{"id":707215,"date":"2026-07-23T14:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T14:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/707215\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T14:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T14:42:09","slug":"ed-sheeran-backs-ipswichs-city-of-culture-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/707215\/","title":{"rendered":"Ed Sheeran backs Ipswich&#8217;s City of Culture bid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Superstar singer Ed Sheeran has been named as one of the ambassadors backing a town&#8217;s bid to become City of Culture 2029.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ipswich, in Suffolk, joins eight other locations on the long list for the award, which comes with a \u00a310m prize pot &#8211; large towns are allowed to enter the competition.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Other well-known ambassadors from Suffolk include musician Brian Eno, actor Griff Rhys Jones and theatre star Kerry Ellis. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sheeran said: &#8220;This town has shaped who I am, both as a person and as an artist, and it has an incredible community spirit. That&#8217;s why Suffolk and Ipswich will always be where I call home.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sheeran, who grew up and still lives in Suffolk, started his career playing gigs in the county and has played a number of surprise gigs in Ipswich, including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cwy2ylv47yqo\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">an acoustic set on the waterfront in June.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Arts and culture should be accessible to everyone, and I know this title would help create even more opportunities for people in the local area. Let&#8217;s do all we can to make it happen,&#8221; Sheeran said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Superstar singer Ed Sheeran has been named as one of the ambassadors backing a town&#8217;s bid to become&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":707216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-707215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707215","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=707215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/707216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=707215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=707215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=707215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}