Journalist’s hilarious exasperated note at the bottom of Wrexham City of Culture article
A journalist has left a hilarious note of exasperation at the bottom of a news article after readers continued to get mixed up about Wrexham’s City of Culture bid.
It was announced yesterday that Wrexham was through to the last four to take the title of City of Culture 2025, with the possibility of attracting millions of pounds in investment.
But Wrexham is also bidding to win city status this year as part of the Queen’s Diamon Jubilee celebrations, after the council’s executive board backed the move in December.
The two separate bids have caused confusion among the public, which has clearly become too much for the anonymous journalist in charge of writing up the news for Wrexham.com.
In an article on the City of Culture bid they sign off in italics with a final plea: “Contrary to some ongoing belief on social media, this is not the same as the bid for city status.
“The UK City of Culture 2025 is a completely separate thing.
“Enough has been written on this, sadly those people don’t bother reading it – will they read this note?!”
Wrexham.com was set up as an independent hyperlocal news site 11 years ago and now attracts over 250,000 readers a month.
City of Culture
The City of Culture accolade is awarded every four years by the UK Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
The 2025 shortlist was compiled from a group of 20 places that registered bids, wth four now left. Bradford, County Durham, Southampton are the other areas in the running.
The four locations were approved by Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries based on independent advice made to the government by a panel of experts led by Sir Phil Redmond.
The expert advisory panel, chaired by Sir Phil Redmond, will now visit the four shortlisted places before making their final recommendation in May. The winner will be announced this year in Coventry.
He said: “Culture can act as a catalyst for community engagement, civic cohesion and a driver for economic and social change as previously seen not just in Derry-Londonderry (2013), Hull (2017) and Coventry (2021), but all those other places who went on a journey to develop their own cultural strategy.
“Simply taking part has proved a catalyst in itself. We have had a great longlist to select from, which made the shortlisting difficult, but I am now looking forward to visiting each of the shortlisted places with the panel to witness culture’s catalytic effect in action.”
Arts minister Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay said: “The UK City of Culture competition shows the important role that culture can play in levelling up our towns, cities and rural communities – bringing investment, great events, thousands of tourists and opportunity for people of all ages and backgrounds.
“We have seen a huge positive impact in this year’s host city Coventry with millions of pounds in investment and thousands of visitors.”
It is a different bid to that of city status as part of the Queen’s jubilee celebrations, which Wrexham is also in the running for.
An area does not have to be a city to bid for the City of Culture award after a change to the rules.
City status
Meanwhile, Wrexham is to make a fourth bid for city status after missing out on three previous occasions.
Wrexham council’s executive board unanimously backed entering a contest to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in December.
“This isn’t something that comes up often and we don’t know when the next opportunity will arise,” Council leader Mark Pritchard said.
“It is true that becoming a city doesn’t bring immediate prosperity.
“It’s how we use this as a platform for promoting Wrexham and developing the county borough to become the capital of north Wales and compete regionally as a destination.”
Journalist John Elledge said that he thought Wrexham had a good chance of securing city status as in 2012 one town was chosen apiece from Wales, England and Scotland.
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Good for Wrexham Councilors for getting into the two ‘competitions’. It would be great for Wales if they won both. As for the locals and social media, what can one expect? Certainly not accuracy. We have heard that there is a rumour going round on social media locally that one can ‘tweek’ one’s electricity bill by changing the meter. Whoever started that must surely know nothing about electricity and how the electricity retailers bill their customers. Yes if your bill is unusually high in terms of the kWh figure it would make sense to compare that with the EPC estimated… Read more »
Poisoned chalice? Imagine the shame if you lived somewhere that lost out as City of Culture to Bradford?