Imagine if a city was planned and designed in a way that it represented each of the communities and peoples that lived within it. What would it look like? How would it change our behaviours, our sense of self and our safety if a city was designed for women, designed for the LGBTQIA+ community or for people living with a disability? 

We often think the way we live is the way it always has to be. The way cities are planned is like that. We feel we sit into a structure that cannot be adapted or evolved. 

Homotopia Festival launched a project called Queer the City in 2020, bringing artists and creatives together to imagine a city through a Queer lens. Sharing LGBTQIA stories and perspectives, there was also a physical art trail through the city. 

This summer, as the city reverberated with the shock of numerous attacks on members of that same community, the idea of visibility and of how a city reflects and protects its communities came to the fore once again. 

To Queer a City is to think about how we can make public space more inclusive. Increasingly, for city planners, the idea of queering a city offers a potential solution to how to tackle hate crime. 

As well as the physical, it is also a principle for the digital realm. How do we empower LGBTQIA voices? Do we give every community the space to share their own voice and experience, or do we only turn to them when we want to see them reflected through our own lens, our perspective. 

In our latest Bido Lito! Arts + Culture Podcast we hear from three voices, Ki Griffin - the actor playing the first non-binary character on Hollyoaks - Felix Mufti - the artist, activist, performer and writer - and Char Binns, Director of Homotopia on how Liverpool can be queered.

Back for a third season and in a slightly different format, the Bido Lito! Arts + Culture Podcast is back telling stories from across Merseyside to a different theme each episode.

Andrew PM Hunt began his musical journey with pop provocateurs Outfit and has since become a stalwart of Liverpool's avant garde scene via his Dialect project and latterly, Land Trance. He discusses how field recordings have influenced his sound and what effect the process of recording the environment has on his work.

Elliot Hutchinson talks about his adventures in aural thrills beginning as a deaf new born and how his fascination developed. The Dig Vinyl team member, DJ and collector discusses a new section of the Bold Street shop presented specifically for hip hop producers and his continued dedication to identifying and manipulating found sounds.

Left Bank Soundtrack

Dialect on Bandcamp

Elliot Hutchinson on Mixcloud

Produced by Laura Brown. Presented by Laura Brown and Christopher Torpey. Guests Andrew PM Hunt and Elliot Hutchinson. Contributors El Gray, Iona Fazer, Harry Robertson and Matthew Berks.

Listen along and tell us what you think – listen above, or via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Acast and Stitcher. Get in touch with us to share your own stories on [email protected], or tweet us @BidoLito.

bidolito.co.uk - new music + creative culture. liverpool.

Lockdown has prevented us from going to galleries and museums in person - but it hasn't stopped us from accessing culture online. In a new series, Laura and Christopher pick out some forms of digital culture archives that have been keeping them entertained while remaining socially distanced. The first episode in this series features queer zine archive QZAP, and the University of Liverpool's interactive Viking Age In The North West app.

Following on from our previous podcast on community media with Dr Paddy Hoey, we have an extra bonus episode for you. This is based on a conversation Laura had in 2019 with Paddy about activism in the digital age, based around the book he'd just written about Irish republican media activism.

For the third episode of Season 2, we speak with Dr Paddy Hoey, journalist and senior lecturer in Media, Film and Television at Edge Hill University. On the table is a discussion about the role that community media plays today, when digital means have caused our communities to become divergent and moved away from the mass public spheres we have long been accustomed to.

You know that feeling when you discover a fictional world and it just feels like you've always known it? And the characters, plots and setting fit perfectly, like your favourite jacket, one that you never tire of wearing.

That's what this episode is about, as Laura persuades Neil Atkinson to turn his attention away from The Anfield Wrap, and talk about their shared love of the world of Inspector Morse: both the novels of Colin Dexter, and the TV world led by John Thaw.

For the first episode of Season 2, we speak with Liverpool Biennial's new Artistic Director, Fatoş Üstek, about how an art biennial relates to its location.

The Florrie in Liverpool 8 celebrates its 130th birthday in 2019. We tell the story of how the building was saved, and how its bricks and mortar weren't the only thing restored.

Musician and songwriter Nick Ellis takes us on a psychogeographic walk through the city, focusing on places that have particular resonance with his music. Ellis shows us how oral histories and layers of stories and tied into the fabric of our surroundings, and how we often ignore them as we traverse the city.

Jayne Casey and Bryan Biggs take us on a tour through the archive of The Bluecoat, the UK's oldest arts centre. In doing so, they chart the building's history as a repository of culture for Liverpool - and unearth a story from 1989, when a show they put on proved the existence of perestroika to Ronald Reagan.