UK Capital of Culture

What is the UK Capital of Culture?

UK Capital of Culture is a competition to select one UK city every four years to be the focus of UK cultural celebrations and to profile the country’s best art and culture to the world over the course of a year. Designed to capitalize on the success of Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture year in 2008, the UK City of Culture status will begin in 2013.

It's a competative process that you have to bid for. In the first round, 29 places expressed an interest in being the UK’s first City of Culture. Fourteen places went on to submit a bid for the honour at the end of December – including Durham, Southend, Swansea and Ipswich.

Norwich makes the final four

The final short list of four was announced on March 24th and Norwich was among those listed! Writers’ Centre Norwich has been at the centre of the planning and development of the bid and we’re very excited about the prospect of winning!

What would the status mean for the winning city?

The winning city will become a focus for national attention that year and will host high-profile media events including the Turner Prize, BBC Sports Personality of the Year, The Brits and the RIBA Stirling Prize as part of their year in the spotlight.

However, the main programme of the year will be for the residents of and visitors to the city. Each city has had to put together a programme that shows ambition, excellence and strong backing from all partners across the city. The successful city can expect to see economic and social benefits flow in, leaving a lasting legacy for locals and visitors alike.

So why Norwich?

Who outside of Norwich knows the following?

• Norwich has been a city since 1194 and still has 1500 listed buildings within the city
walls, many of which are re-used for contemporary purposes including 32 medieval
churches over half of which are arts venues. We have a long history of reusing and
modifying heritage assets to be fit for modern life.

• The city is home to the headquarters of fifty national and regional companies including
Aviva, Virgin Money, Targetfollow and KLM.

• It is a visitor destination, attracting 5million visitors each year and is in the top ten of
UK shopping destinations with a high proportion (almost half) of independent specialist and artisan shops.

• People in Norwich spend more per head of population on culture that anywhere else in the UK and we have national strengths in the creative industries, media and broadcasting sectors.

• We have a world-class University in UEA with its spin off Research Park, Life Sciences
Centre and Climatic Research Institute which excel in food research, genetics, environmental science and life sciences.

• We are home to Norwich University College of the Arts which is at the cutting edge of new developments in the arts and creative industries including in animation and games design.

• The city has a Millennium Landmark building that houses the most used library in the UK, the regional headquarters of the BBC, the Tourist Information Centre and a number of life-long learning open access shops.

What is Our Vision?

The artist Joseph Beuys said “The true capital of the world is the human ability for creativity, freedom and self-determination.”

If the major conflicts of the last millennium were between nations over territory and religion, the major potential conflict of this millennium is between mankind and the natural world.

As UK City of Culture 2013, Norwich will explore, interrogate and celebrate the human capacity to engage with, describe and change our world for the better. We will make Norwich a crucible for experiment, play and debate about how to live creatively and sustainably in the 21st Century.

Thanks to native and internationally fostered talents, we do not believe that we are powerless in the face of this conflict – we believe that everyone can make a contribution to the debate and that the nature of our individual contributions is characterised by our capacity to be creative, innovative and self-determining.

What Does That Mean?

If we win, Norwich will host a year long programme of amazing art and culture that will involve every single resident in the city and provide opportunities to volunteer, work, gain skills and experience something new.  

The Norwich UK City of Culture bid will engage world-leading artists, nationally recognised experts, local communities and the existing and visiting populations of the city to increase our ‘human capital’ in ways that will enrich us all. Together we will open up the city and its venues and institutions to the world, bring our residents from the locality into the heart of the city, invigorate their neighbourhoods, share the value of what we have and what we can achieve together with creativity and create a vision across the year that will describe a world leading model of sustainable and creative city living for the digital age

For the city, we aim

• To engage people in an inspirational year long programme of activity that will raise
aspirations and offer access to cultural excellence for all

• To use exposure to culture and creativity to improve educational attainment and
increase the skills of local people

• To take ‘enterprise-ready’ Norwich over the tipping point of the UK knowledge
Economy and make us a recognized national and international centre of excellence in the Creative Industries

• To cultivate the existing excellent cultural offer of the city and nurture the local cultural
ecology and cultural production which needs wider exposure and an improved
national and international profile.

• To improve the perception of Norwich by building on its existing identity as a cultural
city - locally, nationally and internationally and promoting it widely and aggressively,
involving all citizens by building civic pride

Nationally, we aim to

• Build on the work of Liverpool and further enhance the UK as a cultural destination for those travelling from outside the country

• Provide a model for the future for medium sized UK cities who want to drive social
and economic change through culture and creativity

Internationally, we intend to

• Promote Norwich and Norfolk as places of creativity, green-living and healthy values
with a European face and international aspirations

What Next?

Join up to the Make Norwich UK City of Culture Facebook page and support our bid! We put the final bid in at the end of May and we’ll find out who’s won in the summer!