UK City of Culture 2025: County Durham’s Bid

Nigel Huddleston Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2022 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Nigel Huddleston)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford, although it is very rare for us to be in the same room without talking football—though I suppose that I just have.

I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) for securing this debate. He is a great advocate for his constituency. More broadly, he is an able champion for County Durham and the north-east. He is understandably delighted that Durham was recently shortlisted in what has proved to be a very competitive field for the sought-after title of UK city of culture 2025. I also thank the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for their contributions today. We have many great advocates here, including my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden). He is unable to speak, because he is my Parliamentary Private Secretary, but I am sure that he agrees with everything that has been said today.

I would briefly like to talk about the UK city of culture programme before turning to Durham’s bid. Delivered by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport in collaboration with the devolved Administrations, the UK city of culture is a quadrennial competition that supports culture-led regeneration to drive economic growth and attract investment. It is a key part of the Department’s broader offer to level up. The UK city of culture competition promotes culture as a catalyst for change. Enhancing culture’s role in the heart of our communities, the competition seeks to strengthen relationships and creative partnerships, ultimately making places more attractive to visit, live and work in, which we have heard about today.

It is worth reflecting on some of the benefits brought to previous winners of the competition. Coventry, the current UK city of culture, has delivered an ambitious year-long programme that is already transforming the city and supporting its citizens. With a community-led approach, Coventry City of Culture Trust has secured remarkable investment in local arts and community organisations. For example, despite having to delay its programme by six months due to the pandemic, Coventry has seen more than £172 million invested in the likes of concerts, public art displays and new children’s play areas in the city. There have been so many benefits.

Of course, previous cities of culture have also seen huge benefits. Before Coventry took the title, the 2017 winner, Hull, saw 5.3 million people visiting more than 2,800 events, and the 2013 winner, Derry/Londonderry, benefited from more than £150 million of public and private sector investment, so there is a huge upside to being selected. The benefits speak for themselves and explain why there is such interest, with a record 20 initial applicants expressing interest in the 2025 competition. After a long-list stage, Durham, along with three other locations—Bradford, Southampton, and Wrexham—was approved by the Secretary of State to make the shortlist for 2025. The panel chaired by Sir Phil Redmond, which is the next stage of the competition, will be visiting the four shortlisted places. We hope that the winner will be announced in Coventry at the end of May, and further assessment is going on at the moment.

I absolutely recognise that Durham’s bid is being delivered by Durham County Council, with Durham University acting as the principal partner on behalf of Culture Durham. Durham is home to world-famous heritage attractions, many of which we have heard about today. It is a very broad definition of heritage, involving music, arts, culture, historic sites and, indeed, food—my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland made me very hungry with her speech. Of course, Durham is also surrounded by beautiful landscapes, and many of its communities are built on proud industrial foundations. This culture and heritage is at the heart of its bid, and rightly so.

Talking about being at the heart of things, the comment from my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield was very telling. He said that, to the surprise of many, Durham is at the centre of Great Britain, although I think my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) claims that his constituency is absolutely at the centre. That always surprises people who do not wander north of Watford Gap too often.

As stated on its website, Durham’s bid aims to bring people and communities together, providing the opportunity to have a significant and sustained impact on the region’s economy. As hon. Members have outlined, there are significant plans for investment, a great upside and a considerable multiplier effect in the bid that is being proposed. Durham’s 2025 designation as UK city of culture would create an estimated 2,500 additional jobs in the creative industries alone, and would aim to attract more than 16 million visitors to the region. I have spoken on many occasions to my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield about the importance of tourism in the region and, in my other role as tourism Minister, that is something that is close to my heart. We have seen in previous competitions that being chosen as the UK city of culture really does deliver.

Importantly, even bids that have failed have nevertheless ended up getting considerable success from going through the process, because they then have a shovel-ready project, with business plans and business cases being built that can be used to apply for other funds, including heritage funds, Arts Council England funds and so on. I am absolutely confident that, having got as far as it has at the moment, Durham will see more value being delivered,

DCMS wants all bidders to take advantage of the bidding process. This was the first time that the eight long-listed places received a £40,000 grant to help support their applications. I know that the money is being used very intelligently and will therefore help, regardless of whether the bids win or lose—I hear the arguments about winning—and I hope that it will have helped with strengthening some of them.

I want to respond positively to the invitation to visit Durham that my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield has given me previously, and which I have heard again today from my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland. I absolutely commit to doing so, and we will sort that out in the diary, because there is so much in the region to see and do across the DCMS portfolios. I would like to finish by applauding the Durham bid team’s dedication and expressing my sincere appreciation for all their hard work so far. I wish Durham, and of course all the shortlisted places, the very best of luck in the final stages of the competition.

Question put and agreed to.