Councillor ‘blown away’ by Welsh city’s UK City of Culture bid

Alec Doyle, Local Democracy Reporter

The councillor leading Wrexham’s City of Culture 2029 bid says reading the city’s submission brought him to tears.

Cllr Hugh Jones was updating Wrexham County Borough Council’s Employment, Business and Investment Scrutiny Committee on  the progress of the bid, which was submitted ahead of time to the adjudicators.

“The independent assessment that we had of it (the bid) scored it 365 out of 370,” he told the committee.

Cllr Jones did caution that score was an independent assessment and had not been carried out on rival bids, which remain sealed.

“I have to say that I was absolutely blown away by the bid,” he said. “It brought numerous emotions. It brought tears, it brought laughter, it brought smiles, but above all, to me it brought hope for the strength of the bid, hope for Wrexham winning the City of Culture.”

While details contained within the sealed bid remain confidential, Cllr Jones did offer some details of how it came together.

“I was on this journey along with Amanda Evans, Joanne Knight and Morgan Thomas from the very beginning of our attempt to become City of Culture in 2025.

“We came second with that bid, but the strength of this one is really powerful. It’s well constructed. It’s based on the lessons that we learned from our experience, advice that was given by the judging panel, the feedback that we were given last time from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and others in the bid process.

“So we brought together a very significant team and we have a very powerful bid.”

While some bookies have Wrexham down as the favourite, Blackpool, Plymouth and Portsmouth have also been tipped. Cllr Jones warned against complacency.

“We need to avoid being overconfident,” he said. “There’s still a significant amount of work that has to be done when we get to the short list. We will build up to that and we are continuing to build up with that on the daily basis so avoiding overconfidence is a really important part of our bid.”

He then presented Wrexham’s official bid video, featuring Mark Lewis Jones, local actress Aerona Shi and a host of well-known faces and places across the county borough.

After the presentation he explained that while the process had not been confirmed, during the last bid the judging panel spent six hours in Wrexham with the bid team building an itinerary for them the see the best of the city’s cultural offerings.

“We don’t just want it to be a carefully choreographed judges visit,” said Cllr Jones. “They’ve got to really sense the essence of Wrexham and we need to involve as many people in that as we can whilst retaining that kind of natural Wrexham approach.

“We want to win it because we deserve to have it but we’ve got to be authentic.”

The decision on the final shortlist and the judges visits is expected to be announced in mid-October.

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