Radar: Knowledge Festival

The city’s first Knowledge Festival kicks off this weekend - up at the top of town, at that nexus of Hope Street, Mount Pleasant and Brownlow Hill (‘The Knowledge Quarter’ appropriately enough).

We’re good at talking up how the Beatles were four lads who shook the world, but the city’s not exactly been shirking when it comes to the meaty stuff too: from astrophysics to medicine, our impact in the fields of science and engineering punches way above our weight. From CERN to MIT, Liverpool-developed science has found applications that has increased our understanding of the world (heck, even those pesky God particles) around us.

The city’s knowledge economy is worth more than £1 billion a year and the pioneering work carried out in the labs and science parks up here is, finally, getting the recognition it deserves in this inaugural festival.

It’s a collaboration between the city’s three universities, Liverpool Science Park, the Royal Liverpool University Hospitals and the city’s economic development agency, Liverpool Vision - and it’s hoped to become an annual event, celebrating the best and the brightest city-born innovations (Liverpool played a key role in discoveries as diverse as radio transmission, helicopter technology, IVF, the Higgs Boson particle and cancer treatment…)

Full details of the programme are available at http://www.itsliverpool.com/.

Liverpool Knowledge Festival
13-17 October
Various venues