Antony Pickthall

Head of Marketing and Communications, Liverpool Biennial

“Sandbox offered us an opportunity to experiment with a technology based approach to widening the understanding of the intrinsic impacts of our work. We found that some visitors were more likely to engage with creative feedback using the Sandbox mobile devices and were also more inclined to respond in a creative way. This was our first experiment and we hope to continue using it”.

Sandbox used their cultural mapping tool, to allow participants of the Liverpool Biennial festival map their experience of the festival. The participants were allowed to track emotions, pictures, video and comments. All of this input came back to Sandbox who then tagged it onto a virtual map as a way of visualising each festival goers ‘experience’.

Liverpool Biennial is the UK’s contemporary art biennial, the largest contemporary art festival in the nation as well as a public art agency. For each festival, dozens of international artists are invited to create new works in locations throughout Liverpool and hundreds of the best British artists compete for accolade through the John Moores prize for contemporary painting and New Contemporaries exhibition. Additional exhibitions, presented through a thriving independent scene, mean that for 10 weeks every two years Liverpool is the focus for contemporary art in Britain.

Liverpool Biennial International Festival of Contemporary Art was conceived and founded by James Moores (with Jane Rankin Read, Lewis Biggs and Bryan Biggs) in 1998, and is presented free to the public every two years over a ten week period. Alongside the Biennial exhibition, the Festival includes the John Moores Painting Prize and Bloomberg New Contemporaries.

Since its inception in 1999, the International exhibition at the heart of the Biennial has always been shown in multiple gallery and non-gallery spaces across the city. In 2000, Lewis Biggs became Chief Executive and Artistic Director. He initiated both collaborative curatorial responsibility and the principle of the exhibition being composed primarily of commissioned new work. This combined approach ensures the exhibition is embedded in the city, and remains unique among Biennials globally.

Vision, Mission, Values, Aims and Objectives

Engaging art, people and place

Our vision is that by 2012 Liverpool Biennial will be:

• Acknowledged as the ‘first to mind’ national contemporary arts festival
• Renowned for the high quality of its year round activities as well as for the Biennial festival
• A commissioner of choice for artists of international standing
• Closely identified with and identifying Liverpool – one of the top 3 UK cities for culture
• An influential player in the cultural sector acknowledged by our peers
• Recognised for our innovative ways of working – a model 21st Century Arts Organisation
• Staffed appropriately to deliver the above
• Funded sufficiently to deliver the vision and funded sustainably.

Our mission - Engaging art, people and place - is achieved through partnership. The wellspring for our activities should always be our core value of ‘Go Further’.

We illustrate this core value and underpin our mission by:

• Widening access
• Working through partnership and collaboration
• Deepening our commitment to artistic excellence
• Encouraging artistic innovation and risk-taking
• Examining the wider roles of the visual arts in contemporary culture

We have three principal aims that are supported by objectives:

1. Commission and present art of significant ambition and quality as measured by international arts professionals
2. Broaden and deepen engagement with contemporary art
3. Strengthen the art infrastructure (buildings, funding, organisations) and profession (artists, curators, arts administrators, networking) in Liverpool, and develop these through partnership

These aims will be achieved through the provision of artistic and learning programmes and services that include:

• Biennial Festival
• Exhibitions (gallery, off-site, web-based)
• Commissions of new work
• Public Art commissions and services
• Publications (exhibition catalogues and critical writings)
• Public programmes of artists’ talks, discussion events and seminars
• Learning and Inclusion programme and resources