Liverpool’s Bold Street Coffee will feature work by five artists from a range of diverse backgrounds in the week of the 15th anniversary of the racist murder of Anthony Walker. Tony McDonough reports

Liverpool coffee shop Bold Street Coffee is using its gallery space for a new exhibition which coincides with the 15th anniversary of the racist murder of Anthony Walker.

Centred around equality and inclusion, Ain’t No Time To Hate begins on Thursday, July 30, and will feature works by five artists from a range of diverse backgrounds, who will also receive some donations during this time of economic uncertainty. 

It is launched in the week the BBC screened a dramatisation of the murder of Anthony Walker, who was killed in Huyton in Merseyside in a racially-motivated attack on July 29, 2005. The drama, called Anthony, was penned by Liverpool TV writer Jimmy McGovern.

The exhibition also comes just weeks after the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police in the US sparked a wave of protests around the world and propelled the Black Lives Matter campaign into the public consciousness.

The Bold Street Coffee exhibition will also feature a poignant piece of poetry from Anthony’s sister and vice-president of the Anthony Walker Foundation, Dominique Walker. Proceeds will go to the Anthony Walker Foundation.

Unveiling the exhibition from 8am on Thursday, Bold Street Coffee is inviting the public to come and view the artwork and enjoy a coffee, beer or glass of wine from 6-9pm – with social distancing adhered to at all times. The artists include:

• Zak Grant, a Liverpool-based photographer who created a project called Why Black Lives Matter based on the frustration of seeing the #BlackoutTuesday hashtag and feeling that it totally missed the mark on addressing the kind of struggles the BAME community face on a daily basis.
• Tiffany Baker is a Chicago-born, Brooklyn-based visual artist  who turns life experiences into emotive visual expressions that re-imagine trauma, embed messages of connection, and celebrate her identity as a black woman.
• Ab Badwi is of mixed heritage, with Yemeni and Scottish/English roots. He lived his younger life in Toxteth, Liverpool, living on Hatherly Street in the heart of Toxteth, where he recalls his most vivid memories of racism, poverty, hardship, love and homeless people on the streets whilst growing up.
• Daniel Mark Welsh is a Manchester-based artist and his work mainly figurative, he works in mixed- mediums; both on paper and canvas.
• Jonathan Turton, a Liverpool-based photographer who organised and collated the Ain’t No Time To Hate exhibition, endeavours to champion marginalised groups through his work.

Nick Thomas, co-owner of Bold Street Coffee, said: “Over the past year, we have seen the emergence of a global stance against all forms of racism and inequality, focusing in part around the Black Lives Matter campaign.

“There is no place for inequality of any type in our society, and we want to use our space and voice in the coffee shop to enforce our ethos of inclusion, equality and community, for the foreseeable future. 

“Being able to support the Anthony Walker Foundation and having the charity as a partner is very significant and we really want to raise the foundation’s profile and support the work in which the team does in any way that we possibly can.”