Since its inception in 2009, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport-led designation of UK City of Culture status – awarded successively to Derry (2013), Hull (2017), Coventry (2021) and Bradford (2025) – has offered a shimmering promise on the horizon for cultural transformation and attainment of positive and lasting change.
Each city approached the project differently, but a common thread runs through them: the opportunity for museums to help shape a sustainable cultural legacy.
In Hull, the programme attracted more than five million attendances, and museums, including the Ferens Art Gallery and Hull Maritime Museum, experienced record footfall. Similarly, in Derry the Tower Museum and the Museum of Free Derry played vital roles in telling the city’s complex story, contributing to the wider narrative of reconciliation and identity.
In Coventry, the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum’s Coventry Moves project exemplified how museums, even remotely, can become spaces for dialogue, inclusion and digital innovation.
Bidding for UK City of Culture status can be a bold strategic move and comes with political sensitivities – particularly at a time when local authority budgets are under significant pressure. Bradford Metropolitan District Council invested more than £1m on its bid, which inevitably came with high expectations for job creation and long-term investment for the cultural sector.
This ambitious vision should be applauded as a powerful demonstration of confidence in culture-led regeneration amid ongoing local authority austerity. The return on investment has been unquestionably worthwhile, evidenced by the government’s commitment of £20m towards a total programme cost estimated at £40m.
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Bradford 2025 shaped up to be a vibrant and inclusive celebration of creativity and community spirit, with a rich cultural heritage and creative energy central to an opportunity to reframe the city’s narrative.
Now it has closed, museums and galleries have rightfully been credited with defining a programme with an impressive line-up of festivals, exhibitions, events and installations that have helped shape the city’s theme of Our Time, Our Place.
From the reopening of the Peace Museum and the National Science and Media Museum to the Brontë Parsonage’s Wandering Imaginations collection of fantasy and science-fiction stories, and the Turner Prize exhibition at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford’s museums and heritage were central to a year that saw an evolved approach to what museums can be when empowered to lead as platforms for participation, and be forward thinking in ambition and grounded in place.
Beyond 2025
So, the question of legacy now looms large. The Bradford district is left to reckon with a familiar question: what now?
The challenge is to embed the considerable gains and recognise the power of place-based cultural investment – not just in capital projects, but in people, stories and relationships. Someone once said that trying to measure the impact of culture is like trying to weigh a poem, and this observation captures the challenge of evaluating the impact of being City of Culture.
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The long-term impact will not be measured only in visitor numbers or economic uplift, but in the confidence of a city that has seen itself reflected, and celebrated, on its own terms.
City of Culture 2025 reminded us that place matters and too often legacy plans have fallen short of expectation. While the title year has welcomed a surge of funding and media attention to West Yorkshire, sustaining this is the collective challenge to avoid opportunities being missed and local communities feeling left behind. As Rosie Millard, chair of Hull 2017, noted: “It’s not like you have a magic wand and you can completely change a city; it helps it on its way to becoming something different in time.”
Strategic cultural funding, even in tight fiscal environments, can unlock national support and long-term benefit. If we want lasting transformation, we must treat legacy as a funded, planned and accountable priority. Bradford 2025 has been a triumph in many ways but whether it becomes a turning point or just a cultural high-water mark will ultimately depend on what happens next.
James Steward is the head of service at Bradford District Museums & Galleries