Bed-In at the Bluecoat: Call for Entries!
This Autumn will mark what would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday and also the 30th anniversary of his death. In honour of this, Liverpool City Council is hosting a John Lennon Tribute Season. In celebration of one of Liverpool’s most admired figures, the Bluecoat is hosting a Bed-In between the 9th October (Lennon’s birthday) and the 9th December (the UK anniversary of his death).
We want to pay homage to one of the actions that John Lennon and Yoko Ono carried out in 1969 immediately after they were married. Their week long bed-ins for peace, staged first in Amsterdam then in Montreal, were expressions of non-violent protest against war. The song ‘Give Peace a Chance’ was sung for the first time by those who happened to be in the hotel room for the Montreal bed-in. The Bluecoat Bed-In follows in this tradition of non-violent action for a better world.
(Bryan Biggs, Artistic Director, The Bluecoat)
Requiring 62 exciting and innovative peace protests, the Bluecoat are calling for entrants to contribute inspired ideas. There are no rules to abide by should you wish to make a proposal; instead, your interpretation of the perfect anti-violent peace protest will be welcomed and appreciated. Don’t be fooled into thinking that this project is just for artistic types, either. Every single type of person is required to ensure that the protest is varied and to engage all kinds of different people. In particular, the Bluecoat is eager to recruit scientifically slanted Bed-In proposals, or perhaps more logical and calculated ideas. Their organisation is home to an enormous array of creative individuals, so something to completely contrast with those notions would be the ideal way to form a wide-ranging scale of protests.
Bed-In has been endorsed by Yoko Ono. She has maintained a warm relationship with the Bluecoat, where she performed in 1967 and again in 2008, and the city of Liverpool:
I think it’s wonderful that they will be doing Bed-In … There should be many lively discussion (sic) with the visitors of the bed and the couple in the bed, just like there were at the time John and I did it. There is much to discuss in terms of War and Peace now.
If you think you have what it takes to contribute to an amazing celebration of the man who is one quarter of the band who are perhaps one of the most synonymous entity with that of the city of Liverpool, e-mail bed-in@thebluecoat.org.uk for an application form.
