My Experience of Coventry City of Culture- A Legacy of Facebook Followers | by Alison Manning | Mar, 2023

Way back in May 2018, we had an inspiring talk at my workplace about the delights that lay in wait for us and our city, and the hard work that had gone in to getting that far, after Coventry had been awarded City of Culture 2021 on a euphoric evening just a few months earlier. OK, I should probably admit I’d arranged the talk, as part of a Learning at Work Week, but it was extremely well-received and others shared my enthusiasm. Encouraged to do so, I was one of many who signed up to Coventry City of Culture on social media that day, in eager anticipation of exciting things to come.
Fast forward five years and, with a heavy heart, I have just unsubscribed from Coventry City of Culture’s Facebook and Twitter, after discovering my likes and follows have been listed as “intangible assets” that are being sold off, along with coffee machines, 55 domain names, a few projectors and remarkably little else, after Coventry City of Culture has spiralled into administration. Besides this dismal list, it leaves behind forced redundancies, disgruntled but mobilised creatives, a disappointed population, unpaid debts and lots of unanswered questions, not quite the three-year legacy it had supposedly planned and we had hoped for.
It wasn’t the easiest of starts, delayed by several months due to the blight of the pandemic, but even then it seemed the opening day was shrouded in secrecy, to allegedly prevent dangerous crowds building. Although some events of the day were shown on YouTube, some of the rest of it seemed to be on a ‘catch it if you can’ basis. A motorcade of interesting old vehicles carried a host of musicians, singers and dancers who would stop and perform at irregular intervals. It was a warm day and we were eating in the garden when we heard the sound of passing music. We literally dropped everything and ran to see what was going on, desperate to be part of the action. We saw the cars pass on a neighbouring street, beeping their horns. We took photos. They didn’t stop and we returned to our melted ice cream, hopeful that more exciting things we could actually properly participate in would follow.
This initial, apparently deliberate, lack of communication unfortunately seemed to set the tone for things to come. An infamous brochure only appeared in venues and through people’s letterboxes after the majority of events contained in it had already happened, presumably to low audiences as no one knew about them. It was the grassroots stuff that made City of Culture, most of which sprang up despite and, in some cases, in the face of direct, inexplicable opposition from the official City of Culture trust. Coventry creatives really came into their own, often roused by official obstruction, creating more opportunities for locals who were feeling ignored or sidelined. The official shop won’t take work by local creatives? Let’s form our own space to sell their stuff- the Sitting Rooms of Culture stall in the market was up and running within weeks. There aren’t openings being made for local artists to exhibit their work? The Litten Tree Buildings Showroom encouraged and exhibited work from many local artists, lots of whom had never exhibited before, as well as hosting film festivals and other events. Sadly, neither of these examples are currently still active, due to logistical circumstances beyond their control, but hopefully they will be resurrected at some point.
It was also the grassroots stuff that became the best means of communication, with local Facebook group Sitting Rooms of Culture, originally set up at the start of lockdown, becoming my and hundreds, if not thousands, of other people’s main source of information on City of Culture events. Without people sharing on this group nuggets of information about what was going on and recommendations of events they had managed to get to, knowledge of events, and consequently ticket sales, would have been even lower than the actual levels. With a whopping £12, 776, 000 spent on events and just £487,000 back in ticket sales something went wrong somewhere. It wasn’t just details of events that were shared on the Facebook group though, but also occasional opportunities for local creatives. I was tagged in one of these by someone I hadn’t really met in person, applied and was pleased to be commissioned to write a poem.
So this should have been the start of me benefitting as a local creative from Coventry City of Culture. I certainly benefitted financially, and it was good in that it encouraged me as a poet and boosted my confidence. Thinking about it retrospectively though, I don’t think they had a well-rounded approach to the project and it felt more like tokenism ie “We have paid ten local artists to write poems/prepare music pieces for this, our work here is done.” What would have been nice was some kind of publicity, promotion, encouragement or exposure of our work. It appeared on an app no one knew about and apart from one or two social media posts we were scarcely mentioned, which seems a shame especially as they paid quite a lot for each work. The commission involved writing a poem related to the artwork displayed in empty shop windows in the city centre. The publicity was so bad that one of the artists whose work I had used as an inspiration did not even know about my poem, despite being involved in the same project, till I told her about it. It would not have taken much effort just to print out the works that were poems and stick them in the windows they related to but would have gained us a much wider audience and made our part of the project more of a thing. Or even just a sign in each window telling you that a poem or a song relating to it was available to listen to with a QR code to scan to hear it (though that would have excluded those who don’t use that technology). I guess they weren’t quite sure what their purpose was and perhaps thought they had fulfilled it by commissioning local artists without really using or promoting their work at all. Several people involved in the project had to purely promote it themselves through social media and local radio. I guess some self-promotion was to be expected and it was good in some ways to have something to promote, but some coordinated central promotion would have been much appreciated. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, it was good to be involved. But it perhaps shouldn’t have come as a surprise when a final proposed event for the project was scheduled to take place in London. When this was queried as a suitable location for a Coventry project the organiser simply gave the following reason for the setting: “Because I’m based in London”.
