We want to broaden the conversation about Blackpool’s cultural offer and creative ecosystem by involving the wider community.
A City of Culture bid gives Blackpool the opportunity to ask what culture means here, what it could become, and how people want to engage with and shape it. That conversation has already begun through the Blackpool Cultural Strategy and the development of Creative Blackpool, supported by Arts Council England’s Place Partnership programme. Now we want to build on that momentum and turn ambition into action.
As part of our second-round submission for UK City of Culture bid, Blackpool has been awarded development funding from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. We are allocating a proportion of this money for project grants to help us understand what Blackpool’s residents, communities and businesses want from culture.
We’re inviting organisations, community groups, creatives and businesses to apply with imaginative ways of asking these questions and feeding a wide range of voices into the bid development and conversations around the future of culture in Blackpool over the next ten years.
We’re looking for projects that:
- Ask what culture means in Blackpool and what could it look like here
- How do people want to engage with culture
- How do people want to grow the cultural ecosystem
- Ask what the UK City of Culture title could mean for them
- Help the community understand how they could take part and how the City of Culture title could benefit them
- Help to celebrate and tell the story of Blackpool in our City of Culture bid
