Liverpool: The music City.
Liverpool’s Docks continue to thrive as a heartland for the arts. The first-ever major exhibition of Keith Haring’s work in the UK opens here in July, at Tate Liverpool. Enter the gorgeous warehouse past a fittingly anarchic public artwork, Ugo Rondinone’s Liverpool Mountain, a monolith of five neon rocks.
In the year in which Liverpool has fun as UNESCO City of Music, the nearby Baltic Triangle also hosts Liverpool Sound City in May after a successful 6 Music weekend. Digital and tech businesses thrive here too, next to street-food mecca Camp and Furnace, quirky bars such as Hobo Kiosk, and Constellations, which mixes live music and DJ sets with cocktail and food.
Go a mile-and-a-half out of town, too, to Granby Street in Toxteth, a road transformed by the community in collaboration with Turner Prize-winning architecture firm Assemble. The Granby Workshop sells groundbreaking architectural ceramics, while the Granby Winter Garden opened this spring. A creative space transformed from two derelict terraces, its urban indoor garden grows toward its glass roof, and hosts artists-in-residence.