What has gone wrong with the overall management of Coventry City of Culture Trust I do not know. It could be down to mismanagement, incompetence, bringing in outsiders with no knowledge of Coventry- I don’t really know enough to judge. There are some clues in the figures though, with the accounts for the year ending 31 March 2022 showing just £5,563 spent on Community Engagement, compared with an incredible £122,989 spent on Travel and Subsistence- this for an event based entirely in one city, ideally focussed on the local community. We can perhaps glean from this where their priorities lay. Perhaps now, by listing one of their main, if intangible, assets as their social media followers, they have finally realised that their greatest asset all along lay in the people of Coventry, if only they could have fully communicated with, committed to and collaborated with local creatives and the wider Coventry community throughout. Thankfully, especially in the absence of any other tangible legacy, the grassroots of Coventry creatives have mobilised, networked, formed effective online (and sometimes in person) communities. Their current task, which is in process, is the fight to find out what went wrong with Coventry City of Trust, to ensure a thorough investigation takes place, battle for accountability and seek answers to the many unanswered questions. Hopefully lessons can be learned for Bradford City of Culture 2025, and any more chosen cities after that.
Christian family goes in hiding after being cleared of blasphemy

LAHORE, Pakistan — A court in Pakistan granted bail to a Christian falsely charged with blasphemy, but he and his family have separated and gone into hiding amid threats to their lives, sources said.
Haroon Shahzad, 45, was released from Sargodha District Jail on Nov. 15, said his attorney, Aneeqa Maria. Shahzad was charged with blasphemy on June 30 after posting Bible verses on Facebook that infuriated Muslims, causing dozens of Christian families in Chak 49 Shumaali, near Sargodha in Punjab Province, to flee their homes.
Lahore High Court Judge Ali Baqir Najfi granted bail on Nov. 6, but the decision and his release on Nov. 15 were not made public until now due to security fears for his life, Maria said.
Shahzad told Morning Star News by telephone from an undisclosed location that the false accusation has changed his family’s lives forever.
“My family has been on the run from the time I was implicated in this false charge and arrested by the police under mob pressure,” Shahzad told Morning Star News. “My eldest daughter had just started her second year in college, but it’s been more than four months now that she hasn’t been able to return to her institution. My other children are also unable to resume their education as my family is compelled to change their location after 15-20 days as a security precaution.”
Though he was not tortured during incarceration, he said, the pain of being away from his family and thinking about their well-being and safety gave him countless sleepless nights.
“All of this is due to the fact that the complainant, Imran Ladhar, has widely shared my photo on social media and declared me liable for death for alleged blasphemy,” he said in a choked voice. “As soon as Ladhar heard about my bail, he and his accomplices started gathering people in the village and incited them against me and my family. He’s trying his best to ensure that we are never able to go back to the village.”
Shahzad has met with his family only once since his release on bail, and they are unable to return to their village in the foreseeable future, he said.
“We are not together,” he told Morning Star News. “They are living at a relative’s house while I’m taking refuge elsewhere. I don’t know when this agonizing situation will come to an end.”
The Christian said the complainant, said to be a member of Islamist extremist party Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan and also allegedly connected with banned terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, filed the charge because of a grudge. Shahzad said he and his family had obtained valuable government land and allotted it for construction of a church building, and Ladhar and others had filed multiple cases against the allotment and lost all of them after a four-year legal battle.
“Another probable reason for Ladhar’s jealousy could be that we were financially better off than most Christian families of the village,” he said. “I was running a successful paint business in Sargodha city, but that too has shut down due to this case.”
Regarding the social media post, Shahzad said he had no intention of hurting Muslim sentiments by sharing the biblical verse on his Facebook page.
