project ‘Imagine Bamboo is Everywhere’ is delivered by outdoor arts company Imagineer with artistic director Orit Azaz.

It will see communities from across the city region building six interlinked artworks in each of our six local authority areas, culminating with spectacular events filled with bamboo structures, performances and workshops at outdoor events in August.

Local groups and individuals are now invited to be part of the events with free taster workshop sessions taking place where they can play, imagine and incorporate bamboo and bamboo structures into a performance.

They will take place on the 9 and 10 of June 2023 – the venue and time are still to be announced.

Councillor Mike Wharton, Portfolio Holder for Culture, Tourism and The Visitor Economy for the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority said:

“What I love about this project is that it’s not just about the culture, creativity and talent that goes into a project of this magnitude. It is also helping us consider the environmental aspect and how that will affect us all in the long term. Exploring sustainable materials like bamboo is absolutely key in sourcing alternative materials – especially when it’s done in such a creative way.

“It will be an amazing sight to see when the engineers, designers, communities and performers get together and the installations begin to take shape.”

Stronger and cheaper than steel, bamboo has a long tradition of being used as a structural material for scaffolding, bridges, housing, and buildings in areas of Asia, Africa and South America, with environmentalists now encouraging Western countries to adopt the practice in a bid to help the planet.

Residents, young climate leaders and artists are set to come together with engineers from Atelier One and bamboo specialists from four continents to explore bamboo as a sustainable material for the future. People can also now register their interest in taking part in the bamboo making and building activities in their area.

Artistic Director Orit Azaz said:

“I’d like to encourage any artists whether they are circus performers, gymnasts, dancers, breakers, martial artists or other physical performers to come along and take part in a free taster workshop to find out how they can join us in the fantastic spectacle of outdoor architecture across the Liverpool City Region this summer. I hope it will go some way to help people understand how versatile and sustainable bamboo is as a material and how we can think differently about the materials we choose to use for design and building.”

Jane Hytch from Imagineer said:

“We are excited to be collaborating once again with Artistic Director Orit Azaz especially with the wide range of amazing engineers, entrepreneurs and designers from across the UK, and internationally, coming together to explore the potential of bamboo. We are so excited by the potential to collaborate with people from across the world to exchange skills and ideas and create beautiful strong lightweight structures at a variety of scales right here in the Liverpool City Region.”

‘Imagine Bamboo is Everywhere’ is part of the LCR Cultural Events programme which brought the Lost Castles and Constellations projects that were held in the city region in 2018 and 2019 followed by the bamboo Bridge project in Liverpool in 2021. It is part of Mayor Steve Rotheram’s 1% for Culture programme, which earmarks £300,000 per year – 1% of the CA’s core funding – to activities designed to promote culture and creativity.

The installations build on the work that took place last year, where 14 artists led pilot projects with communities across the city region including Taking Root, which saw 24 baby Borinda bamboo plants taken home and raised by their ‘parents’ before being planted in Court Hey Park in Knowsley, to become a future sustainable building material for the planet.  

The six outdoor events featuring the installations and performances are:

5 August: Mesnes Park, Newton le Willows, St Helens

6 August: Knowsley Flower Show, Courthey Park, Knowsley

12 August: Victoria Park, Widnes, Halton

19 August: Wirral Country Park, Thurstaston, Wirral 

20 August: Great Georges Square, Chinatown, Liverpool

26 August: Kings Gardens, Southport, Sefton

For more info about this project by Liverpool City Region click here.