Welcome to The Filter^

The Filter^ endeavours to be relevant and insightful for the expert, and yet accessible and stimulating for the interested amateur.

"The Filter ... is turning out to be an excellent group blog. Highly recommended."
-- Tim Worstall -> (Editor of "2005:Blogged")

The Filter^ Biography:

The Filter^ was created in a Birkenhead chippy, in January 2004. Stephen Lai and Anthony Evans were both recent graduates from the University of Liverpool, and wanted to present interesting and accessible academic ideas to a wider audience. Thomas Conolly joined soon after, ensuring a balanced triumverate of global outposts.

The Filter^ REVIEW was launched in July 2004 as an assembly of cultural essays. Andrew Mellor joined us to review opera and music, and Matthew Whitfield helps promote the importance of good architecture. Our sister site is restricted to reviews of live events, and has received recognition as a legitimate forum for arts criticism.

In August 2005 The Filter^ decided to expand it’s influence by offering five distinct sections: economics, architecture, music, literature and sport. Whitfield and Mellor crossed over from the REVIEW, and James Bainbridge was enlisted as resident literate.

The common thread throughout The Filter^ is that all authors have been educated in the city of Liverpool, and now stand at the dawn of careers creating and diffusing the ideas discussed on this platform. We don't know if there's a unifying theme - we are friends, but argue - and perhaps Matthew sums it all up best:

What excites me is the thought that collaboration like this could generate something wonderful, where our individual posts on arts, culture and everything could add up to something recognisably ‘Filter^’ in its voice.  I don’t know what that voice could be yet, and that’s why I’m excited.

You can direct general emails to anthonyjevans@gmail.com

About The Filter^ Authors:

Anthony Evans is an economics lecturer at a top ranked business school. His background is in Austrian economics but also takes an interest in institutional and cultural approaches to what he calls "Constitutional Management" (for more see his personal website).

Upon graduating from the University of Liverpool he spent a year working at Swiss Life (UK) and coaching kids soccer full time. He is an Evertonian, and lives in Hertfordshire with his wife.

Thomas Conolly lives in South Manchester where he is training to be an English teacher. His interests are music, travel and the novels of Bernard Malamud.

After spending half of his life living in England and working for various overblown companies, Stephen Lai now runs a small manufacturing/construction company in Hong Kong. works for a large charitable organisation that specialises in creating poverty and addiction.  He is really confused by the left/right demarcation in Hong Kong and does not hold on to the handrail while using the escalator.

Matthew Whitfield is currently working on a PhD in architectural history at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has lived in Liverpool all his life, a city he at once loves and is exasperated by.  Whilst working for the National Trust he was the first curator of Mendips (the childhood home of John Lennon), and has also worked for a contemporary architecture gallery. Matthew fears that as possibly the most left-wing person The National Trust has ever employed, his boundless enthusiasm for quality modern design coupled with a genuine love of the best of historic architecture makes him an intellectual pariah.
He is an inventive chef who buys local farm produce, and takes a keen interest in UK politics. Both these interests clash gloriously when he chops vegetables, listening to Radio 4 - a habit he enjoys in his open, social kitchen. Although a historian by training, Matthew's enthusiasm for contemporary streams of communication keep his focus crisply on the relevence of good design.

James Bainbridge is an editor of 'The Reader' magazine. He is currently
working on a PhD on the early nineteenth century poet George Crabbe, at The
University of Liverpool. He lives in a marvellous flat which is admired by
all who see it. One day he dreams to go on Stars in Their Eyes, as himself.

Andrew Mellor is from Plymouth in Devon, but has lived in St Albans, Milton Keynes, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester and London. He founded chamber choir LSC in 2001, a group which has grown from humble beginnings as a student society to a critically acclaimmed ensemble made up of talented professional and amateur singers from throughout the UK. LSC aims to challenge pre-concieved ideas about choirs, and made its inaugural international tour in 2005, in partnership with The Filter^.

Andrew is currently in the employment of the London Philharmonic Orchestra where he regularly contributes to concert programmes as a note writer and as writer of the regular From the Platform feature. Outside work he writes on a freelance basis for other publications and organisations including The Filter^, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, whilst running LSC and renovating his flat in Brixton's inimitable Tudor Close.