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Chloes’ reflection on the Project

I have had an amazing time through this project. Greta and Georgie have made a perfect group and all of the work we have done preparing this film has felt like fun free time activity rather than assignment work. From meeting at cafes and giggling down the street, meeting members of the community and learning about my local area, there is no way I could imagine having that much fun making a film.

Id like to thank my amazing group for providing a lovely experience, and great memories that I will take with me long after this degree is over !!

In regards to my aspects of the project, although I do have past experience using premiere pro as an editing software, I feel like I wasn’t able to contribute the full extent of my abilities due to extenuating circumstance, but I hope this is reconciled with the lightheartedness that will carry though in the final product :)

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Photo Stills

These are some of the photos taken by Chloe.

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This is the Film Narration-by Georgie

Narration for Bold Street Film – Georgie, Greta and Chloe 

A film about Liverpool.  What should we choose in a city so rich in culture, art and steeped in history? We decided to boldly go where no students had gone before….. Bold Street.  

From agricultural land, the area became a ropewalk manufacturing site for the ships in Liverpool that were used for transporting slaves. Not a proud time in Liverpool’s history.  In the 1780s, Houses were developed, built for merchants. After becoming somewhat forgotten in the 1980s and 90s Bold Street has once again reinvented itself.   It has a diverse, multi-ethnic atmosphere, creating a vibrancy that draws all people. 

It was named Bold Street after Jonas Bold – one of the most influential men of his time and yes, you’ve guessed how he made his money….  

But not everyone was enmeshed in the slave trade, let’s introduce William Roscoe.  He was instrumental in the construction of this magnificent building that is the first you see when starting your journey up Bold Street. The Lyceum was the innovation of Roscoe and other philanthropists.  It was built in a neo-classical style and housed the first subscription library in England, paving the way for our public libraries.  Now, the Lyceum needs to be restored to its former glory.  We live in hope. 

Back to William Roscoe briefly, who came from a working-class family and rose to become known as ‘Liverpool’s greatest citizen’.  As the MP for Liverpool, he campaigned tirelessly for the abolition of slavery – a brave man indeed. . But we owe more to him than his stand against the slavers.  Without him, we would not be here in this building now.  He was instrumental in establishing the Liverpool Mechanics’ School of Arts in 1823.  It went on to be the best university in Liverpool – yes, LJMU!!   

The secret of appreciating Bold Street’s architectural history is to look up, above the modern shop fronts that line the street.  Above, can be seen 18th century facades, Edwardian, Victorian and the beautiful Art Deco styles of Radiant House and the former art gallery, Rennies.  

We pause here outside Mowgli, to pay homage to Nisha Katona, our vice-chancellor.  This was her flagship restaurant and paved he way for others, only in the North. 

Bold Street has always had its share of artists in residence.  In 1823, Louis Daguerre, father of modern-day photography, installed one of the first dioramas in Europe here in a purpose-made building. A diorama is large semi-transparent canvas behind which natural or artificial lights would create atmospheric effects – an early form of cinema. The Ruins of Holyrood that we have all admired in the Walker Art Gallery was one of his first exhibitions across the British Isles.  

Around the end of the 19th century, Francis Barraud set up his studio above his brothers’ photography work room at 92 Bold Street. Francis who, I hear you ask?  It was in this studio in 1898 that he painted a Jack Russell listening to a phonograph.  This image was to become a world-famous icon and logo… His Master’s Voice.  This was adopted as the trademark for RCA records and later EMI.  

A visit to Bold Street Coffee will give you the opportunity to view work by upcoming local artists.  As an independent cafe, they wanted the community to grow as they grew. They believe art and coffee go hand in hand. They want to bring contemporary art to an audience who would not normally engage with all that new-fangled stuff.  

