Over the weekend I found myself in Hull - a city I had always assumed wasn't especially worth visiting due to its reputation as being quite a deprived area. However, I found myself pleasantly surprised by how nice the city centre and the waterfront area were - regeneration has preserved the maritime heritage, and the waterfront in particularly felt particularly buzzy on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

So let's start off with a bit of Hull's geography...

Hull is a port city in the East Riding of Yorkshire, standing on the north bank of the Humber Estuary (pictured below), at the point where the River Hull joins the Humber, roughly 20-25 miles inland from the North Sea. It used to be known as Kingston upon Hull (a much grander name!).

Hull has a population of around 278,000 within the city boundary – it is the 4th largest city in the Yorkshire and Humber region (after Leeds, Sheffield and Bradford)

The biggest endogenous factor shaping the character of the city, is its estuarine gateway location, which made Hull a natural trading and fishing port, and linked the inland industrial parts of Yorkshire to the North Sea and the rest of Europe.

The Humber Bridge opened in 1981, connecting Hull to the south bank. At the time it was the world's longest single-span suspension bridge. Today, the Port of Hull still supports around 12,000 jobs and contributes over £800m a year to the economy.

Hull has long been seen (by outsiders and sometimes itself) as remote, overlooked and inward-looking – this is down to its position ‘at the end of the line’ the train line from Leeds or Doncaster, with the North Sea on one side. This has reinforced a sense of peripherality and isolation.

Hull was awarded UK City of Culture status in 2017 - so my geography brain immediately thought 'well this is an amazing case study for Changing Places!'

Context - industrial base and deindustrialisation

Deprivation and need for regeneration is a heavily weighted judging criterion for the UK City of Culture bids. So what was Hull like before?

Traditional economic base: Hull grew rich on deep-sea distant water trawling (this is fishing in international waters), centred on St Andrew's Dock and around Hessle Road. At its peak, it supported around 350 trawlers and a huge shore-based economy (fish merchants, net-makers, engineers, etc) - for every fisherman at sea, seven more worked onshore (see image below).

Deindustrialisation - the 'Cod Wars': Hull's distant-water fleet collapsed rapidly in the 1970s-80s when Iceland extended its Exclusive Economic Zone to 200 nautical miles (known as the the 'Cod Wars'). This cut British trawlers off from their traditional Icelandic and Arctic fishing grounds. This decline was made worse after the UK entered the European Economic Community (EEC - now the EU), particularly after the 1983 Common Fisheries Policy. St Andrew's Dock closed in 1975.

Consequences: Mass unemployment concentrated in areas like Hessle Road - by 1979 well over half of the fishing-industry workers were out of work, and the effects rippled through the whole shore-based economy.

Wider decline: Alongside fishing, Hull lost manufacturing and dock-related jobs as containerisation made older, general-cargo docks redundant. Albert Dock is the only one of Hull's historic docks that is still operating as a commercial port. The other five historic docks ceased operations in the late 1960s and were either completely repurposed or infilled...

• Humber Dock and Railway Dock -converted in the 1980s and now operate as the vibrant Hull Waterside and Marina.
• Junction Dock - reopened as the Princes Quay shopping centre, built on stilts over the water (pictured below).
• Queen’s Dock - permanently closed in the 1930s, filled in, and transformed into Queen's Gardens.
• Victoria Dock - closed in the 1970s and redeveloped into a residential area.
• St Andrews - filled in during the 1980s - the western half is the site of the St. Andrew's Quay Retail Park, and the eastern end is a derelict conservation area near the Clive Sullivan Way.

Stigma and deprivation: By the 2000s, Hull had a reputation as one of the most deprived cities in England. In 2003 it was famously voted 'the worst place to live in Britain', and by 2015 it had one of the highest proportions of neighbourhoods in the most-deprived 10% in England. Unemployment (6.6%) was well above the national rate (3.9%), and educational attainment was well below the national average.

This combination of economic marginalisation and negative external representation ties in with 'meaning and representation' in the AQA specification - Hull's lived experience (proud, resilient fishing and industrial communities) sat awkwardly against its external image (a joke, a 'crap town', a place to avoid, etc).

Why did Hull become the UK City of Culture (2017)?

UK City of Culture is a government initiative that runs every 4 years. It was set up in 2009 to replicate the significant social and economic benefits that Liverpool gained from being European Capital of Culture 2008. Since the Brexit referendum, UK cities are no longer eligible to bid for the European Capital of Culture, so the UK City of Culture program and local UK events have become the primary focus for culture-led urban regeneration.

Hull was shortlisted in 2013 against Dundee, Leicester and Swansea Bay, and won outright. It became the 2nd UK City of Culture, after Derry in Northern Ireland won the first title in 2013.

The panel chair, Phil Redmond, said Hull was picked because it presented "the most compelling case based on its theme as 'a city coming out of the shadows'." The bid deliberately used Hull's stigmatised reputation as a strength - focusing on its story of transformation and rediscovery, rather than hiding it.

The bid drew on real cultural assets that could carry a year-long festival...

