Delivering a strong and tangible legacy of opportunity
UK City of Culture 2021
Coventry was awarded the status of UK City of Culture 2021 back in December 2017 but saw its start delayed to May 2021 due to the pandemic. Over the past 12 months, some 709 events took place, across all 18 wards of the city. In line with the ‘story of change’, activities and events featured professional artists and creatives alongside community participants.
Early analysis reveals Coventry’s programme saw 389,705 tickets issued for live events with a further estimated audience of 136,916 attending un-ticketed live events across the city. The online audience, so important for the events affected by lockdown, is still growing and is currently estimated at over 516,000 for events created by the City of Culture Trust and its partners.
Major achievements through the year included: The Turner Prize at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum; two summers of performances at Assembly Festival Garden; the establishment of the UK’s first permanent immersive digital gallery, The Reel Store; the UK’s longest drone show, Our Wilder Family for a free audience of over 27,000; and the BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend for 88,000 people.
Coventry – the third holder of the UK City of Culture title – adopted a unique approach of putting ‘co-creation’ at the centre of its programme, valuing local stories and the latent creativity across the city. This deeply rooted way of working, ‘The Coventry Model’, delivered a range of both intimate events and high impact activities to deliver long-lasting social value. Embedding engagement at a hyper-local level, the ‘co-creation’ approach has seen city communities including faith groups, community centres, libraries, schools, community radio stations, the police, and local arts organisations all helping to shape and design the creative programme.
Coventry secured more than £172m of direct investment to support the programme of events, the activities of the Trust, and the major upgrade programme of the city’s public realm and cultural assets.
The volunteering programme, City Hosts, saw 1,515 local people trained as volunteers to give the biggest Coventry welcome to visitors, assisting with queries and wayfinding over a combined 35,913 volunteering hours. The Hosts have become familiar figures on the city’s streets with most survey respondents agreeing they positively improved the experience of visiting the city.
A final evaluation of the UK City of Culture year is due in 2024 – capturing not only the City of Culture year, but its legacy. The final report will also consider audience and impact analysis for the City of Culture affiliate programme developed and delivered with partner organisations. This will be made available on the City of Culture website (now obsolete) as well as the independent Coventry 2021 Evaluation website currently being set-up by both Coventry University and the University of Warwick, to be made available at https://www.coventry21evaluation.info/.
Following the end of the City of Culture year, the Coventry City of Culture Trust will build on successful programmes delivered during 2021 and will continue to commission new activities with cultural, educational and community organisations across the city.
Supporting the creative, cultural and tourism sector
The Council has won £760,000 in funding from the Community Renewal Fund to support the recovery of the city’s creative, cultural and tourism sectors.
The Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership received £19.8 million from the Government’s Getting Building Fund programme. Of the total £19.8m fund, £11.7m were allocated to projects in Coventry.
Projects completed and nearing completion include:
• Visitor Information Pods in Coventry;
• a new Digital Media training centre at Stratford-upon-Avon College;
• the Catalyst project on Abbey Street in Nuneaton Town Centre;
• the Commonwealth Convention Centre at the Coventry Building Society Arena improving the conferencing and exhibition spaces in advance of the Commonwealth Games 2022;
• restorations to St Mary’s Guildhall including conservation and restorations to the 14th century Coventry Tapestry and work to uncover the medieval kitchen in the venue.
Recovery in city centre footfall
The footfall data presents a slightly complicated picture, partly due to the pandemic and the resultant anomalous and unstable trends in footfall. Further future analysis of this data and other new data sources coming online will give a fuller picture of footfall in 2021/22 and how footfall levels changed in Coventry’s year as UK City of Culture. Footfall in Coventry city centre was significantly up in 2021/22 (April 2021-March 2022) compared to the previous 12-month period: 94.7% higher. The fact that it has increased by a lot is unsurprising given that it was so restricted due to national lockdowns during 2020/21; footfall was 63.0% down in 2020/21 compared to the previous year.
Footfall levels across the whole of 2021/22 have not recovered to the 2019/20 levels however, the annual total is 29% lower and Coventry city centre footfall remains lower than pre-pandemic levels. The most significant recovery in footfall occurred at the beginning of this financial year, during April to June 2021 as restrictions eased, in they improved to 36% below the 2019 levels. Since then, increases in footfall have been gradual, up to Q4 (Jan-Mar2022) when they were 27% below 2019 levels.
