'We need this, we want this… and we've got to win this!' - Portsmouth shows its passion for City of Culture bid
GEMMA Nichols believes the passionate people of Portsmouth are ready, willing and able to take the crown of UK’s City of Culture.
As the CEO of Portsmouth Creates, which champions the city's creative and cultural sector, she is helping to spearhead the bid for the 2029 crown. Gemma brings with her the extensive experience of working for Culture Liverpool after it was crowned European Capital of Culture in 2008 and working on Southampton's 2025 bid which was eventually pipped by Bradford.
Here she tells The News about the amazing response from people across the city, why it is vital these voices are heard and what it would mean for Portsmouth to seize the prize, which comes with £10m in cultural funding.
‘HAVING lived in Liverpool after it was European Capital of Culture I saw a huge transformation of the city - you could see it from the infrastructure, the community connections and from being a place that was put on the global cultural map without losing its sense of identity.
It was great to see that first hand and that's why I think this is a really big opportunity for Portsmouth because, like Liverpool, there's an opportunity for us to really make our mark.
What I love about Portsmouth is the fact that we just roll our sleeves up and get on with it.
So I think that that drive from the community has just been phenomenal.
An appetite for significant change
There's a real appetite to see a significant change in the city and something like being UK City of Culture - and with this comes a £10m prize - is huge. We need to be on the map. Portsmouth deserves to be front and centre.The investment will be hugely appreciated and go very, very far but I think that being recognised as a dynamic, innovative place is so important.
Since we announced our intention to bid I’ve been left feeling quite emotional because I couldn't believe how passionate people were about this. We very quickly pulled together a community photoshoot to show our strength and asked people to turn up one evening at the Spinnaker Tower. I thought there'd be about 20 or 30, so when we had more than 100 people turn up, it was really heart-warming and also gob-smacking in terms of the appetite people had to back the bid.
Since then we've pulled together more than 20 different working groups covering everything from business to performing arts, visual arts, music, climate, education, health. We really wanted to work with people across the full make-up of the city, to understand what the opportunities and the barriers are around Portsmouth and how this impacts on our potential of becoming UK City of Culture.
We've also been doing a number of community consultations and listening to as many voices as we can. As we move into the new year, there will be more consultations, more working groups, a public survey and other opportunities for people to feed into the process. When we hopefully make the Longlist, we will go deeper into those conversations and work further across the city so we make sure that everybody's voice has been heard.
We have a real story to tell
It's then about how we harness those voices, articulating them into the themes of the bid, and taking them forward to the judging panel and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, who will be looking for a place that can really tell its story. We know as a city that we've got some challenges in terms of levels of deprivation, poor health outcomes, with many being impacted by the cost of living. But what they want to see is how you use culture as a mechanism to address some of these challenges that without losing the identity of what makes us a city.
We know for many people the word ‘culture’ turns them off. Somebody asked me the other day what are you going to define as culture? But that’s not up to the likes of me, that's up to the city.
For me, I think of things like Fratton Park. Every Saturday when there's a game on that is a massive cultural heartbeat of the city _ thousands upon thousands of people flooding in through those turnstiles, singing, coming together, uniting for a passion. That 100% is culture.
The food you go and eat down Albert Road, Palmerston Road or wherever you may choose in the city. That is culture. It's a cultural experience. Go into the library, get a book. That's a cultural experience. Picking up a magazine, popping your telly on and watching Netflix. All of these pieces, these everyday things that we don't think of as cultural, are. So everybody is engaged in culture in some way. They just don't quite know it yet. And I think Portsmouth has got a really unique culture in terms of its everyday culture. Yes, we've got some fantastic galleries and we've got some fantastic museums. Our job is to unlock that and make it more accessible for people to get involved and make sure that they do feel like this bid is for them. Because culture is for everyone.
‘We need this, we want this… and we've got to win this!’
Having been involved with previous competitions I feel the process we have been through so far just feels different. It's joined up, it's passionate and there's a real momentum growing. We're not actively screaming from the rooftops about the bid at the moment, but everybody we speak to feels the same - we need this, we want this… and we've got to win this!
The passion and the drive that’s around is exceptional with a really strong message coming out from lots of different locations, organisations and individuals. The bid shouldn't be a strategy delivered by one organisation like Portsmouth Creates or the city council.
This is for the city to drive and decide what they want. When I talk about Portsmouth's ambition, it's to unite the city as one to deliver our bid.’
Make your voice heard
PORTSMOUTH’S initial expression of interest to be City of Culture 2029 has to be in by February 8. From the entries, a shortlist will be announced in March. Portsmouth Creates want to involve as many voices as possible in the bid so if you want to have your say email [email protected]