• Hull's maritime and trading history - which is celebrated in the newly refurbished Maritime Museum (see below).
• Literary connections, e.g. poet Philip Larkin lived and worked there.
• Its role in the emancipation movement - William Wilberforce (born in Hull) led the campaign to abolish the slave trade.
• Existing grassroots culture - such as Hull Truck Theatre and the Freedom Festival.

Crucially, it fitted the policy goal of using culture as a tool for regeneration in 'left-behind' post-industrial places - a good example of an exogenous factor (government policy) directly reshaping a place's trajectory.

How City of Culture status changed Hull

Investment in culture, heritage and infrastructure...

• An estimated £220m was invested in Hull's cultural and visitor economy, fully or partly attributable to the City of Culture title...
• Both Ferens Art Gallery and Hull New Theatre were refurbished funded by the council, along with money from businesses, national arts organisations and foundations.
• New venues were created from derelict industrial spaces, e.g. Stage @TheDock and the Humber Street Gallery in the old Fruit Market area (pictured below) - a direct physical legacy of culture-led regeneration reusing former docklands. Hull Venue (a new 3,500-capacity arena, later named the Bonus Arena) was built as part of the wider push.
• Public art was commissioned as a statement of the city's new industries too, e.g. 'Blade', a 75-metre wind-turbine blade made at Siemens' new Hull factory, displayed as street art, symbolically linking the old industrial identity to new green industry (offshore wind).

Programme and participation...

• Around 2,800 cultural events were staged in 2017, reaching an audience of 5.3 million. 95% of Hull residents attended at least one event - this was a high level of local buy-in for what could easily have been an event 'for outsiders'.
• The opening event, 'Made in Hull', used sound and light projections onto landmark buildings in Ferensway/Victoria Square - it attracted 25,000+ people on the opening night alone and 342,000 people took part in the first week.
• Over 50,000 school children took part in the associated 'No Limits' education programme across 100+ schools/institutions.
• Pride in Hull was designated national 'UK Pride' for the 50th anniversary of decriminalisation of homosexuality (LGBT50) -the audience grew from 9,000 (2016) to 44,000 (2017), then stabilised around 50,000 in 2018–19 - this is a good example of a lasting shift in a place's meaning for a specific community. You can see references to Pride throughout the city centre, such as phone boxes like the one pictured above.
• Around 2,500 volunteers were recruited and trained to help deliver events, building local skills and civic pride, not just a one-off spectacle imposed from outside.

Economy, jobs and image...

• Nearly 800 new jobs were created in the visitor economy and cultural sector.
• Visitor numbers rose by 1.3 million compared with 2013 (the bid year), reaching around 4.7 million visitors, with tourism spending adding over £300m to the local economy.
• The city generated over 20,200 pieces of media coverage - a direct example of a place's external representation being reshaped through deliberate marketing/branding rather than left to chance.
• The BBC agreed to show Hull, rather than Leeds or Manchester, on the national weather map throughout 2017 - literally putting Hull 'on the map' in people's everyday media consumption.

Long-term legacy

Of course any legacy from a huge event isn't automatic - they often end with debates about how places are represented and whether change benefits everyone...

Positive, lasting outcomes...

• Hull City Council and partners created a 20-year plan and a permanent legacy organisation (Absolutely Cultured, established 2018) to keep programming events after 2017, rather than letting momentum collapse.
• The University of Hull conducted research to evaluate the year and found continuing positive impacts in the years immediately following 2017 - such as unemployment falling to a 12-year low of 6.6%, and economic growth of 5%, above the national average.
• Some infrastructure and reputational gains have proved durable - e.g. National Geographic named Hull in its 'Best of the World'/Top 25 destinations list for 2026, showing the city's rebranded profile has outlasted the anniversary year itself.
• Hull has continued to develop as a centre for the offshore wind and green energy industry (e.g. Siemens blade factory, port facilities) - which shows some diversification away from both old fishing/manufacturing and pure 'events tourism' into a more durable economic base.
• The council launched a new ten-year Community Plan (2024–2034) and a follow-up Culture Strategy (2025–2030), explicitly building on the 2017 legacy - evidence that 'culture-led regeneration' became embedded in local policy rather than a one-off.

Criticisms and limits...

• Severe deprivation has not disappeared - roughly a third of children in Hull live in low-income households (well above the England average), and free school meal eligibility (34.7% in 2024) is far higher than the national figure (25.7%).
• Some academics argue the cultural 'masterplan' told a selective, romanticised story about Hull's maritime past - celebrating the Old Town and the nostalgic fishing heritage (e.g. refurbishing the trawler Arctic Corsair) while leaving recent industrial sites, like the derelict St Andrew's Dock, to decay further - this is a good example about external agencies shaping which place-meanings get promoted, and whose history gets left out.
• Some grassroots and politically-engaged cultural groups reported feeling excluded from the official 2017 programme for being 'too political' or 'off-brand', raising questions about whose culture was represented.
• Less than 1% of visitors in 2017 came from overseas - meaning the 'tourism boom' narrative should be read carefully - most of the economic activity was UK domestic visitors, especially local residents attending events on their own doorstep, not international city-break tourism.
• Wider economic shocks since 2017, such as COVID-19, the cost-of-living crisis and high interest rates, have made it hard to assess how much of Hull's recent hardship or recovery is really down to City of Culture versus national/global trends.