Just off Bold Street stands FACT.  It was set up in 1988 to provide a base for artists to have access to the new media.  In 2003, FACT opened a purpose-built art hub and has been at the forefront of new styles of artwork.  The building is not a white cube but has curves, space and natural light – welcoming all into its accessible surroundings.  Their aims are to enable artists to use technology to explore how we live our lives, and to support the intersectionality of human beings and technology.  The gallery and artists work throughout the local communities and schools to bring art outside the walls of a gallery. 

From 2004-2007, FACT created the Bold Street Project, working with local artists and the community of the street.  Michelle Wren created a 3D sculptural model of Bold Street, as an homage to Daguerre’s diorama.  There were community events, artwork and performance art. You can find the link to more of this project on our blog. 

And we now come to the Bombed-Out Church which stands as a guardian to watch over the Bold Street community. A place of worship until May 1941, it was extensively damaged by the bombing blitz that hit Liverpool.  It is a memorial to all those who died in war.  In 2014, a sculpture by Andy Edwards, called ‘All Together Now’ was placed in the grounds, commemorating the Christmas Day Truce between the British and Germans, where they laid down their arms and played a game of football – a fitting tribute to the residents of Liverpool, where the beautiful game is so revered.  The Bombed-out Church is a venue for artists, community theatre and craft markets. 

We hope we have shown you how Bold Street and its residents have influenced the development of architecture and culture over the last two centuries and how Liverpool’s artistic heritage will continue to thrive. 

No film about Liverpool would be complete without music, so we end our film with ‘The Bold Street Strut’ by Wild Rossa and the ’88, released in 2015. 

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Greta's Reflection on the Blog

For starters I have got to say that I have enjoyed my time working on this film project with Chloe and Georgie.

After finding out I'm working with both of them, I just knew that we would make a great team, as we are a group of perfectionists. It was one of my best time's working in a group, as in the past (back in school) I ended up doing nearly everything.

Some of my favourite bits about working together is getting to know each other, having a laugh, and bringing our different skill into this project. With Chloe having amazing editing and directing, Georgie's great leadership skills, particularly with talking to people and myself with the blog. With this we all, helped each other out and giving good criticism, especially when we got stressed and needed uplifting.

It was a pleasure working with Georgie and Chloe, Thank You!

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Bits we wanted to include, but couldn't

This is a picture of the old gym, that used to be on Bold Street.

This is part of the script that had to be taken out of:

In 1862, adjacent to the Lyceum was a building called the Rotunda, which is no longer standing(partly due to the railway now underground but used to be over ground. This building was home to the first gymnasium (as we would know them) opened by John Hulley. He has been recognised as the founder of the modern day Olympics. Looking at this engraving, it was a hive of activity, though we haven’t quite worked out why they needed a horse involved! This was beautifully written by Georgie.

Here we are working away! Separated by the teacher cause we were messing around in the back of the classroom!

Here are the links to the song and YouTube video of Bold St:

https://ddec1-0-en-ctp.trendmicro.com/wis/clicktime/v1/query? - link of the song

url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.youtube.com%2f%40theboldstreetproject&umid=578dd5de-52ad-4d6d-9660-94cadc57840a&auth=41113785e995a47af8df6599784c8f06e345fdcb-77c02e6a190861391b7d24e77d5be41a352f12d4 - Link of the Bold St project sent by Laura

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Georgie's reflection on the project

I was really happy when the groups were put up on Canvas and it turns out, I was right to be happy. I have enjoyed myself so much working with Greta and Chloe, not only on the film but it was an opportunity to get to know each other better.

We each had a different skillset to bring to the project and we were all totally invested in our subject choice. Greta is clearly a blog-star as she has put it all together. We have all chipped in but Greta has really been the driving force behind it! Chloe, our director/producer/editor, has emerged as a future Oscar winner for best film! I was more than happy to narrate, interview and generally talk.... no surprise there!

It has been a privilege and an absolute pleasure working closely with Greta and Chloe. We seemed to infect each other with our enthusiasm and commitment. And we have laughed, stressed and supported each other all the way through.