“I posted the verse a week before Eid Al Adha [Feast of the Sacrifice] but I had no idea that it would be used to target me and my family,” he said. “In fact, when I came to know that Ladhar was provoking the villagers against me, I deleted the post and decided to meet the village elders to explain my position.”
The village elders were already influenced by Ladhar and refused to listen to him, Shahzad said.
“I was left with no option but to flee the village when I heard that Ladhar was amassing a mob to attack me,” he said.
Shahzad pleaded with government authorities for justice, saying he should not be punished for sharing a verse from the Bible that in no way constituted blasphemy.
Similar to other cases
Shahzad’s attorney, Maria, told Morning Star News that events in Shahzad’s case were similar to other blasphemy cases filed against Christians.
“Defective investigation, mala fide on the part of the police and complainant, violent protests against the accused persons and threats to them and their families, forcing their displacement from their ancestral areas, have become hallmarks of all blasphemy allegations in Pakistan,” said Maria, head of The Voice Society, a Christian paralegal organization.
She said that the case filed against Shahzad was gross violation of Section 196 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), which states that police cannot register a case under the Section 295-A blasphemy statute against a private citizen without the approval of the provincial government or federal agencies.
Maria added that Shahzad and his family have continued to suffer even though there was no evidence of blasphemy.
“The social stigma attached with a blasphemy accusation will likely have a long-lasting impact on their lives, whereas his accuser, Imran Ladhar, would not have to face any consequence of his false accusation,” she said.
The judge who granted bail noted that Shahzad was charged with blasphemy under Section 295-A, which is a non-cognizable offense, and Section 298, which is bailable. The judge also noted that police had not submitted the forensic report of Shahzad’s cell phone and said evidence was required to prove that the social media was blasphemous, according to Maria.
Bail was set at 100,000 Pakistani rupees (US $350) and two personal sureties, and the judge ordered police to further investigate, she said.
Shahzad, a paint contractor, on June 29 posted on his Facebook page 1 Cor. 10:18-21 regarding food sacrificed to idols, as Muslims were beginning the four-day festival of Eid al-Adha, which involves slaughtering an animal and sharing the meat.
A Muslim villager took a screenshot of the post, sent it to local social media groups and accused Shahzad of likening Muslims to pagans and disrespecting the Abrahamic tradition of animal sacrifice.
Though Shahzad made no comment in the post, inflammatory or otherwise, the situation became tense after Friday prayers when announcements were made from mosque loudspeakers telling people to gather for a protest, family sources previously told Morning Star News.
Fearing violence as mobs grew in the village, most Christian families fled their homes, leaving everything behind.
In a bid to restore order, the police registered a case against Shahzad under Sections 295-A and 298. Section 295-A relates to “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs” and is punishable with imprisonment of up to 10 years and fine, or both. Section 298 prescribes up to one year in prison and a fine, or both, for hurting religious sentiments.
Pakistan ranked seventh on Open Doors’ 2023 World Watch List of the most difficult places to be a Christian, up from eighth the previous year.
Morning Star News is the only independent news service focusing exclusively on the persecution of Christians. The nonprofit’s mission is to provide complete, reliable, even-handed news in order to empower those in the free world to help persecuted Christians, and to encourage persecuted Christians by informing them that they are not alone in their suffering.
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What went wrong with ‘the Metaverse’? An insider’s postmortem

It’s now two years since Facebook changed its name to Meta, ushering in a brief but blazing enthusiasm over “the Metaverse”, a concept from science fiction that suddenly seemed to be the next inevitable leap in technology. For most people in tech, however, the term has since lost its luster, seemingly supplanted by any product with “artificial intelligence” attached to its description.
But the true story of the Metaverse’s rise and fall in public awareness is much more complicated and interesting than simply being the short life cycle of a buzzword — it also reflects a collective failure of both imagination and understanding.
Consider:
The forgotten novel
Ironically, many tech reporters discounted or even ignored the profound influence of Snow Crash on actual working technologists. The founders of Roblox and Epic (creator of Fortnite) among many other developers were directly inspired by the novel. Despite that, Neal Stephenson’s classic cyberpunk tale has often been depicted as if it were an obscure dystopian tome which merely coined the term. As opposed to what it actually did: describe the concept with a biblical specificity that thousands of developers have referenced in their virtual world projects — many of which have already become extremely popular.
