Hull’s rising tide of creativity puts this ‘place like no other’ firmly on the map

Author and screenwriter Russ Litten

Thirteen publishers rejected my first novel Scream If You  Want To Go Faster before it found a home. One of the most common reasons given was its setting. “Hull seems a particularly grim location,” wrote one bemused editor. “Why would anyone want to read a story set there?”

When I came to write my second novel Swear Down I decided to set it in London. However, as the story evolved and the two main characters, murder suspects, took flight from the capital there was only one logical place for them to run to, one singular secret place where they assumed the police would never find them. Who would ever think of running away to Hull?

I’ve tried to run away from Hull several times and each time it’s dragged me back to its salty embrace. I love the stoicism of the people, their blunt, pitch-black humour and the romance of the horizon; the way the sky meets the water like a vast and endless mirror.

Whenever people come to visit me in Hull they all leave with more or less the same verdict: This is a place unlike any other. Not for us the cocky loudmouth swagger of Manchester or the sentimental self-aggrandizing of Liverpool. We just get on with our own unique thing, whether anyone’s looking at us or not. This is a special place, a secret treasure island stuck on the edge of the country, a place unlike any other.

Now we’ve been named as City Of Culture it looks like the secret is out for good.

Playwright Gill Adams

Hull is more than a city, it’s who I am. It’s in my blood.

There’s a saying, “You can take the girl out of Hull but you can’t take Hull out of the girl.” Well I am no longer a girl and I no longer live in Hull, but I am still a very proud Hull lass.

It’s the people who make it a great city, they have a unique  way about them, for a start they are funny, especially the women. Of course they pretend they don’t know they are funny and it is a humour is rooted in survival.

My family are from Hessle Road (once a proud fishing community) and growing up in the Sixties and Seventies they fed my imagination and have continued to pull at my writer’s heart for more than 50 years.

Everything I needed to become a writer I learnt in Hull. If it doesn’t ring true they will tell you, if it’s not good they will say so, but if it shares their humour, hopes and fears and is written with a love they recognise, then you have the most loyal audience in the world.

Actor Martin Barrass

We’re well aware of Hull’s detractors over the years, but so what? Back in history our profile was once high enough to refuse the king entry into the city and in so doing sparked the English Civil War.

Admittedly, the 20th-century was not so kingly, bringing disaster in the shape of both the nightly Blitz bombings of the 1940s and the decline of Hull’s mighty fishing industry, resulting in mass unemployment.

Yet despite all that, I’ve lived and worked all around the UK and still believe that there is no finer place for a kid to grow up. Massive parks, a glorious sandy coastline, ferries, heritage, museums and our own phone company (hands off BT). Add to all that Hull Truck and New Theatre, Hull KR, Hull FC, Hull City and a list longer than both arms of Hullensians who have hit the heights in the arts, science and sport.

Tell the world how brilliant Hull is? I think we’ve already towld ‘em!

Martin Barrass will be appearing in Aladdin and the Twankeys at York Theatre Royal from December 12 to February 1

Arts consultant, Elaine Burke

I arrived in Hull intending to stay for two years. Twenty years on I’m still here, and still charmed and surprised by this unique city. Where else has a nationally and internationally acclaimed theatre that started life on the back of a truck?

A friend describes Hull as full of diamonds in the mud. That’s the famous “gull marked mud” that Philip Larkin wrote about. She’s talking about the exceptional people who live here, making extraordinary things happen. Like Malcolm Scott, a former property developer who loves the arts, and recently turned an entire multi-storey office block into a space for theatre makers and other creatives.

Walk around the city, where medieval cobbled streets lead into steely industrial complexes; down the former fish docks, through to a breathtaking marina and out into leafy Cottingham Road to the University of Hull – one of the UK’s finest.

Hull has been good to me. I arrived to work as an art therapist all those years ago – jobs as rare as hen’s teeth anywhere else. But Hull had a uniquely thriving department, supported by doughty managers who knew the value of the culture you can’t see, as well as the culture you can. That first job of mine became something completely different when Hull’s innovative NHS led the way on the national stage, and I was lucky enough to become the only senior manager in the country to develop arts and health services. It was an audacious and visionary move – placing culture and the arts at the heart of health. And it could only have happened in Hull.

Maritime historian and Hull University lecturer Robb Robinson.

What is so great for me about my home town is the way that its geography, its site, its situation, have been infused into the attitude and outlook of so many of the people who were born here or who have made it their home and has nurtured a distinctive independence.

Forget the common clichés about Hull being at the end of the line, this place and many of its inhabitants have always engaged with the globe.

When you stand on the pier, hard by The Deep and close to the statue of William de la Pole, the eddying flow of the fast Humber tide beckons you seawards, onwards, outwards, towards the world.

Ever since its medieval foundation Hull’s people and ships have done their proverbial business in great waters. Their individuality and creativity has coursed across every continent and ocean. Yet lots of their stories are local secrets.

Whilst almost everyone knows something about Andrew Marvell, William Wilberforce and Amy Johnson, many, many other East Riding people have also made a substantial mark in almost every field of exploration, creativity or commerce. From the Arctic to Antarctic, the Himalayas to Australia, world maps are littered with landmarks named after Hull explorers, seafarers and their ships.

I also love the way that the individuality of Hull people manifests itself so strongly in the creative sector. So many actors have come from the city, not least Tom Courtenay, Barrie Rutter and Maureen Lipman. Hull Truck has made its mark across the world whilst the Fruit Market area on Humber Street in the atmospheric Old Town has emerged as an astonishingly vibrant centre of music and muse and epitomises everything that is energetically creative about this true City of Culture.

