Liverpool has been declared to have features of Outstanding Universal Value which puts us in the Premier League of world cities. As we head for the exit we might well ask if we have sufficiently valued the status that being a UNESCO World Heritage Site city confers? Is it inevitable that development and economic pressures should always trump heritage and cultural concerns? Could these different perspectives and priorities ever work together? Is it too late to promote what we have and engage with residents beyond the city centre?

Liverpool UNESCO World Heritage Site – A Status worth fighting for?

Wednesday 4 October 2017
Seminar 1: UNESCO World Heritage Site – what’s it all about?
Isabelle Anatole-Gabriel: UNESCO Chief of the Europe and North America Unit at the World Heritage Centre, Paris.

Register here

Wednesday 18 October 2017
Seminar 2: Development and Conservation – why the conflict?
Michael Turner UNESCO Chair in Urban Design and Conservation Studies at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem.

Register here

Wednesday 1 November 2017
Seminar 3: Heritage Assets – where’s the value?
Minja Yang: former Deputy Director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Paris and Director of the UNESCO WHS Regional Office in Delhi, currently  President and Professor at Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation at the Catholic University of Louvain,  Belgium.

Register here

We urge residents of Liverpool to register for a series of seminars that will make UNESCO’s voice heard publicly in the city for the first time. With Liverpool’s world heritage status at growing risk, the series aims to give the people of Liverpool the chance to find out more, and to hear UNESCO’s perspective on why Liverpool is on a par with world famous heritage sites such as the Taj Mahal, the Acropolis, and the Great Wall of China, as a site of “outstanding universal value”.

Organised by Engage Liverpool CIC, entitled “Liverpool UNESCO World Heritage Site – A Status worth fighting for?” will bring heritage officials, including Isabelle Anatole-Gabriel, UNESCO’s Chief of the Europe and North America Unit to venues within Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City – currently inscribed on UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger.

The seminar series has been announced to coincide with the ICOMOS International Day for Monuments and Sites on Tuesday 18 April 2017, to help raise awareness of the potential impact of the loss of Liverpool’s World Heritage status and the potential gains to be made from development and conservation working together.

Liverpool was inscribed as a WHS in 2004 covering six areas of Liverpool’s city centre and docklands. The award was made in recognition of the city’s global significance as one of the world’s major trading centres in the 18th and 19th centuries, and also for its part in the development of mass movements of people.

However, UNESCO and The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) have warned that redevelopment in the area – including the Liverpool Waters scheme – “would fundamentally adversely affect the Outstanding Universal Value of the property”. Liverpool is now one of only two endangered UNESCO sites in Europe.

A very good place to start your reflection would be to read either the Final Report or the Executive Summary of the Institute of Cultural Capital’s Liverpool World Heritage City Heritage, Pride and Place published in 2013. They are well written and worth reading. View them in our Project Downloads section below.

Read Mayor Anderson’s comments about WHS status HERE  12.10.16

Read Mayor Anderson’s Press Release about new WHS Task Force HERE 02.10.17

Download the Seminar Flyer HERE

UNESCO Documentation about Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City HERE

WEBSITES worth a visit:

UNESCO World Heritage Cities Programme 

UNESCO World Heritage Centre

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