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You can see this lack of clarity in many of the mass tech headlines attempting to describe the Metaverse in the wake of Facebook’s name change:
In a widely shared “obituary” to the Metaverse, Business Insider’s Ed Zitron even compounded the confusion still further by inexplicably misattributing the concept to TRON, the original Disney movie from the 80s.
Had the media referenced Snow Crash far more accurately when the buzz began, they’d come away with a much better understanding of why so many technologists are excited by the Metaverse concept — and realize its early incarnation is already gaining strong user traction.
Because in the book, the Metaverse is a vast, immersive virtual world that’s simultaneously accessible by millions of people through highly customizable avatars and powerful experience creation tools that are integrated with the offline world through its virtual economy and external technology. In other words, it’s more or less like Roblox and Fortnite — platforms with many tens of millions of active users.
But then again, the tech media can’t be fully blamed for following Mark Zuckerberg’s lead.
Rather than create a vision for its Metaverse iterating on already successful platforms — Roblox’s 2020 IPO filing even describes itself as the metaverse — Meta’s executive leadership cobbled together a mishmash of disparate products. Most of which, such as remotely working in VR headsets, remain far from proven. According to an internal Blind survey, a majority of Zuckerberg’s own employees say he has not adequately explained what he means by the Metaverse even to them.
Grievous of all, Zuckerberg and his CTO Andrew Bosworth promoted a conception of the Metaverse in which the Quest headset was central. To do so, they had to overlook compelling evidence — raised by senior Microsoft researcher danah boyd at the time of the company acquiring Oculus in 2014 — that females have a high propensity to get nauseous using VR.

Contacted in late 2022 while writing Making a Metaverse That Matters, danah told me no one at Oculus or Meta followed up with her about the research questions she raised. Over the years, I have asked several senior Meta staffers (past and present) about this and have yet to receive an adequate reply. Unsurprisingly, Meta’s Quest 2 VR headset has an estimated install base of only about 20 million units, significantly smaller than the customer count of leading video game consoles. A product that tends to make half the population puke is not exactly destined for the mass market — let alone a reliable base for building the Metaverse.
Ironically, Neal Stephenson himself has frequently insisted that virtual reality is absolutely not a prerequisite for the Metaverse, since flat screens display immersive virtual worlds just fine. But here again, the tech media instead ratified Meta’s flawed VR-centric vision by constantly illustrating articles about the Metaverse with photos of people happily donning headsets to access it — inadvertently setting up a straw man destined to soon go ablaze.
Duct-taped to yet another buzzword
Further sealing the Metaverse hype wave’s fate, it crested around the same time that Web3 and crypto were still enjoying their own euphoria period. This inevitably spawned the “cryptoverse” with platforms like Decentraland and The Sandbox. When the crypto crash came, it was easy to assume the Metaverse was also part of that fall.
But the cryptoverse platforms failed in the same way that other crypto schemes have gone awry: By offering a virtual world as a speculative opportunity, it primarily attracted crypto speculators, not virtual world enthusiasts. By October of 2022, Decentraland was only tracking 7,000 daily active users, game industry analyst Lars Doucet informed me.
“Everybody who is still playing is basically just playing poker,” as Lars put it. “This seems to be a kind of recurring trend in dead-end crypto projects. Kind of an eerie rhyme with left-behind American cities where drugs come in and anyone who is left is strung out at a slot machine parlor or liquor store.”
All this occurred as the rise of generative AI birthed another, shinier buzzword — one that people not well-versed in immersive virtual worlds could better understand.
But as “the Metaverse” receded as a hype totem, a hilarious thing happened: Actual metaverse platforms continued growing. Roblox now counts over 300 million monthly active users, making its population nearly the size of the entire United States; Fortnite had its best usage day in 6 years. Meta continues plodding along but seems to finally be learning from its mistakes — for instance, launching a mobile version of its metaverse platform Horizon Worlds.

Into this mix, a new wave of metaverse platforms is preparing to launch, refreshingly led by seasoned, successful game developers: Raph Koster with Playable Worlds, Jenova Chen with his early, successful forays into metaverse experiences, and Everywhere, a metaverse platform lead developed by a veteran of the Grand Theft Auto franchise.
At some point, everyone in tech who co-signed the “death” of the Metaverse may notice this sustained growth. By then however, the term may no longer require much usage, just as the term “information superhighway” fell away as broadband Internet went mainstream.
Wagner James Au is author of Making a Metaverse That Matters: From Snow Crash & Second Life to A Virtual World Worth Fighting For
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