Robb Robinson is author of Far Horizons: from Hull to the Ends of the Earth.

Actress, stand-up and writer Lucy Beaumont

Obviously we don’t know at this stage how much it will affect Hull’s economy and unemployment figures but do you know what? For the first time in ages there’s a real sense of pride and if you’re a creative  and struggling in the city hopefully this might be your time to shine.

I for one can stop with the sarcastic and intentional jibes towards Hull in my stand-up. Job done. It’s not the city it used to be and its people have got so much to look forward too and hopefully the bad press it has so often received will stop.

I’ve never understood it. Okay, it’s a city that suffered in the past with the collapse of its main source of industry – fishing – and being the worst bombed city outside of London during the Second World War it’s not as architecturally beautiful as it might have been.

But you know what? It’s got more character than Leeds and Manchester and has countryside to rival Sheffield. It’s finally  been given a chance to prove to the outside world what it’s  worth.

Andrew Pearson, artistic director of Ensemble 52 and member of the Hull City of Culture bid team.

We established Ensemble52 in 2008 because there was a lack of theatre provision in the city. It was also the beginning of the recession, so we just tried to do as much as possible with the little we had. It seemed that the tough economic times had galvanised other creative talents in the city. Next to our base at Fruit, galleries, museums, and pop up eateries started to appear, all built on passion and little cash. This is why Hull is great.

A few years on and there are now 20 or so emerging theatre companies choosing to make their work here in the city and we have just staged the first Heads Up Festival in conjunction with the Battersea Arts Centre, a contemporary theatre festival featuring outstanding national, international and locally curated work.

So, Hull has been beavering away.

There was a huge hunger for City of Culture, both from the creative sector and the public, and now we have it, it will give these artists the chance to show their work on a bigger stage.

Hull playwright Dave Windass

When Hull Truck’s new writing group the Blockheads sprang into life in 2003 there was already a sense that things in Hull were about to bubble over.

For too long we’d all kept  our heads down and didn’t  really make a fuss but there  were a few of us then that wanted to get stuff up, on and out  there.

Another Hull playwright, Richard Bean, popped in to  talk to us about his journey up to that point, which had seen him shock the blue rinse brigade at the Royal Court in London with Under The Whaleback. He was pretty inspirational and demonstrated that stories based in Hull also spoke universal truths.

The shift from Spring Street to Ferensway for Hull Truck reinforced the company’s credentials as a regional producing powerhouse.

There’s no arguing that the new home is a great facility but it also left a void for smaller, less traditional but more dynamic venues.

Fruit, on Humber Street, is a great empty canvas on which to work and when I got chance to take over a disused office space last year, along with Ensemble 52, we knew we were creating something similar.

New writing is in abundance in Hull and this is a hotbed of theatrical endeavour. As we  move towards 2017 that  activity is going to increase exponentially, which is very exciting and the kind of stuff that we dreamed of back in the Blockheads days.

Crime writer Nick Quantrill

Was anyone really surprised when Hull was crowned 2017  UK City of Culture? I don’t think we were in the city. As the bid stated, this is a place ready to come out of the shadows.

A new skyline has emerged and the Larkin 25 trail, which led visitors around places important to the poet, showed how culture can reach out to people and be inclusive. No longer are we prepared to be the butt of everyone’s jokes. We’re better than that.

Hull is home to a thriving  and growing artistic scene,  be it theatre, poetry, comedy  or the growing pool of crime writers I belong to. But the city’s artistic endeavours didn’t win the title alone. Add in the overwhelming support from residents and the business  world and it’s clear just how passionate we are about making this the best ever UK City of Culture.

It will be an unforgettable year which promises to transform perceptions of Hull and enrich those who live here. Be sure to join us. We’ll deliver something truly spectacular, but more importantly, something which will reflect who we are in this special place at the end of the M62.

Nick Quantrill’s latest novel, The Crooked Beat, is published by Caffeine Nights.

Barrie Rutter, Hull born director and founder of Northern Broadsides

What I wish for my home town is pleasure, year-long, unapologetic and rapturous.  One thing I have learned in nearly 50 years of acting on a stage is that pleasure can be a great educator.

The education world will already be gearing up for a year of youthful creativity; schools love a festival and it won’t be long before hundreds and thousands of works of impish art forms will be finding their way onto walls and fridges.

I have a few ideas of my own...  a ribbon amalgamating the colours of Hull Tigers, FC and Rovers stretching from  Pickering Park to East Park perhaps. Commission the artists now – Hullensian and Alumni alike – the poets, sculptors, musicians, dancers, writers, actors. Fill the city with colourful culture; shout about it, ring the bells, sound klaxons and buzzers. Let us look back from the hangover days of January 2018 and say “...what a year; what a pass...”

Bafta and Olivier Award winning playwright John Godber who transformed the fortunes of Hull Truck.

Hull has battled with its  image for many years, but those of us who helped secure and build Hull Truck a new theatre know it as a city with great enthusiasm for the arts, and deserving of this opportunity to shine.

When I first arrived from Wakefield 30 years ago,  Hull wasn’t even mentioned in the Arts Council’s Glory  of the Garden document,  which was designed to  develop arts across the country.

Scores of actors, directors, designers, and playwrights helped Hull Truck survive over the last 28 years; how wonderful  if they too could bask in this  great accolade.

Playwrights, poets, screenwriters, novelists, artists and comics all find in Hull a city with more than enough material to go at... long may that  continue.