Reading has been robbed of the opportunity to become a \u2018city of culture\u2019, which would have seen it benefit from around \u00a310 million of funding for the arts.<\/p>\n
The City of Culture competition is held by the government every four years to highlight the arts and heritage, and is hotly contested by councils throughout the country.<\/p>\n
Although a bid for Reading to become a City of Culture was submitted earlier this year, it failed to make the longlist of nine bidders.<\/p>\n
The news has had a mixed reaction from people on Facebook, with some wondering why Reading was put forward in the first place.<\/p>\n
The places that made it to the longlist were the cities of Inverness, Milton Keynes, Portsmouth, Sheffield and Wrexham, and the towns of Blackpool, Ipswich, Middlesbrough and Swindon.<\/p>\n
The government is also running a \u2018Town of Culture\u2019 for smaller places, with the winner benefiting from \u00a33.5 million.<\/p>\n
Explaning this on Facebook, councillor Paul Gittings (Labour, Coley) said: \u201cJust for information, Reading had to bid in the city section because of our overall size.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is also a great deal of cultural activity, and in 2016, Reading did run a highly successful year of culture on a shoestring budget from grants, with the highlight being over 50 thousand visitors to the historic Gaol, where performances related to Oscar Wilde were staged to great acclaim.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bid for the City of Culture was put forward by Reading Borough Council.<\/p>\n
Reacting to the news, Liz Terry (Labour, Coley), the council leader, said: \u201cReading is home to well-established cultural venues, festivals of national and regional significance and an extensive, diverse programme of cultural activities throughout the year, which we remain very proud of and which could not be delivered without our town\u2019s incredible community and voluntary sector who make such an enormous contribution to our amazing cultural offer.<\/p>\n
\u201cNotwithstanding the decision, I have no doubt Reading will continue to go from strength to strength, and the council, its partners and our community will continue working together to ensure our reputation as a cultural beacon continues to grow in the years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n
Examples of the town\u2019s cultural offer include Reading Festival, Water Fest, \u2018Are You Listening\u2019, the free-entry museum and The Hexagon.<\/p>\n
The town\u2019s failed bid was noted by the @ReadingClowncil X\/Twitter account on Wednesday, March 18.<\/p>\n
Rowena Rowe said: \u201cI think rather than denigrating Reading all the time, if you live there, you should try to do your part to improve it. It has oodles of history given its location and there are so many people all over the world whose roots are here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Making a strong case for why the town should have been selected, Gareth Warwick said: \u201cI love Reading\u2019s culture, we have the Abbey ruins, King Henry I was buried there, Forbury Gardens, the Maiwand Lion statue, Jane Austen educated in the Abbey Gateway, the four Bs Huntley & Palmers biscuits, Simonds Brewery, Sutton Seeds bulbs and S &E Collier bricks, a Banksy, the Museum of English Rural Life, South Streets Arts Centre, The Thames & Kennet & Avon Canal, Camino de Santiago (The Way of St. James) pilgrim route starts at St James Church & finishes in Spain (the hand of St. James was once held there), and the university.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is South Asian and Caribbean culture and now the Hong Kong British Nationals Overseas (BNO), a burgeoning independent food & brewery scene including Perrys, Clay\u2019s Kitchen & Bar, MeKong Blue Collar, award-winning Reading Farmers Market, Double-Barrelled, Loddon Brewery & Dolphin breweries, and the furthest west point on the underground.. it\u2019s a fab town.. the largest in the UK!\u201d<\/p>\n
The winning bidder will be selected for a City of Culture programme in 2029.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reading has been robbed of the opportunity to become a \u2018city of culture\u2019, which would have seen it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-152089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}