This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Live Business
Musicians’ Union publishes buskers’ guide to Liverpool
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 11 August 2014
The Musicians’ Union has launched a new guide to busking in Liverpool, aimed at promoting harmony between street performers and local business owners. Harmony as in an absence of conflict, obviously. Local business owners aren’t expected to join in.
‘The Guide To Busking In Liverpool’ comes two years after the MU successfully opposed the introduction of licensed pitches for busking in the city. It has been published jointly with Liverpool City Council, the Keep Streets Live Campaign and the Business Improvement District.
Says the MU’s Regional Officer for the North of England, Morris Stemp: “The aim of the guide is to foster a vibrant street culture which allows for spontaneity whilst at the same time making provision for constructively resolving any issues that may arise using existing statutory powers, and is an example I anticipate many will want to follow. It also blows apart the myth that busking is in some way illegal”.
He added: “This is in stark contrast to some less pragmatic authorities and councils, where heavy handed regulation and over-zealous bureaucracy stifle self-expression. Buskers in Liverpool now have a guide that will help nurture music and other art forms on the streets, with all the benefits this will bring to the city, to buskers and to wider society”.
In part, that was a little swipe at Camden Council, which has imposed restrictions on busking in the London borough. Attempts to oppose this move were unsuccessful, with the council’s decision upheld by the High Court earlier this year.
