UK City of Culture 2021

The first time I saw the video (with sound off) I was expecting the ATV logo to come up at the end!

Is that video supposed to tempt me to visit the city? It looks like a teen music video with pretentions. No mention of what the city has to offer.

Hopefully things will happen for Whitefriars for the City of Culture but I'm still unsure what. There are some interesting things happening to Coventry's old buildings, but I'm not sure how much difference they'll make. Most of them are shut, most of the time. Successive architects have seen the city as a centre for modernism and commercialism (even in medieval times), but unfortunately some of the modern design was pretty dire. I first saw Coventry in the 90s and it was very rundown. For me it looks much better now. There are still areas that need improvement but the student blocks are at least bright and upbeat. The city lost so much in key moments of time. There was little money for preservation and by the time there was interest in that sort of thing, Coventry was almost denuded of charm. Ironic that one of the least pretty areas - the Burges is still there and I'm hoping that they transform the area as it's an eyesore. For tourism, the old elements are too far apart. The area with the cathedrals is interesting but there's a lot of church and not a lot else in quite a big area. Even when open, the St Mary's cathedral visitor centre was both limited and hard to find. St Mary's Hall is great but requires advance research to see when it's open. Almost everything else is private property. The Slug and Lettuce doesn't draw people in. The Herbert is ok but its Coventry section is [insert earthy ancient insult]. Which is a pity because they've got masses of wonderful stuff. Irritatingly, English Heritage has listed the post war shopping precinct, which is probably the worst era for design, ever. Where were they post war when masses of medieval buildings were demolished? Spon Street was the dumbest place to create a museum street as it's not near the bulk of the remaining features. They didn't even do it properly and make other businesses on the street conform to a design standard. I'm not even sure what could be done to pull the existing features together, they're so far apart. A weekly street market might help. Coventry will never be quaint. It's future lies in at least being useful. The university and its flats at least fulfil that spec. The alternative to going up is going out and green spaces get further and further away. Will people have pride in the city? That's a tougher question. I suppose it depends what people are looking for. Coventry certainly has more to attract people than Warrington. I doubt many people owe loyalty to their home town/city anymore because they move about to follow work.

Plan for short stay accommodation in Priory Row heritage buildings

Interesting read

So here we are, it's started. Did we all see them prancing about at the Vignoles Bridge the other day? What's on What's on at the Belgrade What's on at the Herbert What's on at the Historic Coventry Trust I'll be honest, my whelm is not overed. St Mary's Hall isn't open yet. There's no news of Whitefriars. The Whitefriars gatehouse has got money to be restored but when it will be finished is another matter. There's only one (online) event so far I really want to go for and either it's already booked out or there's no ticket link yet. NB Eventbrite isn't functioning normally at the moment. This may be due to a major web issue.

Thank you Helen F for this info. I wish I was there to take advantage of it all. I'd really like to do the backstage Belgrade tour, especially with the cream tea. My brother was a big 2Tone fan so I'll send him that information. It's very frustrating still not being able to visit my home city for this celebration.

I'm going to use Margaret Atwood's quote: "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."

I kinda like "If you can't say anything nice, come and sit by me".

Dirty Stop Outs For those who were interested in Ruth Cherrington's projects and books. "This book is the culmination of years of research and more recent collaboration with local Facebook groups, through which Ruth gained many great insights, memories and often hard-to-get images and memorabilia. Ruth will describe how she set about documenting the City's clubs, meeting the challenges and virtually meeting hundreds of club members, both past and present." 6 November 2021 11.00am - 12.00pm.

Helen, I have just heard the conversation on Spotify (easy to use) re Joseph Paxton and the London Road Cemetery which I found very interesting. Thank you!

The postman today delivered a What's On guide to the events taking place. Or should I say, have taken place. It wasn't addressed to me, so I assume he delivered one to the whole street. Someone didn't do their job properly.

A wander round the city centre

A good find MR and highlights much of what we wrote about the city, the City of Culture and how both the pandemic and modern shopping trends have affected town and city centres. The bit people liked in the comments was the old part of the city! Which was mostly shut. Some of the large dead shops have been gone for some time and the trend of online shopping has made that model almost unviable. The smaller ones just need footfall which Covid has decimated. Ikea's location always was a dumb place to put it and was doomed from the start. I was interested how much of the city was set up for Chinese students, whom I saw plenty of in the summer of 2019. Maybe they'll return. Poor Coventry has had its time to shine in a time when nobody is interested and very little is happening... at least during the day. It always was geared towards the young and maybe the place wakes up in the evening? To go forward, towns and cities need to consider trends like the internet and our love of variety rather than identical shops selling the same stuff but more expensive than online. Council rates make shops too expensive to run and more expensive to visit than out of town. Amazon style sheds need to be taxed in a way that brings in money but doesn't encourage councils to litter the outer areas with them. Centres need to return to what they used to be, places for people to live and frequent small businesses.

Breaks my heart to read your post but I have to agree with most of it. A great pity that Coventry's City of Culture time came at an unfortunate time in world history. As for the shops, shopping used to be a lot of fun and online purchasing doesn't come close. I'd take the big shops along with the entrepreneurs and markets to mooch through. I'm guilty of buying from Amazon but only for fairly mundane things. I like to walk around to shop and it's great exercise. I regularly walk my local indoor mall from end to end when I can't walk outside because of the heat or rain and I occasionally find something I like. For some people this might be their only interaction with another person so I try to smile or nod as I go by.