(a)

the Plymouth Culture Board lead the city’s bid for the UK City of Culture 2017; this board led by Adrian Vinken had been brilliant in developing this bid and through its commitment unified the city and gathered many of the city’s major stakeholders together to develop and submit a bid that would celebrate Plymouth’s culture and history and seek for the city to be recognised as an ocean city both nationally and internationally;

(b)

Plymouth’s UK City of Culture Bid had a very strong social media campaign, which, along with some of the world class events that the city had hosted, significantly raised the city’s profile;

(c)

the city’s bid was seen as a stepping stone to continue the city’s ambitions to become a strong cultural centre and the foundations for the city to deliver its plans for the transatlantic celebrations in 2020, the 400^th anniversary of the Mayflower ship’s departure from Plymouth to America;

(d)

in total 11 cities bid for the City of Culture 2017, and only four cities were shortlisted for the next bid stage, unfortunately Plymouth wasn’t shortlisted but this would not deter Plymouth from carrying on its vision to establish itself as an ocean city with an excellent cultural offer and many events and initiatives had continued to be progressed to ensure this vision is achieved;

(e)

some of the events and initiatives that Plymouth had been working on included the development a history centre, the opening of world class art exhibition, refurbishment of the Theatre Royal, guarantor for Ocean Studios and hosting a visit of the president of Massachusetts Senate.

(f)

the decision making for the shortlisting was undertaken nationally and had political elements and this gave Plymouth a minimal chance of being shortlisted, the city was disappointed to not be shortlisted; however it wasn’t completely unexpected and the feedback received was positive;

(g)

in moving forward in preparation for future City of Culture bids the Board requested further feedback to enable the city to learn from any mistakes, the feedback received commented that the proposed growth and visitor numbers was overly ambitious although it was believed by the Council’s Economic Development department that the figures submitted as part of the bid were, in fact, conservative and modest;

(h)

in preparing for the City of Culture bid the Board managed to bring together some very senior city leaders and the enthusiasm and commitment of this group would be a big driving force in delivering the city’s cultural aspirations in the future;

(i)

as part of the bid process the Board approached a number of external organisations to secure funding and many of these funders have pledged their ongoing commitment to continue to support the city’s cultural development despite the city not being shortlisted;

(j)

the city’s bid generated a fantastic amount of public support, particularly through social media where Plymouth had the biggest social media campaign out of all the cities bidding; this support has encouraged the Board to continue to deliver the city’s ambitious cultural programme.

(k)

the Plymouth Culture Board recognised that the city lacked community engagement in these projects and tried to develop and enable capacity at the community level by encouraging the voluntary sector to become involved and lead community engagement and empowerment;

(l)

the City of Culture Bid has had many other positive outcomes such as the creation of a Sports Board, to lead improvements in sports development and a recognition as this as being important culturally, and the development of the Heritage Consortium, to bring together the major organisations in the heritage sector;

(m)

the Council resisted the opportunity to immediately put forward a bid for the next City of Culture and instead had decided to reflect on the 2017 bid, develop improvements to the Board and the bid process, improve on the work with local communities and strengthen its plans for the transatlantic celebrations in 2020.

(1)

a copy of the City of Culture Bid 2017 feedback is provided to all Ambitious Plymouth members;

(2)

a review of the Plymouth Culture Board’s progress and the city’s plans for the the transatlantic celebrations in 2020 is added to the Ambitious Plymouth work programme for 3 March 2013.