Hello and welcome to the very first Sunderland 2021 Blog! Over the next 12 months we will be asking lots of different people involved in Sunderland's bid to be UK City of Culture 2021 to write short articles sharing their ideas about our city, our community, our cultural scene and the development of our bid to be UK City of Culture 2021. Personal or political, provocative or poetic, pithy or ponderous we hope this blog will form a record of what we anticipate will be an exciting, possibly exhausting and undoubtedly challenging roller-coaster of a year.
For our first blog, I wanted to share my thoughts on my first couple of weeks working as the Bid Director on Sunderland 2021. On 9th March we held our first consultation event at Sunderland’s historic Museum and Winter Gardens. The energy and ambition in the room was palpable. There was so much optimism and enthusiasm for the bid and the city as a whole. I was thrilled that so many people gave their time to come and talk about why Sunderland should be UK City of Culture 2021. Our very talented Sunderland film maker Robert Carr was on hand to document people’s answers to that question and you can see what their responses were here:
Another highlight of my first couple of weeks was a trip to Sunderland Minster to see Nicholas Pope’s Yahweh and the Seraphim and then to Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art in Fawcett Street to see Baldock, Pope, Zahle. I was blown away by Yahweh and the Seraphim at the Minster – extraordinary bold curation and also breathtakingly beautiful. I loved The Conundrum of the Chalices of the Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Virtues which was a partnership between Nicholas Pope and the National Glass Centres’ James Maskry. The whole project is an impressive collaboration between different artists and organisations from the city and beyond. So hats off to NGCA! I encourage you all to go see it if you haven’t already.
Last Wednesday Jude Kelly (Artistic Director of Southbank Centre) and Sue Hoyle (Director of The Clore Leadership Programme) came to talk to the Sunderland Cultural Partnership. Their talks really struck a chord with what we are trying to do here in Sunderland. Jude Kelly talked eloquently about her passion for ensuring everyone has a rich cultural life, her commitment to ‘art for the many, not for the few’ and told us about projects that inspire her from across the world.
So after my first couple of weeks I’d say that our city is ambitious, brave and collaborative – and we have the support and backing of some very inspirational friends from further afield . Not a bad place to start.
Rebecca Ball
30th March 2016
