SUMMER OF SURPRISES
What YOU can expect from City of Culture year
THE City of Culture Team has unveiled more of its programme, reassuring Coventry that “the City of Culture is happening.”
Speaking in a virtual press briefing the City of Culture team set out what Coventry residents can expect from this landmark year with a mammoth programme of events.
Organisers were keen to reassure that “following a year of chaos” the City of Culture is still going ahead.
The team confirmed that the huge opening ceremony - Coventry Moves - will go ahead as planned, and revealed an epic rundown of all the events that will be taking place throughout the year.
Further events and partnerships were also revealed, including the Booker Prize, a city-wide street art festival, a celebration of Sound Systems and community radio takeover.
People in Coventry and Warwickshire are being told to expect a “summer of surprises” once the UK City of Culture gets underway in May, and here’s everything we know so far about Coventry’s year as City of Culture.
What will happen first? The City of Culture team said they are resolute in delivering on their promise to take the City of Culture to every corner of the city.
The year will begin with an epic opening ceremony, Coventry Moves, on May 15, and will run for 12 months.
Coventry Moves is being billed as an audacious day full of extraordinary surprises that will be experienced both in the city and in homes across the UK from dawn until dusk. It will be a playful and engaging introduction to Coventry, its stories and its people.
As restrictions ease, a ‘Summer of Surprises’ will allow the people of Coventry and Warwickshire, alongside visitors from further afield, to enjoy events, experiences and culture once again as the Trust delivers on its promise to take the UK City of Culture to every corner of the city.
What will happen around Covid restrictions? This is the first major cultural programme of its scale, breadth and length to commence since the arrival of the pandemic in March 2020.
The team has said it will start under restricted conditions and phase its events as the loosening of restrictions in the UK takes place.
Despite this, the Trust has reaffirmed its commitment to delivering on its promise to build and deliver a wide ranging, innovative and entertaining year-long programme and secure a longer-term legacy by transforming the city and supporting its diverse cultural sector to thrive.
All events are being planned in a flexible and responsive way, to allow them to be presented throughout 2021-22 in line with the guidelines at the time they take place.
More key announcements made include: The Trust reaffirmed its commitment to present several major and ambitious undertakings, previously announced last year. These include Terry Hall presents Home Sessions (July 2021), and CVX, an arts festival curated by young people in the city with Positive Youth Foundation and the rapper JAY1 (Aug 2021). The Walk (27 October) will see a 3.5-metre-tall puppet of a young refugee called Little Amal voyage 8,000km from the Syria/ Turkey border, across Europe and into the UK. Previously due to arrive in Coventry during summer, Little Amal will now arrive in Coventry in October.
The BBC is also set to shine a spotlight on Coventry throughout the year and is bringing big events to the city.
BBC programming begins in March with the hugely popular The Antiques Roadshow at Kenilworth Castle; followed by a range of new BBC Arts programmes including a film looking at the life and work of Delia Derbyshire, a Coventry-born composer who helped create the famous Doctor Who theme music and who
was a pioneer of electronic music.
In September, the BBC Arts annual poetry and spoken word festival Contains Strong Language - a partnership between the BBC, Coventry City of Culture Trust, Writing West Midlands, Nine Arches Press and a special collaboration with young voices from Beirut (Lebanon) heads to the city for the biggest celebration of poetry ever seen in the region.
BBC CWR and Midlands Today will be at the centre of the celebrations, bringing special programmes and events straight into people’s homes throughout the year - telling the story of the people of Coventry and uncovering what makes and shapes the city.
Throughout the summer, events will take place across the city that explore the stories and heritages of the people who call Coventry home. As the city reopens following the easing of restrictions, there will be a variety on offer for day trippers and city breakers to enjoy.
