BBC Radio 4 2016-09-24

Good Morning.

Whenever people ask me where I’m from – and I say Hull – I’m now used to the variety of expressions that result. Usually, I can see them thinking “where on earth is that?” or “Oh, that explains why you speak like that!”

So I’ve obviously been very proud this week to hear of Hull’s plans for 2017 as the UK City of Culture. Councillor Stephen Brady says there will be “an explosion of culture and regeneration in this city not seen since the 1950s.”

Andrew Motion, in his biography of one of Hull’s most famous adopted sons, Philip Larkin, explains how the Second World War “drew the people of Hull together but smashed their town apart”. Larkin, arriving there in the late 50s, found a City at the end of one kind of life waiting for another to begin. Such a sense of expectation is once again in the East Yorkshire air.

To be a City of Culture is a tall order. Martyn Percy, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford makes an obvious but necessary point - in deciding how to engage with contemporary culture we have to first define what it is. And that’s not easy because it incorporates and encapsulates so many things and is forever changing.

One of the most surprising features of Hull’s plans is the ￡1.6m purchase of Pietro Lorenzetti’s masterpiece Christ Between Saints Peter and Paul. The 14th century work is an interesting highlight for a city not exactly known for its great Cathedral, or a as a place of pilgrimage.
In the piece, Christ, in the centre, is depicted as blessing those who look on accompanied by St Paul with his scabbard and St Peter holding the keys which speak of an as yet unknown future. Crowds are expected to flock to see it.

And when I looked at the piece, in some detail online this week, I wondered what the keys would represent to the people of Hull? What is the key to understanding the culture that has fashioned them?

Where we come from is an important part of who we are. Throughout the books of the bible a peoples’ identity is defined by who they are individually, where they come from and where they are heading. The spirit of the people, working together, is a litmus test as to whether all is well.

And so the year of culture that Hull is about to host for everyone is a celebration of the unique combo of shared story and experience that makes Hull and its people what they are.

First broadcast 24 September 2016