Culture champion

It fully deserves such an accolade – and the riches that will inevitably follow. This is a go-ahead, forward-looking location that has undergone a radical transformation over the past 25 years.

Yet Sheffield would not be in such a fortuitous position without the

vision of those city leaders who identified the area's potential in the early 1980s – and then secured the necessary public and private sector investment to turn their dream into reality.

There will, of course, be a small number of sceptics who will belittle this initiative. However, they only have to look at Liverpool, and the financial dividend that it derived from being the European capital of culture, to realise that a thriving cultural scene can help underpin a community's future fortunes as a residential, business and leisure destination.