As the city opens up, here is what you can expect to see in a “summer of surprises”:
The Show Windows introduces audiences to Coventry’s post-war precincts and other areas of the city-centre (from May 2021). The curated shop window project is a partnership with Coventry Business Improvement District with curator, Charlie Levine, and RIBA. Local, national and international artists and architects will create artworks for shop windows, alongside the loan of artworks from national art and craft collections including Crafts Council. In Paint We Trus t (from May 2021), a citywide street art festival, will feature local, regional and national street artists, with 20 extraordinary new artworks transforming vertical and horizontal spaces across the city centre. Delivered in partnership with Coventry Business Improvement District and led by Coventry organisation Street Art Strategy, it features globally renowned artists from Coventry, Bogota and across the world.
Several events embrace and celebrate the people who have made the UK’S city of sanctuary their home. Coventry Welcomes (14 - 20 June 2021) will present a week-long programme of music, dance, drama, food, literature, poetry, workshops, storytelling and more to mark national Refugee Week. It is being created with Coventry Refugee and Migrant Centre, Counterpoint Arts, the Belgrade Theatre, and over 20 community partners.
Can You Hear Me Now? (June 2021) will be a new outdoor production by Stand and Be Counted, the UK’S first Theatre Company of Sanctuary, who will launch this new show created with people seeking sanctuary in Coventry.
Nest Residencies will mark the opening of the Daimler Powerhouse this summer (August 2021), a new creative hub for the start of City of Culture located in a former car factory in the UK’S ‘Motown.’ The residencies, created with Talking Birds, provide time, space and conversations with other artists.
Music project Sound Systems (October 2021) will celebrate Coventry’s sound systems culture, rooted in reggae and West Indian sounds and connected to its twin town of Kingston (Jamaica), with heats taking place over the summer. Local student, hospital and community radio will also be celebrated in Community Radio Takeover (August 2021) in partnership with BBC CWR and Voluntary Arts.
The Allesley Silas (July 2021) is a new, site specific largescale outdoor musical theatre production by From the Heart Theatre. Based on George Eliot’s Silas Marner, adapted by Coventry Playwright Alan Pollock and directed by Nick Walker, it will be created alongside local communities.
Later on in the year Broken Angel (from Autumn 2021) is a series of specially commissioned artworks which will reimagine a broken pane from Coventry Cathedral’s John Hutton West Screen window. The original window was smashed in an act of vandalism in early 2020. Random String Festival (November 2021), is a two-week digital arts festival in partnership with artists locally and nationally to create a series of workshops, events and installations with a focus on the Coventry Canal.
A year-long season at Warwick Arts Centre opens in May 2021 with a programme of music, visual art, theatre and more supported by Coventry City of Culture Trust. A new stage adaptation based on Christie Watson’s best-selling memoir and Sunday
Times Book of Year, The Language of Kindness (20-23 May 2021), and a community visual art project will commence to contribute to Middlemarch: The Other Side of Silence an exhibition inspired by George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch.
The Belgrade Theatre will also expand its role in the city, putting on productions like Like There’s No Tomorrow
(May-june 2021), Hungry by Chris Bush, Really Big and Really Loud by Phoebe Eclair-powell, May Queen by Frankie Meredith and Black Love by Chinonyerem Odimba, with music by Ben and Max Ringham.
Coventry UK City of Culture Trust announced Youthful Cities, a major international programme of activity that places young citizens, and a youthful mind-set, at the heart of its year of celebrations in 2021. The programme will develop links between civic and cultural organisations in Coventry (UK), Beirut (Lebanon), Bogota (Colombia), Detroit (USA) and Nairobi (Kenya). These international collaborations will see young citizens explore the big issues and challenges in their cities.
An additional partnership will see the British Council bring its Prototype City initiative to Coventry, which is an international architecture exchange programme.
A series of British Council International Changemakers Bursaries will support the development of partnerships between cultural practitioners in Coventry and their international counterparts, to inspire bold and creative ideas for international digital collaboration.
From June, the City of Culture team will work with the The Booker Prize Foundation to bring the world’s leading book prizes to the city. Highlighting the international symbolism and message of Coventry, the virtual announcement of the 2021 International Booker Prize winner will come from city for the first time.
