JUNE 5 marks the launch of Coventry’s year as City of Culture. It actually started on May 17 but the organisers kept it low-key to avoid any large gatherings — imagine a cultural event that works best without any observers!

City of Culture is is an honour bestowed by Whitehall every few years on a city that it believes would be particularly deserving of some Londoners showing it what “proper” culture is.

Previous recipients include Derry-Londonderry — as the private company that ran the festival rebranded it — Liverpool and Hull.

Looking at some of the big names in the programme, you could easily get the impression that the idea is that those city folks are coming up from Euston to let us know how culture works: the Turner Prize will be at the Herbert Art Gallery and the Booker Prize “virtually announced” from Coventry, whatever that means.

And Terry Hall, formerly of the Specials, will return to the city to curate a three-day music event.

One local visual artist told me that the whole programme felt more “host town, not ghost town.”

Local performers were marginalised and prime locations used to showcase imported works, with no thought as to whether Coventry-based talent could be highlighted.

Pictures are already being shared across social media of some of the impressive murals that have been installed by artists from Bristol and London.

Do the street artists of Coventry not have any thought-provoking expressions of life in their home city to share with the world? Couldn’t Coventry City of Culture celebrate the culture of the city of Coventry?

High up on the programme is a theatre adaptation of Silas Marner by Coventry-based George Eliot, involving local performers but there are  plenty more grassroots, local work happening, down the programme — the website warns that these have not been produced by the official company but are “taking place during our year.”

And even more will be happening that hasn’t come to the notice of the official committee. Coventry Association of International Friendship (CAIF) will celebrate the links made between women of the city and of Stalingrad in 1944 and will organise a Coventry-Dresden festival of the arts too.

The City of Culture will excite many, but it is a missed opportunity. One issue of grave concern is the lack of trade union involvement.

Coventry has a proud trade union and tenants’ association history which has won big pay rises for workers and last year there were a large number of Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Protest is part of the city’s culture.

Many community groups such as CAIF, the Lord Mayor Peace Committee, Coventry Against Racism and Love Music Hate Racism have attempted to liaise with the culture team but given the nature of these bodies have not been consulted on the programme.

We should welcome the events planned during Refugee Week which involve the Coventry Asylum and Refugee Action Group. But most people ask what will the legacy be. Will local people gain long-term employment? Will there be any apprenticeships? What will links will be made with the local schools?  

It remains to be seen whether this is a year-long jamboree that packs up at the end of its tenure and moves on — Medway, Southampton, Bradford and even, improbably, the county of Lancashire all have their websites ready for their 2025 bids — or whether there will be a lasting, transformative cultural legacy for Coventry. And whether it’s a legacy the people of Coventry want, or the one a central committee in the capital think that they should have.

The local Communist Party branch wants to inject class politics into the events, organise busking in the city and ask people what they think the City of Culture means to them.

Coventry-based readers of the Morning Star can contact us at [email protected] if they have any views and wish to join us in really celebrating Coventry’s culture.