Each district in West Yorkshire has benefited from a year of culture, concluding with Bradford as UK City of Culture in 2025. Plans for 2026 and onwards have been co-designed with districts and wider stakeholders including arms-length bodies.
Background
Each districts’ year of culture proved highly successful and helped to drive a 7.8% increase in the visitor economy in West Yorkshire in 2024.
In 2024-2025, Ruth Melville Research supported ‘Year of Culture’ delivery teams, Local Authorities and culture sector organisations, in capturing learnings and insights, and facilitating knowledge-sharing on the region’s years of culture
Key recommendations for future activity included:
- The imperative to uplift (and not displace) the activity of West Yorkshire’s cultural organisations, building on what we have found to work during ‘Years of Culture’.
- Appetite for multi-year activity, flexing according to capacity and available resources, with maximum lead-in time.
- A ‘West Yorkshire’ approach, reflecting and championing our identity, talents and regional ambition.
- Little appetite for more calendar year-long programming, due to delivery pressure and risk of burnout.
This led to the development, with stakeholders, of a concept for successive annual ‘seasons’ of culture, each with a different thematic lens or USP, 2026 being Nature. This marks the 200th anniversary of the world’s first nature reserve, which was in Wakefield, as well as the launch of the region’s Local Nature Recovery Strategy, allowing for a joined-up approach to comms and activities for the benefit of all.
Funding is channelled through Local Authorities to allow for place-based decision making. The Combined Authority’s anchor funding is intended to help crowd-in additional public and private investment and is conditional on the Local Authorities maintaining a culture budget and capacity.
A key aspect is joining the activity up with our Local Visitor Economy Partnership (LVEP) who will be managing the Season web presence, branding and promotion.
Objectives
Greater complementarity between cultural investment and other policy objectives (including visitor economy, creative health, nature recovery strategy, net zero).
Process
West Yorkshire Combined Authority officers were historically invited to join the monthly LA culture leads meeting, along with ALBs. This is the basis of the teamwork and conversation that resulted in the shared vision and delivery plans. Development has included roadshows in each district for stakeholders and culture/heritage organisations and freelancers. The Combined Authority prepared the necessary business case with support from Local Authorities.
Impact
The first ‘season’ goes live in summer 2026, but an initial impact has been a join up across different teams in the Combined Authority between nature recovery and culture.
Learning
The development period was necessarily contracted due to Integrated Settlement timelines and approvals; the CA acknowledges programmes of this scale need as much time as possible and are already working in partnership on the 2027 and 2028 cases.
Recommendations
Every combined authority is different, but each is relatively young in terms of establishing identity and profile. A district-wide approach to activity hopefully benefits all.