Thank you both!

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Slowly putting things together

We decided to meet up at the library to carry on with our project. We booked out a room to work in. This is around the time when we started to feel quite stressed as we three are over thinkers, and we were running out of time. We became united overthinkers - however, we kept soldiering on!

We started out with Georgie reading out her script and timing it. It was still too long, so we went through it together. We looked at what may need to be taken out such as unnecessary info to try and refine it. Chloe mentioned about how we need to add some criticality to the script. We exchanged thoughts about how we are going to do this. Wrote a list of what needs to be taken out of the script and that we are going to add some of it onto the blog. This was the gym, rope channels and editing down some bits of information.

Then, we logged onto the computers, I would be updating this blog, Georgie is re-writing and refining the script and Chloe is putting things together to start editing the video. Chloe also emailed Milo, asking if we can use the green screen, and help with the small portion of it.

Another thing, that I have been thinking of is the readability of the original blog website, which was on Wix. I found it to be quite hard to navigate it, and after many thoughts of me not particularly not liking it, I decided to completely re-do the blog. After, talking about it with Chloe and Georgie, we decided upon using Tumblr instead of Wix for the blog. I'm quite pleased with how the blog turned out on Tumblr as it's so much better to navigate it and read it. We thought of calling ourselves for the new and improved blog boldstreetstrut as it's very fitting.

Here is the link to the old blog, where you can see it's not very good. https://filmblogofliverpool.wixsite.com/art-in-liverpool-fil

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A quick update part 2…

So, a week later, when we met up again, at lunch. We talked more on moving forwards with our project. We created a rough storyboard of how we want our video to look like.

The intro- with the slave history and merging this with history Lyceum- past and its present

- Then to go on talking about William Roscoe with the set up of the public library.

- Afterwards we are going to mention Mowgli and it link to LJMU- John Lennon Building

- Talk about multi-cultural environments, unique shopping experience and the well

- Bold Street Café, with photographs

- FACT, interview voice record of Joan. Audio of it history

- Bombed out church

- Finally the Bold St strut. ( For the humour and outro)

This is a rough draft that we will be using as a guide, so that we are going in the right direction. Of course this may change as we are getting more things together.

On the 15th March, Georgie emailed Laura Yates who works at the Bluecoat. She emailed us back saying we can meet her the next day at 1pm. We wanted to interview her to ask her about a project she did back in 2007 about Bold St. Unfortunately, Chloe couldn't come with us due to family obligation, so only Georgie and I went.

When interviewing Laura, we introduced ourselves and what and why's about our project we are currently doing. The interview process itself went really well, we learned a lot of the history of Bold Street and how everchanging it is. (including her sending us links about what she talked to us)

A week later we met up again at lunch, to go through our project again. We mainly talked about some of the things we need to do, to start pulling everything together. Georgie also sent me the links of the audio of the interview, as I thought it would be a good idea to add to the blog. She also read to us the script she wrote for the video, with mine and Chloe's input on the timing and what needs to improve on it. Something that quickly transpired is that the narration length is 10 minutes, which is too long. So, we had to work on the script together vigilantly on some of the things to take out to make it shorter. Other than that, Georgie's way of writing the script is done really well. Another thing we talked over is, how we are going to do the outro for the video. We were thinking of taking some pictures of ourselves and putting it behind a green screen, with the song, 'The Bold Street strut'. Something we also realised is that nothing is going to happen with the tattoo museum as we couldn't interview the owner. Additionally, we decided when is the best time to meet again, so that we can start putting everything together. We chose to meet up on Wednesday 22nd March, at 11 in the library.

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A Quick Update…

For this blog post, I'm going to fill you in with a couple of things that have had happened/things I haven't yet mentioned.

Something, that I have forgot to mention, that is vital in the process of our project, is how we mainly communicate. Before starting to get together for our blog, I created a WhatsApp group chat, for us to communicate with each other, outside our lecture hours. On this group chat, we discuss meeting times, ideas, plans, and anything to do with this project. It's the perfect tool to use, when we aren't together in person. Additionally, it's a great way to get to know each other better.

