A spate of new events and projects is transforming the South West’s largest city into the region’s cultural capital.
Plymouth has long been known as a key industrial centre for Devon and Cornwall with Devonport Dockyard and the largest naval base in Western Europe.
Now a more creative side is emerging as the city announces the first Art Weekender in the region, and the inaugural Fringe Festival of theatre and live performance prepares to open later this month.
Meanwhile work continues to convert part of the Royal William Yard – a Grade I-listed former naval supply base – into the largest artists’ centre in the South West. The £4.2-million Ocean Studios will welcome the first of up to 100 resident artists in June.
“Within the peninsula, Plymouth is taking the lead culturally,” said Dom Jinks, executive director of the Plymouth Culture Board. “Bristol has reached saturation point. Plymouth is becoming the alternative centre in the whole South West.”
The Art Weekender will feature international, national and local artists showing work in established galleries and ‘pop-up’ spaces in empty shops. The event is organised by Visual Arts Plymouth (VAP), comprising 14 organisations including Plymouth University, Plymouth College of Art, the City Museum and Art Gallery, Plymouth Arts Centre, Ocean Studios, and galleries Radiant and KARST.
The programme will include specially organised events and some commissioned public art, and bracket exhibitions that the venues have already arranged.
VAP is also inviting artists and community groups to take part in the Art Weekender in what a spokesman said would be a “world-class programme” and a key element in the build-up to Mayflower 2020, the 400th anniversary of the departure of the Pilgrim Fathers from Plymouth.
“The aim is that this will become an annual event and attract people to Plymouth as a cultural destination like Bristol, Glasgow and Liverpool,” he said. “This is part of Plymouth becoming a ‘festival city’, looking towards 2020.”
Plymouth already hosts several established festivals and events that pull in thousands of visitors. In July the Hoe will again host the MTV Crashes music festival and a fixture in the city’s calendar in August, the British Fireworks Championships, will feature a display by the RAF’s Red Arrows. Plymouth International Book Festival brings top-name authors to the city each autumn.
The city has the UK’s most successful regional theatre in terms of audience reach. The Theatre Royal Plymouth completed a £7-million update in 2013 and has TR2, Europe’s first purpose-built production and education centre.
Looking ahead, the £25 million history centre in North Hill, due to open in 2019, will house the City Museum and Art Gallery, Plymouth and West Devon Record Office, the Central Library, South West Film and Television Archive and South West Image Bank. That has been talked of as a potential centrepiece of a Plymouth bid for European Capital of Culture in 2023.