There will also be the School of Participation, a new pan-european project with the support of the Creative Europe programme of the European Union. It will bring artists and creative practitioners from Coventry (UK), Graz, (Austria), Plovdiv (Bulgaria), Kaunas (Lithuania), Nov Sad (Serbia) together in a festival.
Coventry City Council also revealed the masterplan to welcome visitors to the city, including the latest on their public realm improvements and capital infrastructure projects.
For the first time, an in-house Public Arts Curator has been embedded within the City Council-led Regeneration Programme ensuring that artists are truly embedded in the infrastructure programme.
Coventry City Council has also set out the major capital projects underway, including a £5.6m transformation of Coventry’s St Mary’s Guildhall; a regeneration project that will see the Grade II* listed Drapers’ Hall brought back into regular use as a centre for music performance and education through a partnership between Historic Coventry, The Princes Foundation and Coventry Music; and a host of developments and improvements to Coventry Cathedral.
Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, The Rt Hon Oliver Dowden CBE MP, said: “Coventry UK City of Culture is shaping up to be truly spectacular. The festival will catapult this fantastic city onto the world stage and offers a fantastic chance to bring people together both in the city and across the UK through innovative events and installations. I look forward to witnessing it first hand as we build back better from the impact of the pandemic.”
Chenine Bhathena, Creative Director of Coventry UK City of Culture, said: “Coventry was once the capital of England, and this year we’re the city of culture. After the year our citizens and communities around the world have had, our people-powered programme is a much- needed celebration and show of hope for the future. Locally driven, socially resonant and globally connected. Tune in, take part, and when you can come and visit.”
THIS WEEK marks nine years since little Daniel Pelka died in Coventry, having been starved and beaten to death by his cruel mum and her boyfriend.
Daniel was just four years old when he died as a result of a head injury at his home in Coventry on March 3, 2012.
He had been brutally tortured, beaten and starved by his mum Magdalena Luczak, then 27, and her boyfriend Mariusz Krezolek, then 34, for more than six months.
Luczak and Krezolek were both jailed for a minimum of 30 years after being convicted of his murder at Birmingham Crown Court in August 2013.
The judge described them as “heartless monsters”. Both have since died in prison.
Each year sees a number of people visit Daniel’s memorial in St Paul’s Cemetery, Holbrooks, to pay their respects on the anniversary of his death, including Nicci Astin who set up the Justice for Daniel Pelka Facebook group.
However, due to the Covid pandemic and lockdown restrictions, that cannot be the case this year for Nicci who lives elsewhere in the country.
Nicci said: “We aren’t able to get to Coventry this year ourselves, but there will be others there and we have bought flowers which will be picked up and go to his memorial.
“I do miss going and meeting other people that share the same sort of feeling towards Daniel.
“All I want is for Daniel and his little face to be remembered.”
Flowers are also being sent to Daniel’s final resting place near to his father’s home in Lodz, Poland, and Nicci is hoping she will be able to visit Coventry in July to mark Daniel’s birthday.
Daniel’s memorial, which has become a shrine to the youngster, was set up by the Justice for Daniel Pelka Facebook group after he was buried in Poland.
During the trial it had been found that Daniel, who lived most of his life in Coventry and went to school in Foleshill, was bullied, beaten and starved by Luczak and Krezolek before his death.
During his final months, he was denied food, forced to perform punishment exercises, confined in a locked box room with just a urine-soaked mattress to sleep on, poisoned with salt and subjected to water torture.
Staff at his school saw him scavenging for food and on one occasion he was caught stealing a teacher’s birthday cake.
During the 30-hour period in which Daniel lay dying after suffering a head injury, Luczak and Krezolek chose not to call an ambulance, instead opting to carry on with their normal lives.
After his death, it was found Daniel weighed less than two stone.
A serious case review later found that social workers, police officers and healthcare professionals had all missed chances to save him.
COVENTRY City Council is set to agree a loan to fund a 100-room hotel in the city centre as part of the drive to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.
