7. What’s in a Name?

I’ve found myself circling back to something deceptively simple: the name of this so-called future organisation.

Up to now, I’ve been referring to it as “the organisation”, “the body”, or “the CIO”. Practical, yes. But also oddly abstract. The more detailed the thinking becomes, the stranger it feels to keep describing something that is starting to take shape without giving it a name.

Naming is not branding in the superficial sense. It’s not about a logo, a colour palette or a clever strapline. A name is the beginning of identity. It sets tone. It signals intent. It shapes how something is understood, trusted and remembered. It becomes the foundation on which everything else is built: language, values, behaviour and ambition.

I’ve written before about brand being far more than visual identity, and it’s an area of my own professional expertise. Over the years, I’ve worked on the development and repositioning of brands for both small organisations and large-scale cultural institutions. At its best, a brand is a shared understanding of purpose and personality. It helps people quickly grasp what something is, who it’s for, and why it exists. For an organisation that would need to earn trust, bring people together and operate across a wide and sometimes fragmented ecology, that clarity really matters.

So I’ve been thinking carefully about what a name would need to do. It needed to feel rooted in Liverpool and the wider City Region, without being parochial. It needed to hold meaning, not just sound good. It needed to allow space for growth, evolution and ambition. And it needed to support the kind of tone the organisation would aspire to: open, generous, forward-looking and confident without being overbearing.

I’ve been brainstorming hundreds of possibilities. I’ve had post-it notes all over the walls in my office. Words that spoke about movement, connection, development, culture and place. Some were too literal. Some felt institutional. Some felt borrowed. Many were discarded quickly. A few lingered but one name kept coming back.

Liverpool has always been a city shaped by water. The river brought ships, stories, people and rhythm from every corner of the world. It carried pain, pride and possibility. It connected the city not just to trade, but to culture, creativity and change. Dance, like water, is movement and connection. It flows between people. It carries stories. It transforms spaces and lives.

When shaping a name for a new dance development organisation, I feel it has to be something that resonated deeply with the city’s past, reflected its present, and looked confidently to its future. The answer, in the end, was close to home and that being ‘WAVES’.

WAVES speaks to energy, rhythm and forward movement. It suggests momentum rather than stasis, connection rather than isolation.

Waves are collective by nature. They gather force, travel outward and leave change behind them. They don’t belong to one person or one place.

As a name, WAVES captures the essence of what this organisation would exist to do: restart, reconnect and reimagine dance across Liverpool and the City Region. It suggests openness and collaboration. It allows space for diversity of practice, people and scale. It feels active rather than administrative.

It also creates room to think beyond the immediate.

This naming isn’t about locking something down prematurely. I’ve spent days working through options, and this one feels right. Naming matters. It helps an idea feel real, gives people something to respond to, question and build around.

So, for now, WAVES it is…