One of the ideas that was mentioned by Georgie is to open up the video with 'to go where no man has gone before' but with a twist, instead saying 'to go where no students have boldly gone before', this would be a Star Trek reference. I thought this was a brilliant idea.

So on the 3rd of March, this was when we had our first let-down. We were meant to interview the owner (20 min max) of the tattoo museum/parlour, about tattoo's and it's history. Unfortunately, when we arrived, we found out that he is ill, so we couldn't meet him. So, we had to reschedule that for next week, but yet again we couldn't meet him, because it snowed quite a lot over night. And Chloe messaged us that the morning train were cancelled because of this. So, we decided we were not going to meet up that day and maybe try again later on.

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The videoing and Interviewing

28th February

On this day, we met in JLB at 10am. Together we went up to borrow a video camera and microphone for the day, and went down to the café, to discuss our plan for the day. Since the main objective for the day was to video a few areas in Bold Street and to interview a couple of people, we had to test out the microphones. When testing out the microphones, we found that the quality of them was not good, as the sound came out staticky and picked up everything. We tried out the sound recorder on Georgie's phone, in which the quality was much better, so it was ultimately decided upon to record the interviews on Georgie's phone. Afterwards we devised questions, Georgie would ask the person we are interviewing. These questions were mainly about the what, why, and who's of it all. Additionally ,Georgie told us about an art studio she found, not far off from the bombed out church, and looked up at their Instagram page.

We thought it would be a great idea to first visit this art studio place, but unfortunately it was closed. So, Georgie emailed them, asking if we could ask them about this art studio, as we're university students of John Moore's, and would like to interview them, so hopefully they will get back in touch with us soon (Sadly, it turned out they were closed for renovations).

Then we walked back down to Bold St, and to the Bold Street Coffee shop, to interview the manager, Adam, about this place and why they are selling this art - Georgie being the star to interview him. After this we went up to the tattoo museum , and we asked the owner if we could take some pictures of the museum, as part of our assignment. He agreed but with the proviso that we don't publish anything. Georgie then asked asked the owner if we could interview him about this place and the tattoos as an art form, Unfortunately, he was really busy that day, but we were able to have an appointment to talk with him on Friday.

Next we went up to the FACT Gallery just off Bold Street. We first went into their café for a break and what turned out to be the best hot chocolate ever ( as voted by Greta and Chloe!). Afterwards, we went to meet up with Joan and she was more than happy to answer any of our questions. Joan has worked for FACT for over 20 years, so she was able to tell us everything and much about the history of the gallery. One of the things that stood out to us, is that the gallery is ever changing and there to work with local young artists, particularly to help them at their very start of their career.

Finally we went down to video some of the areas around the gallery. We also went into a current exhibition 'When our worlds meet' by Danielle Brathwaite, for Chloe to film in there.

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The Photographing

27th February

Today we had a much busier day. We met up at the JLB at 12:30, and went up to borrow a camera. On this day, we focused on photographing buildings, starting with Chloe taking photos of the bombed-out church, and then any buildings that stood out to us, on the right side of Bold Street. The buildings we chose for Chloe to snap were those built in an interesting style, like classical and art deco. Also, we included a photo of the Lyceum building, the street sign, and a well inside of a vintage clothing store. And we did this on the left side of the street again.

Whilst Chloe was taking a photo, Georgie noticed that above Mowgli's restaurant, there is a tattoo museum. Of course, we had Chloe taking a photo of the tattoo museum sign. We agreed it would be a good idea to visit it the next day, as tattoos are a form of art. Also, as Chloe took a photo of where Rennie's art shop is before it's completely closed down, Georgie saw a builder come out of the place. She went up to him, to ask him she could interview him at one point and what is going to replace the shop. He told her he doesn't know, but it's most likely to be another bar/restaurant as many shops close down to be replaced by them.