The council has stepped in to provide additional funding to kick-start the Hotel Indigo project at Friargate, close to the railway station, due to the impact the pandemic has had on the hospitality sector.
Plans for the 100-room, fourstar boutique hotel were approved towards the end of 2019 and warmly welcomed by councillors.
In December 2019 the city council’s planning committee voted unanimously in favour of the plans from applicants Castlebridge Group, for a five-storey hotel build in Friargate including a restaurant, bar and minigym.
In the wake of the pandemic councillors are being asked to approve a loan to support the private finance already committed to the project and ensure the building work can go ahead.
The council has not revealed how much money is involved but says the loan will be a small amount, compared to the overall cost of the hotel.
When it was approved, the Hotel Indigo project was described by the city’s planning committee as ‘exciting,’ a ‘welcome’ addition’ and ‘very much needed.’
The hotel is set to create 42 full-time and 21 part-time jobs.
Councillor Jim O’boyle, cabinet member for jobs and regeneration, said: “We have
We have always said a high quality unique hotel was needed in the city centre to support our ambitions...
Jim O’boyle
always said a high quality, unique hotel was needed in the city centre to support our ambitions to grow tourism and help drive the city’s regeneration.
“Friargate is the ideal location, in the heart of our growing business area and just yards from the railway station which is undergoing development to make it a major gateway to the city.
“We know the pandemic has hit the hospitality sector hard and times are difficult right now, but we have to plan for the future of our city and we have to be ready to emerge strong as the restrictions are lifted.
“By agreeing a loan now, we can help secure a high quality hotel for the city that will bring in jobs and investment in the years ahead and we can build the legacy that our city needs from our year as UK City of Culture.”
Councillor Richard Brown, cabinet member for finance, said: “Coventry has undergone major improvements in recent years and before the pandemic struck, we were seeing the benefits of a lot of hard work and planning to bring investment into the city and boost the economy. We cannot allow that to slip as a result of the pandemic
“Castlebridge have shown faith in our city and faith in our ability to recover and be a major destination city in the years ahead.
“This loan will reap benefits for the city in so many ways, benefiting not just visitors and tourists, but all our residents.”
The hotel, which will join over 100 other Hotel Indigo locations around the world, will have 100 bedrooms with a ground floor restaurant and a 40-cover bar that will be open to the public.
Work is expected to start this summer with an intended opening date in mid-late 2022.
The Castlebridge team have developed over 20 hotels within the UK and Europe, including Hotel Indigo in Stratford and the Hilton Garden Inn at Birmingham Airport.
The plans are due to be discussed by the city council’s cabinet on March 9 and Full Council on March 16.
PART of Nuneaton’s Debenhams store could be demolished - to pave the way for flats and new shops.
Under plans, submitted to Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council, part of the prominent building could be bulldozed.
In its place will be five, three, four and six storey buildings which will boast commercial and retail on the ground floor.
There are also proposals for 73 apartments, open space landscaping.
Key planning documents, which include what the development will look like, have yet to be uploaded to the council’s website.
But the appearance of the planning application online finally puts paid to the rumours about what will happen to the once popular store.
In recent weeks the wellknown frontage to the store in Newdegate Street has become a temporary home for homeless people.
Now the final decision on the application, which includes retaining the facade, rests in the hands of planners at the
Town Hall and a target decision date has been set for May 26.
The town was devastated when the news broke that the store, which had been based in the prominent building in Bridge Street for the past 48 years, was due to close.
Generations in Nuneaton mourned the loss of Debenhams, which took over from what was then the J.C Smiths building in 1972.
It had been a go-to place for generations of people from not just across Nuneaton but much further afield.
The huge department store was not just a place they went shopping but the cafe was also popular as a place for people to meet up. Also, when the public loos in town were closed, parents and carers regularly used the toilets in the cafe as a place to take their children.
Its closure marked the loss of Nuneaton’s last remaining department store after the Co-op closed.