Four areas shortlisted for UK City of Culture 2025

Four areas have been shortlisted to be in the running to become the UK City of Culture 2025.

Southampton, Bradford, County Durham and Wrexham County have been approved by the culture secretary Nadine Dorries following recommendations by an independent panel of experts. The award received a record number of bids, with 20 initial applications.

From this, a longlist of eight areas – including Cornwall, Stirling and Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon – each received £40,000 to develop their applications.

All bids were asked to explain how they would use culture to grow and strengthen their local area, as well as how they would use culture to recover from the impact of the Covid pandemic.

“The UK City of Culture competition shows the important role that culture can play in levelling up our towns, cities and rural communities - bringing investment, great events, thousands of tourists, and opportunity for people of all ages and backgrounds,” said the arts minister, Stephen Parkinson, who is also Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay.

Previous title-holders include Derry-Londonderry in 2013 and Hull in 2017.

Coventry was UK City of Culture in 2021, and despite being disrupted by the pandemic, the cultural festival has seen more than £172m invested in funding music concerts, public art displays, the UK’s first permanent immersive digital art gallery, a new children’s play area in the centre of the city, the new Telegraph Hotel and improvements to public transport.

Phil Redmond, the chair of the City of Culture expert advisory panel, said: “Culture can act as a catalyst for community engagement, civic cohesion and a driver for economic and social change as previously seen not just in Derry-Londonderry, Hull and Coventry, but all those other places who went on a journey to develop their own cultural strategy.

“Simply taking part has proved a catalyst in itself. We have had a great longlist to select from, which made the shortlisting difficult, but I am now looking forward to visiting each of the shortlisted places with the panel to witness culture’s catalytic effect in action.”

The UK City of Culture 2025 panel is:

• Phil Redmond, television producer (chair)
• Claire McColgan, director of Culture Liverpool (deputy chair)
• Lynne Best, director of The Fourth Pillar in Belfast (representative for Northern Ireland)
• Nick Capaldi, chief executive of the Arts Council of Wales from 2008 to 2021 (representative for Wales)
• Roberta Doyle, a UK culture sector communications and marketing specialist (representative for Scotland)
• Martyn Henderson, the chief executive officer for the Sports Grounds Safety Authority
• Andrew Barnett, who leads the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in the UK
• Rebecca Matthews, managing director of Glasmuseet Ebeltoft, Denmark’s museum of contemporary international glass art
• Aideen McGinley, a previous member of the DCMS expert advisory panel in the previous two UK City of Culture competitions
• Tateo Nakajima, director at Arup
• Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, the chief executive of UK Music