ALL EYES ARE FOCUSED ON COVENTRY

Coventry City of Culture 2021 to launch in May

A few months later than envisaged thanks to the global pandemic, Coventry’s City of Culture year will finally kick off on May 15 with launch event “Coventry Moves” when the city will be transformed in a spectacular performance.

Being awarded City of Culture in 2018 has galvanised Coventry, as well as bringing in much-needed funds from public investment, businesses and charitable foundations.

in 2017, Hull’s status as the UK City of Culture attracted more than five million people, £220 million of investment and 800 new jobs, according to a report published after the event. It passed the baton onto Coventry, and while the pandemic may have diminished the city’s prospects of matching Hull’s achievements, the benefits are clear.

The government has invested £15 million, with Arts Council England allocating a further £3.4 million to support the project.

From boom (literally) to almost bust, Coventry is rising again

Coventry certainly deserves the investment. Between the wars, the city was the fastest-growing urban centre in Britain which made it a valuable target for a German air raid on the night of November 14, 1940. The single most concentrated attack on a British city in the Second World War, the aim was probably to knock out Coventry as a major centre for war production.

As a result, Coventry lost not only its great medieval church of St Michael's, the only English Cathedral to be destroyed in the Second World War, but hundreds of city centre buildings, including the 16th century Palace Yard, where James II once held court.

But this feisty city rose from the rubble, thanks to car production. In the 1950s they called it 'Britain's Detroit'.

The city’s new cathedral, built alongside the ruined St Michael’s and consecrated in 1962, seemed to symbolise a prosperous future, but the 1970s recession, fuelled by the oil crisis, affected Coventry badly. It did not have the variety of industry to fight back.