In October 2008 we staged the compulsory purchase of our studio at The Royal Standard by Liverpool City Council. This self-imposed ban on our art practices for a city-wide open studio event aimed to draw a link between cultural production and the hostile land grabs that have been made by the council over the previous decade under the contentious Pathfinder regeneration scheme.
Impoverished communities that were expected to present little resistance have been forcibly bought up and moved on in order to make way for new retail and commercial developments - acts of profiteering equivalent to social cleansing. Capital of Culture status and heavy investment in the arts have been the driving forces in pushing Liverpool's development forward and attracting the private investment necessary for the compulsory purchases to be made. The houses that are consequetially empty and boarded-up along Edge Lane, the proposed boulevard in to the city centre, are adorned with colourful cultural branding by the council in a futile effort to brighten up the miserable situation that they have created.
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