Eurovision: Hope and Joy in Liverpool

Posted on: 17 April 2023 by Dr Gemma Ahearne & Professor Lucy Easthope in Blog

With Eurovision soon coming to Liverpool, Criminologist Dr Gemma Ahearne and Disaster and Emergency Planner Professor Lucy Easthope discuss the importance of the event to the city in the post-pandemic period.

As two Birkenhead girls, who love our music, we are delighted that Eurovision is coming to Liverpool in May. The excitement is already building.

As a Criminologist, and a Disaster and Emergency Planner, we know that this event represents a key moment in the pandemic recovery period, and is a key symbolic shift in moving forward from such a traumatic period.

People need people, and they need hope.

The UK approach to the pandemic globally was at odds with much of the literature and the planned approach - it was anti-human. Contrary to much belief, the pandemic was extensively planned for. In both of our respective disciplines, we understand the value of acknowledging a range of competing and conflicting risks and harms. There are no easy answers and there are always trade-offs.

Instead of heeding to the decades’ long work of the planners, we instead took a criminal justice lens to a public health crisis. This used criminalisation and shame. We are delighted to see the excellent work of the Wellcome Trust Shame and Medicine project.

It is crucial that the communications around Eurovision balance both the joy and the hope of the event with a genuine need to fully understand why these events are important in the post disaster landscape.

After so long being kept apart, and with so many people suffering grief and loss, this event will have a spiritual quality. Young people in particular have suffered immense harm during the last three years. We need this togetherness, laughter, music, flamboyance. This is our resistance. There will be a fierce sense of intense intimacy during the event.

In Lucy’s lifetime as a disaster and emergency planner, she talks of brief glimpses of true joy within the complicated rebuild and the hard work of recovering. This has not been fully acknowledged yet as the next phase of life inside the long tail of a pandemic, with continued attempts to play down what this has meant for all of us.

Events held in the aftermath of disaster have a fragile quality. Our social contracts were broken during lockdowns, and some people will remain fearful and cautious of crowds. We are all healing.

Eurovision simultaneously combines the loftiest of ideals - world peace, post war with the frothiest of fun. Its wackiness is what the world needs more than ever. Liverpool as a city is made for this moment.

Emergency planning for the event itself will be intensive and exhausting. For all the reasons stated above and so many more, it is essential that it goes smoothly.
Our thoughts are with all planners, and all teams on the ground ensuring that we all stay safe. Let the party begin!

About the Authors

Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology is a Lecturer in Criminology, School of Law and Social Justice, University of Liverpool. Gemma is interested in gendered harms and exploitation, competing and conflicting risks, stigma and moralising discourses. Gemma is Faculty Lead for Community and Belonging in HSS, and Deputy Director of Education in the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology. Gemma is on twitter @princessjack.

Professor Lucy Easthope is a UK expert and advisor on emergency planning and recovery.  She is a Professor in Practice of Risk and Hazard at the University of Durham, and co-founder of the After Disaster Network at the university. She is also a Professor in Mass Fatalities and Pandemics at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath and a research affiliate at the Joint Centre for Disaster Research at Massey University. Lucy is on twitter @LucyGoBag.

Lucy’s Sunday Times bestseller ‘When The Dust Settles’ is available at The Guardian Bookshop. 

Lucy’s latest edited collection ‘When This is Over’: Reflections on an Unequal Pandemic’ is available at Policy Press.