HomeFundingProjectsHull 2017 City of Culture

Hull 2017 City of Culture

Hull 2017 Culture Company
Grantholder

Hull’s transformative City of Culture year

The project in numbers

£2.85 million

Grant amount

October 2014

Date awarded

October 2014 – March 2018

Project dates

Hull

Location

In partnership with:
Hull City Council, Absolutely Cultured, University of Hull
Download: Hull Volunteering Report 1 Download: Hull 2017 Case Study Download: Cultural Transformations – the Impact of Hull 2017 City of Culture

Project Detail

In April 2016, Spirit of 2012 award made a significant investment of £2.85 million into Hull 2017 UK City of Culture, making us a principal partner in the programme.

The four main elements of our investment were:

    • a series of curated arts projects rooted in, and developed with, the communities in Hull, including flagship project ‘Land of Green Ginger’
    • contributing to the Hull Volunteering Programme;
    • a Flexible Fund to enable further programming in line with Spirit’s outcomes; and,
    • Funding for the Senior Producer and Intern

Spirit of 2012 was one of the first major funders to commit funding in advance – since Hull, several funders have made earlier commitments to City of Culture teams to allow them to develop their plans properly at an earlier stage.

Spirit supported many projects within the city, including Slung Low’s Flood – a ground-breaking, multi-platform story told across four parts; Square Peg, an extensive disability arts programme delivered by Artlink; Look Up!, a series of large-scale public art works and Land of Green Ginger – ‘acts of wanton wonder’ across the city. Our grant to Hull 2017 Culture Company also invested funds in Hull’s landmark volunteering programme. Across the year, more than 2,500 volunteers worked with the dedicated staff team to deliver an outstanding cultural programme.

The Land of Green Ginger

Seven ‘acts’ across seven sites, these were highly imaginative pieces, each inspired by local stories (old and newly created), taking inspiration from a locally famous unusual street name ‘The Land of Green Ginger’. The activities ranged from a community bonfire where residents could share their dreams for the future, to a nose-moulding workshop in a local shopping centre.

The Hull Daily Mail got involved – reporting on mysterious crates found in vault under the city stamped ‘To Hull: From the Land of Green Ginger’, and teachers received storytelling resources based on the project.

One of the acts was the Longhill Burn: more than 2,500 people took part in what residents said was the first time they could remember the community getting together for “such a big do”. At the event, audience members wrote down answers to the question ‘What gives you hope?’ which were placed on the fire. Longhill is an estate in the North East of Hull, and is one of the poorest areas in the city.

The seventh act and culmination of the project was a giant puppet parade of woodland creatures and magical beasts through the city centre, produced by Mancas. Each resident also received a Land of Green Ginger storybook through the post to commemorate the festival.

 

An electrician’s critique of Unexpected Engagement by Jason Wilsher – Mills

(taken from the Square Peg Evaluation by Armstrong Cameron)

So, we had an electrician in doing some work for us the other day; this was due to some lighting problems. We’d not met him before but he was kind of doing a good job for us. There was some work on the wall and [the finance officer who was in the gallery at the time] said, ‘Are you interested in art?’. He said, ‘This is really interesting – what’s it about?’ so we explained, and he said, ‘I usually think art is shit but I like that because I had to wear callipers as a kid. You never see that – you never see it represented – and it was horrible. I used to get bullied. I’m really glad that it’s art, that it’s up on the wall’.  Then he went back to getting on with his work. This is it – someone who does not engage with art talking about an experience in their past that feels represented; someone who came here to do a job managed to connect on an emotional level.

 

 

Impact & Learning

Key achievements:

  • Over 2800 events, cultural activities, exhibitions and installations across the year – 90%+ of residents engaged with at least one cultural activity
  • 3 in 4 residents said it changed their perception of city for the better
  • +9% increase in cultural confidence (and confidence taking part in non-cultural activities)
  • Two thirds of residents felt that their knowledge of Hull’s history or heritage had increased because of the UK City of Culture
  • 2,400 volunteers, 84,000 shifts and 337000 hours of volunteering. Find out more about our ongoing support for Hull Volunteers.
  • Within the volunteer workforce, 71% agreed or strongly agreed that there had been an improvement in their self-esteem, and 68% that there had been an improvement to their confidence, directly linked to their participation in the year.
  • 92% of Hull and 94% of East Riding residents said volunteers provided a positive representation of the city.
  • Land of Green Ginger inspired pride in place, increased community interest in arts participation and increased connection with local stories
  • The education programme, No Limits, provided moments of inspiration for children of all ages – The Sixteen Thousand Bricks exhibition involved every early years setting and nursery in Hull, and 56,000 school children took part in City of Culture activities.
  • More than 4500 visits to exhibitions at Artlink as part of Square Peg, the disability arts programme, and 1061 attendances at workshops and speaker talks – 86% of the audience did not identify as disabled. Check out pages 31 -33 in their evaluation for a series of vignettes about the diverse ways the exhibitions in the programme created moments of connection and learning.

Key learnings

  • A major event across a whole year provides the opportunity for residents to develop new creative habits. Across the year, the sheer range of experiences open to Hull and East Yorkshire Residents encouraged people to try new things – over half of Hull audiences said they had been introduced to a particular art form for the first time, 95% said it had encouraged them to attend similar events in the future, and 76% that it encouraged them to take more risks in what arts and culture they consumed. This creates more audience demand for varied and high-quality art – which the local cultural sector and its local and national funders then need to serve as part of legacy plans.

 

  • Experience with Hull 2017 was formative for Spirit of 2012’s thinking about major events, particularly where multiple funders are all contributing to achieve place-based outcomes. It informed our inquiry recommendations around demarcated funding for legacy, and clarity over accountability for legacy, and our approach to collaboration with the National Lottery Family.

 

  • It also informed our approach to M&E, helping us think through the practical challenges of getting many projects to collect data in ways that can be aggregated, the responsibility of the bigger evaluation budget of Cities of Culture meaning organisers and evaluators have to give back data and insights to the cultural and community organisations so that they can use on an ongoing basis, and the need to get the balance right between celebratory big numbers and lessons for improvement.
  • Reflecting on Square Peg, Artlink’s then Director Kenn Taylor explained ‘If I could do it again, we’d have done a programme with [fewer] projects overall but having the smaller number of projects with deeper engagement with outcomes on show for longer. It was, however, a great action learning process in trying different things and seeing; what had impact; what was needed; what was popular and what worked within the different things we did, and this will really help shape what Artlink focuses on in future.’

95%

of residents

said it had encouraged them to attend similar events in the future

76%

of residents

said that it encouraged them to take more risks in what arts and culture they consumed

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