HULL has really embraced its title of UK City of Culture with a gusto that is impressive.
Cultural events are happening on a daily basis throughout 2017 and the East Yorkshire city now provides a case study of how to leverage such an opportunity to maximum benefit.
It has been so successful that it has almost made people forget about Hull YouTube icon Ronnie Pickering.
Who?
Ronnie Pickering!
I was back in Hull last Friday for what has been dubbed the ‘Jolly Boys Cultural Tour’.
Some readers may remember a similar event last year.
The idea was the brainchild of Hull businessman Shaun Watts, who wondered how he and fellow members of the city’s business community could make their contribution to the City of Culture celebrations.
Shaun and 10 other business contacts decided to each invite a guest from outside Hull to spend a day touring the city sampling some of its rich history and culture…and pubs.
To be fair it is a much more palatable prospect than painting yourself blue and standing naked in the city streets.
If you are unfamiliar with that story, it happened last year when US artist Spencer Tunick persuaded 3,200 local people to gather in the city centre, strip naked and be painted four shades of blue before posing in various locations in Hull to be photographed for an art exhibition commissioned by the city’s Ferens Art Gallery ahead of the UK City of Culture celebrations.
Last year’s Cultural Tour took in the nearby town of Beverley and some East Yorkshire country pubs on board an historic 1947 bus but this year, in homage to the City of Culture, we stayed very much in Hull.
Gathering for breakfast on the roof of the Humber Street Gallery, the sun glistened off the rooftops of buildings in the nearby Old Town and boats bobbing around in the marina.
The city couldn’t have put on a better welcome for its guests.
Led by a local historian we headed off to learn more about a town that was founded in the 12th century when the monks of Meaux Abbey near Beverley needed a port where the wool from their estates could be exported.
The exact year the town was founded is not known but it was first mentioned in 1193 and renamed Kingstown-upon Hull by King Edward I when he purchased land that became the walled Old Town in 1299.
Since then it has been a market town, a military supply port, a trading hub, fishing and whaling centre and industrial metropolis and was an early theatre of battle in the English Civil War, blotting its royal copy book when King Charles I was refused entry.
But it is probably best known for its 18th century Member of Parliament, William Wilberforce, who took a prominent part in the abolition of the slave trade in Britain.
Its pubs certainly reflect much of its rich history and we tasted our first pint of the day in Ye Olde White Harte’s historic Plotting Parlour, a dark wood panelled room in a building that dates from 1550 where local merchants and politicians met to thrash out deals.
They now tend to do them in Starbucks.
We passed by the remaining ruins of the medieval wall that once protected this key provincial town as we walked through the St Stephen’s shopping centre to look at a sculpture based on the life-size form of a whale but made out of 12,000 fragments of hand torn paper arranged across more than 4,200 individual threads.
Claire Morgan’s Elephant in the Room is modelled on the Greenland Right Whale and reflects Hull’s history when it was home to the largest whaling fleet in the country in the 1820s with over 60 vessels based in its port.
Apparently the Right Whale was so named because it was classed as the right whale to catch being slow, not too dangerous and floated when it was dead.
I’ve never learned so much in a shopping centre.
From there, thanks to the contacts of Dominic Gibbons who runs Hull-based property business Wykeland, we were given a tour of the city’s new indoor arena.
The Venue, which opens next year, will seat 3,500 people and host international artists as well as major conferences and dinners.
Our tour guide was Andy Hill of construction company BAM and who is married to British athletics great Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill.
From there we continued our tour through the Old Town of Hull, where you can see the smallest window in Britain in the George Hotel, a slit in the wall where a porter used to sit to look out for stagecoaches arriving at the coaching inn.
The area also boasts what must be one of the best and most cryptic street names in Britain, The Land of Green Ginger.
After a hectic and historic tour of more Hull hostelries we arrived back in the marina where the Freedom Festival, held annually to celebrate Wilberforce’s achievements, was taking place.
Humber Street, which once was home to Hull’s Fruit Market, is now an eclectic collection of gin bars, cafes and restaurants and another reminder that while Hull has a rich history it is also looking to the future with bold ambition.
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IT was back to my old Holbeck stamping ground the other evening to join brand design firm Elmwood to celebrate its 40th anniversary.
An informal BBQ was held to which all the staff of the Leeds studio were invited along with representatives from the firm’s offices in New York, Hong Kong, Singapore and Melbourne.
The business is very creative and edgy but also feels very “grown up” compared to some trendy newcomers in the sector and in Jonathan Sands it is led by a man who has been there and done it – and got the OBE.
There is always a nice feel about a gathering of the Elmwood team, office dog Teddy was of course in attendance, despite the attentions of an over eager Jack Russell.
Over a hotdog and beer I chatted to Wander Bruijel who is the firm’s new director of inbound marketing. His background is working with advisory firm EY as its global brand, marketing and communications director and prior to that he was with Philips Electronics in his native Holland.
Looking towards the bar of the Cross Keys pub, where the event was held, I had to do a double take when I spotted Anne McCartney of PwC.
You see it was a Tuesday evening and that is the night Anne and friends hold their informal ‘Tuesday Club’ drinks at Restaurant Bar & Grill in Leeds.
I wandered over to find out if the demise of Tuesday Club was reality.
“No, we’ve brought Tuesday Club on tour,” said Anne, better known as Macca to her friends and club members.
“We’re here to support Debbie, she is an old friend and we used to work together at PwC,” she informed me about Elmwood’s long serving finance director Debbie Longbottom.
Well that’s a first.
She’s got to be the first finance director I’ve ever met who’s got her own fan club.
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WHEN I published a photograph of the attendees of a dinner in London I spoke at in the summer this blog stood accused of not being diverse enough.
I wasn’t a member of the club of ex-pat Yorkshireman in London but it raised the ire of a number of women who suggested the gathered throng didn’t include any women or ethnic minorities.
Although I do think there was a bloke from Manchester there.
Anyway, in a bid to better embrace gender diversity I have been monitoring my recent Twitter followers and Tweets received.
And I am happy to report that they are a better reflection of such diversity.
In fact they include more women than men.
And a glance at some of their profiles suggests they have a healthy interest in yoga – they pose with impressive flexibility – and making new contacts.
That can be the only explanation for Tweets such as: “Hey undress me”.
When I looked to see who else this bold young lady had Tweeted recently I saw I was in good company.
The other two she has responded to in the last week were from Masterchef and former President Barack Obama.
Have a great weekend.