The Art of Football: Liverpool gets set for a cultural kick-off

Where better to launch a football celebration, than in the most sport-mad city in the UK?

The Beautiful Game is to be celebrated with a special season showcasing how football is one of the world’s biggest and most unifying conversations.

Coinciding with the greatest footballing event across the globe, the 2018 FIFA World Cup, The Art of Football will see Liverpool host three major exhibitions, a symposium, pop-up cinema, a music festival as well as stage a call out for community groups to take part in a football parade with a difference – all in celebration of the creative culture and social fabric which underpins football.

Taking place from Thursday 15 June to Sunday 15 July, here’s the programme includes:

Common Ground, Albert Dock Colonnades

Free exhibition. Opening times: Tuesday to Sunday, 10am – 5pm. 14th-June 15th July 2018.

This exhibition seeks to explore the ritualistic behaviour of football fan culture and its development from the game of the working class in the 1980s to the riches of the Premier League today. Curated by Foto Octo, it captures the work of three photographers across different decades and offers a unique insight into how the community has evolved alongside the might of the now multi-million pound football industry. The photographers are Tom Wood whose retrospective spans 40 years, Ken Grant who has been capturing football inspired images since he was a teenager and Tabitha Jussa who examines what it means to be a football supporter in Liverpool.

The Art of the Football Shirt, Camp & Furnace

Free exhibition. Opening times: One hour before kick off on all World Cup match days 14th – 28th June 2018.

Curated by fashion historian Neal Heard, The Art of the Football Shirt explores the relationship between football and popular culture. Showcasing a curated selection of over 100 sartorially sound, obscure and vintage football shirts, it will show how team kits of previous generations have gained iconic status and how they have crossed paths with the worlds of music, fashion and politics. In the exhibition, Heard shares his vast knowledge, passion and enthusiasm to tell a story that goes beyond the realms of the beautiful game.

I Don’t Love Soccer Because Soccer Has Never Loved Me, Camp & Furnace

Free exhibition. Opening times: One hour before kick off on all World Cup match days 29th June – 15th July 2018.

This work takes a critical look at “the beautiful game” through the lens of graphic design and illustration.  The exhibition presents artwork from an international selection of graphic artists made in response to an essay entitled The World Cup and Its Pomps written in 1978 by the famous Italian semiotician, intellectual and writer, Umberto Eco. Produced by Liverpool John Moore University’s Liverpool School of Art & Design, confirmed artists include world renowned designer and typographer Jonathan Barnbrook (David Bowie’s Blackstar and Damien Hirst publication I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life…), Brendan Dawes (digital artist and designer who has work in the permanent collection at MoMA, NY) and Kat Gibb (long time Chemical Brothers collaborator).

Terrace Tapestries

Workshop dates: 12th- 19th May from 10am at The Florrie.

Parade date: 14th June 2018, city centre and the Martin Luther King Building, Albert Dock.

The launch event for The Art of Football Season, this project will draw on the longstanding, international tradition of banners at football matches as a vehicle for collective expression. Long established and revered Liverpool banner artist Peter Carney will lead this large scale project, working with residents, community organisations and schools across the city to design and produce a series of new banner artworks. Each of the 32 participating World Cup nations drawn will be represented, and a series of workshops will take place to produce the banner artworks, showcasing the world in one city.

Working with a team of illustrators and designers, the artworks will be presented as part of a large parade through the city, to mark the start of the Art of Football project and the 2018 World Cup. The banners will then go on display at National Museum Liverpool’s Martin Luther King building in Liverpool’s Albert Dock, for the duration of the World Cup. Any community groups interested in taking part in the workshops should email: jah@fotoocto.com

Soccerama Symposium, Liverpool Central Library

Opening time: 7pm. 12th – 13th July 2018.

Featuring guests from across the world of football, media and academia and hosted across two evenings at Liverpool Central Library, Soccerama is a symposium to explore football through a new lens. Via a series of conversations and debates, it will unpick football’s interwoven relationship with the key global debates of our times; women’s rights, nationalist populism, LGBTQ, consumer culture, class politics and race. Thursday 12 July will be dedicated to the topic ‘Football: The not-so beautiful game’ and Friday 13 will be ‘From outside the box’. Panelists and contributors will be announced soon.

Disco Sócrates, Constellations

30th June 2018, £10 ticket

In honour of the ultimate anti-footballer, socio-political activist and godfather of football cool, Disco Socrates is an exploration of music culture and its social and political impact around the globe. Anchored around a one-day festival, it will see live performances from artists drawn from the participating World Cup nations, reflecting the power of musical movements to affect change around the globe.

The international line-up includes Nigerian born, Berlin based soulful jazz vocalist Wayne Snow, Oko Ebombo who fuses beats, Parisian jazz and performance art, Cairo’s Rozzma will bring his own blend of beats, psychedelia and traditional Arabic music and Iranian MC Gomnam.

Green Screen Community Cinema

Prenton Park – 1st July 2018

Isla Gladstone (Stanley Park) – 9th July 2018

Free event. This project will see a series of pop-up cinema screenings take place at the heart of the communities which can be found in the modern game’s backdrop. Featuring radical and challenging football cinema and documentaries, the project is designed to explore and showcase alternative interpretations, debates and ideas around football. The cinema will be set within the grounds of the Isla Gladstone in Stanley Park – flanked by Goodison and Anfield – and Tranmere’s Prenton Park, the events will see the screening of two deeply moving films; Forbidden Games: The Justin Fashanu Story and Football Rebels.

The Art of Football season forms part of the Liverpool 2018 programme which celebrated ten years since Liverpool’s transformational tenure as European Capital of Culture. The football-inspired project has been curated by Bido Lito! in collaboration with Foto Octo and Laces Out. For more information on the whole programme, or to buy your tickets head to www.artoffootball.co.uk 

Are you the city’s biggest football fan? We want to know what lengths you’ve gone to, to support your team. Drop us a line on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram and we’ll share your pics.