Once we were done with taking photos of buildings, we went inside Bold Street Coffee, who sell local artists' work, (Sean Webster) we wanted to ask permission for Chloe to take photos of them, and Georgie asked if she could interview one of the workers there the next day about why they support the local artists.

After all this, we went back up to JLB, to bring back the camera. As we were walking back up, we discussed about the narrative of our film, and how it maybe longer than 5 minutes. We thought that we will be able to write a good narrative including the interviews once, Chloe puts together the photos and video. When handing back the camera, we mentioned to Milo about our project, and that we are going to need to borrow a video camera and microphones as we are going to be interviewing some people. In addition to that we thought it would be best with Milo's input to put our film on YouTube and keep it private. We chose this because with YouTube, it will be easier to sort out the subtitles as we want our film to be easily accessible to everyone.

To conclude our day, we went down to Weatherspoon's, and discussed some of our plans for the next day.

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Second Get Together

24th February

On this day we got together at the library to further discuss our project. We focused on putting together some of our research and skills that we would bring to this film, and some of the plans moving forwards. So far, some of the research we had already carried out: History of Bold St, the Bombed-out church, and a painting of Bold St. Whilst talking about our findings, we got into talking about the time-slips of the street, where some people, walking along the street, would go back in time to the 1960's - very science fiction! Georgie then mentioned about FACT just of the street. She had gone there, and talked to Joan who works there about a project that was done about Bold St. Joan had said it was Laura who had oversaw this project whom works at the Bluecoat. So, Georgie took on the job to email them both so we could talk to them about the project.

We then led onto talking about the storyboard for our film, and how it will go. This is our idea that may change as we're doing our project:

Starting at the bottom of the street at the Lyceum building with the sign of the street. This is where we will start with the history of the street.

Asking Laura from Fact about the Bold Street Project and the who, what, why, and how of it all.

Food venues and unique shopping experiences

Graffiti just off the side of the street

Bombed out Church

Summary. We discussed on walking down the street to a song. We would mimic Rossa and the 88s strut down Bold St. Me and Georgie thought it would be a good idea to dress up for this strut, specifically in 60/70s as a nod to the time slip of the street.

Finally we discussed our specific skills we would bring in and our role allocations. In deciding the roles, we have split the project into its main elements and assessed who would be best suited for the task.

Georgie- Leader, interviewer and narration of the film.

Chloe- Filming and editing

Greta (me)- creating and writing the blog

With the research divided based on interests

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Introduction

Welcome to our first post. This blog is a part of our group project documenting our journey of making a film project on Art in Liverpool. So let's introduce ourselves. We are a group of three Art History Students, Georgie, Greta (me) and Chloe.

The start of our journey around the beginning of February, was to discuss some ideas for this project. Chloe mentioned to do Street Art, to which we all agreed. We also talked about some of the the skills we would bring into this project. Chloe had experience in filming, and I really wanted to do this blog. whilst Georgie is a good leader for this project. A week later, during Julie's lecture, when she showed us examples of films from last year, there were quite a few videos done about street art. We realised that because street art was done so many times, there would be a lot of pressure to make ours perfect. Particularly since we are all overthinkers and perfectionists!

During this lunch break, we decided to think on some more ideas. This is when Georgie thought of a great idea of doing our project on performance art, and maybe somehow tying this in with Eurovision. This idea came about as Eurovision 2023 is being hosted in Liverpool. Additionally, Chloe made a Google document where we can pool in together any idea/work, and I made a WhatsApp group chat for us.

We met up again a week later to further discuss our project. We thought that the idea of performance art maybe too difficult, so we went back to the drawing board. Chloe drew out a mind-map, to put down more ideas. This was we thought of the idea of doing Bold Street as a subject, as it's a great street with lots of cool shops, a variety of restaurants from different cultures and an interesting history.