{"id":687220,"date":"2026-07-12T06:27:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T06:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/687220\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T06:27:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T06:27:15","slug":"town-of-culture-frustration-as-somerset-towns-miss-out-on-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/687220\/","title":{"rendered":"Town of Culture: Frustration as Somerset towns miss out on prize"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A tourism boss has said it is &#8220;frustrating&#8221; that no places across the West Country have been shortlisted for the UK&#8217;s first Town of Culture.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Nine places across the Somerset Council area applied for the honour of being crowned UK Town of Culture 2028, which is similar to the more established City of Culture scheme.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Bridgwater, Taunton, Watchet, Wells, Yeovil, Bruton, Glastonbury, Frome and Shepton Mallet all missed out on the 15-name shortlist, with 400 towns applying.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Giles Adams from the Visit Somerset tourism board said: &#8220;It&#8217;s frustrating. With respect to those towns selected, I don&#8217;t want to appear sour but it does strike me that there is a focus on the north and the south west misses out.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I think with these big competitions, there are very corporate and it always felt like things would be given to more northern town,&#8221; Adams added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A tourism boss has said it is &#8220;frustrating&#8221; that no places across the West Country have been shortlisted&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":687221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-687220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/687221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}