Looking at the data for separate locations across Coventry city centre, all points of measurement experienced large falls in 2020/21, to a similar extent - and all similarly have seen large increases in 2021/22 to similar degrees. All measured areas remained below levels in 2019/20, there are no parts of the city centre that depart significantly from the trend.
Comparing footfall trends in Coventry city centre to data metrics for other towns and cities gives a mixed picture. The main comparison reported here shows that, for a selection of places where Coventry’s data providers also measure, the average increase in 2021/22 was 59.5%, less than the increase of 94.7% measured in Coventry.
However, data analysed by the Centre for Cities shows a less positive picture for Coventry. It compares all cities in the UK, analysing footfall levels at the end of March 2022 and how they compared to pre lockdown levels in February 2020. It shows that, although all cities experience a sharp drop-in activity because of restrictions, some are seeing it return faster than others. It shows, as our data does, that footfall in Coventry city centre remains lower than pre-lockdown levels, but also that Coventry ranks amongst the worst 10 cities in the UK in this respect, most cities have higher relative footfall levels compared to pre lockdown levels.
HMV’s 100th birthday concert
On 25 August 2021 HMV’s 100th Birthday concert with Ed Sheeran was held at the HMV Empire, Coventry. The music retailer HMV, in partnership with Coventry City Council, also hosted a free livestream of the Centenary Concert at Assembly Festival Garden as part of Coventry’s City of Culture Celebrations.
Godiva Festival 2021
In September thousands enjoyed a fantastic weekend in Coventry as the Godiva Festival returned. Tens of thousands of people flocked to the city’s War Memorial Park to enjoy a weekend full of fantastic live music and family fun in September 2021.
Over 54,000 tickets were sold for the festival, which was making its return after being sadly cancelled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Once again, the festival offered something for all ages, with performances from big names like Craig David presents TS5, Sister Sledge, Supergrass, Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Fun-Lovin’ Criminals, to name but a few, within a diverse music programme.
Festival attendees also enjoyed plenty of fun in the Family Field, with brand new activities like the Actual Reality Arcade and established attractions like the mini petting farm, birds of prey and funfair all proving popular with families.
Festival of Running 2021
On 31 October 2021, the Festival of Running finally hit the streets of Coventry, with over 4,500 runners signed up to take on the Half Marathon or 5K routes around the UK’s City of Culture.
The 5K route saw runners take in the historic Council House, Lady Godiva statue, and some of the city’s historic buildings - while the Half Marathon shared a similar starting route before heading out into leafy countryside lanes up to the highest point before five miles of downhill to the glorious Cathedral finish.
Runners raised tens of thousands of pounds for local, national, and international charities, including the event’s six partner charities: Myton Hospice, Penny Appeal, Coventry Mind, South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust, University Hospital and Zoe’s Place Baby Hospice.
The event was operated by Coventry University Students’ Union (CUSU). CUSU’s Sport and Wellbeing Officer, Elvis Zeiluks, said: “The Festival of Running is an incredible way to get all the city involved in celebrating and enjoying fitness. I am very proud that the festival raises so much money and awareness for local charities and is inclusive for everyone. We have some people who have never run before through to elite runners taking part, and a 2.5k wheelchair race too.
Birmingham Commonwealth Games 2022
As an official Commonwealth Games 2022 host city, in July-August 2022, Coventry hosted Rugby Sevens, Judo, and Wrestling; an athletes’ village at the University of Warwick; and an official Festival Site at the city’s Assembly Festival Gardens.
International Children’s Games 2022
The International Children’s Games will take place between 11-16 August 2022.
The eight sports taking place are; Athletics, Basketball 3-on-3, Basketball, Climbing, Football six-a-side, Swimming, Table Tennis and Tennis.
Events were hosted in a range of venues around Coventry including The Alan Higgs Centre, University of Warwick, Coventry University and Broadgate Square.
Coventry City Council and MLS, as event organisers, worked to deliver the event with city partners including CV Life, the University of Warwick, and Coventry University.
Rugby League World Cup 2022
In November 2021 organisers of the Rugby League World Cup announced the rescheduled dates, including a match in Coventry at the Coventry Building Society Arena on 21 October 2022.
National Collections Centre
The Council is working to creating a new shared collections centre to house the local heritage collections alongside national collections, with aligned research and conservation facilities in the heart of Coventry.
A collaboration between the City Council, Arts Council England, Arts Council Collection, the British Council, Culture Coventry Trust, and Coventry University. This work will create a new, shared, national Collections Centre that will provide state of the arts facilities for the management and research of national and local collections, along with associated educational and learning opportunities.
