Our Themes
We’ve set the ball rolling by announcing our intention to bid to be the UK City of Culture 2025.
Now we need you.
This is your bid and you can help us unlock the creative talent and opportunities we know exist here on our doorstep.
Tell us what you love about our spectacular coastline with its ancient waterways and beautiful inland landscapes, our ecologically rich and diverse wildlife, and the wide range of English seaside offerings from the beach huts and wild areas of the Norfolk and Suffolk coasts to the seafront splendours of our resorts.
Our Spectacular Bid
We want to celebrate our culture and let everyone know about our festivals, entertainment venues, museums and galleries; our talented musicians, composers, authors, poets, artists, dancers and photographers; our delicious food; our inspirational sporting heroes, our digital innovators and wildlife conservationists; and whatever else makes your heart sing about life here in our special place.
Our bid encompasses the towns of Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft, with their shared history of connections with the sea, as well as a host of other remarkable locations. There is a rich heritage and culture here – both natural and man-made – stretching along the Suffolk coast from Felixstowe, through Aldeburgh, Southwold and northwards to Winterton-on-Sea, passing through coastal resorts and inland market towns, the Broads National Park and areas of outstanding natural beauty.
Our beautiful towns towns are re-establishing themselves and their place in the world – in the renewable energy industry and as places of fertile creativity and cultural distinctiveness – and as we develop our programme, we want you to help us showcase their unique offerings.
The Irresistible Pull
We were formed by the sea. It made us, connected us, carried our influence around the world, and brought and brings people, cultures, ideas and energies to our shores.
The Silver Darlings
Many of our stories are of migration: the first humans crossing Doggerland, silver herring, people, birds. Great Yarmouth & Lowestoft were built on the herring shoals and the trawlers and Scottish herring girls who followed them.
The Blue Space
We celebrate the water – at sea, in ports and tributaries that carried our forebears inland to places like Sutton Hoo. We have waterways longer than Venice or Amsterdam, flotillas & regattas, community/artist boatbuilders, the sunrise before anywhere else in England, and festivals of fire and light. But we also enjoy the quiet healing power that water and our landscapes bring.
The Landscape That Ate My Heart
We have glorious beaches, inspirational landscapes, sweeping coastlines and rich wildlife. With the Broads National Park, Suffolk Wildlife Trust and others, our landscape will become the galleries and halls for the work of contemporary artists, writers, composers, musicians, performers.
Listen to your Heart and Celebrate
Unbeatable entertainment – Great Yarmouth is the home of circus and Lowestoft the spectacular celebration of First Light. Our programme will celebrate music, street performance, comedy, theatre – and our beaches will see events like no other in the country for scale and brilliance, befitting for the coast generating the UK’s future energy!
