Showing the Town’s Colours: The Engine room, Southport and it’s Communities was a joint commission as part of a broader investigation into needs and opportunities for supporting local cultural infrastructure, led by Prof Abi Gilmore, and to provide creative documentation for the ‘Engine Room’ initiative, led by Dr Eric Lybeck. The Engine Room is a co-working and co-learning space designed to counter the trend of creatives leaving Southport for employment and opportunities. It forms part of a strategic effort to produce a generative ‘civic ecology’ where creative and digital entrepreneurs can start and scale new industries locally. The film is a sequel to an earlier work devised with Prof Abi Gilmore and Dr Claire Burnill-Maier utilising a similar methodology of interviews and visual documentation of ‘left-behind’ places on the periphery of conurbations. The film visits different locations in Southport, Sefton Council, to hear from residents and creatives from Southport about their perceptions of the town and its surrounding areas as well as their vision for its cultural future.

The film was made in collaboration with Prof Abigail Gilmore, Dr Claire Burnill-Maier and Dr Eric Lybeck and the creative communities of Southport, with thanks to the Engine Room (https://www.theengineroom.org/0, the Atkinson (https://www.theatkinson.co.uk/) Southport Bid (https://southportbid.com/), Sefton Council (https://www.sefton.gov.uk/), the University of Manchester (https://www.manchester.ac.uk/), Southport Learning Trust (https://southportlearningtrust.org/), Southport Contemporary Arts (https://www.sca-network.co.uk/), Stand Up for Southport (https://standupforsouthport.com/), Spectrum Alliance Movement (https://samsociety.com/) and other supporters and friends.

This project was supported by the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2024, UKRI/AHRC DCMS Cultural Placemaking Fellowship and the SEED Research & Scholarship Fund.