‘Village of the Damned was shot here – and then George Harrison moved in’: our UK City of Culture nominations | culture

Ramsgate, Kent

Why did Caesar, St Augustine, Hengist and Horsa make Ramsgate their first port of call on various crusades to England? Proximity to France? Easy landing beaches under cliffs? Lively arts scene?

Perhaps – pending new archaeological discoveries – the first two, but there is no doubt that this part of Thanet has been on the move for a long time. Van Gogh, Turner, Pugin, Tissot and Sambourne used brushes on its streets. Everyone already knows about Dickens, but other local writers include Anthony Buckridge and Russell Hoban and Frank Muir. Sir Moses Montefiore transformed one area of ​​the city into a glorious slice of Jewish-Georgian splendor. The brainchildren of other crazy and wonderful architects are scattered everywhere. The harbourside ‘Smack Boys Home’, a charitable home for orphans and fishing apprentices, is the best church I know.

There was certainly a bit of a cultural lull during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, a period when I knew the city best. My family is from Flora Road, and I spent every holiday there, and then even more time when my grandmother was sick. She died in 2005, a year after UKIP set up its first office and gift shop in nearby King Street. But the advent of high-speed rail in 2008 changed things, and the subsequent improvement has been enormous. There’s now a decent, credible music venue, as well as a great record store, wild museums (old computers, pinball machines), book sales in shipping containers, and endless grassroots activity.

But the point about Ramsgate is that it has soul and salt in its bones. Even without the modern additions, it’s a place of wild skies and big ideas. There is no place I love more. Except maybe Broadstairs: a short walk along the coast, with better rock baths and better ice cream. Catherine Shourd

(Litchmore Heath, Hertfordshire).

Given the sheer density of cultural significance per square foot, there is surely no place more deserving of this title than the Hertfordshire village of my birth, Lechmore Heath. This chocolate-filled beauty, with its pond, pub and village green where Morris dancers hang out, is just a short drive from Elstree Studios and is often used for film and TV filming. Most notably, the 1960 science fiction film Village of the Damned was filmed there (based on John Wyndham’s novel Midwich the Cuckoo), in which the women of the village mysteriously give birth to a strange set of blond-haired, dead-eyed babies: the advanced group of the invading conquering master race. All the picturesque village scenes took on a strange dimension after that.

My oldest friend, the novelist Joanna Briscoe—whom I played with in the village when we were four—wrote a wonderful thriller set there called Touched, inspired by the film. But these somewhat sinister associations were replaced in 1973 when George Harrison bought the local country house, then called Piggott’s Manor – at the time he was working on his album Living in the Material World – renamed it Bhaktivedanta Manor and donated it to the Hare Krishna movement as a place of spiritual tranquility and enlightenment; There is now a George Harrison Park dedicated to his memory on the grounds. Peter Bradshaw

Falmouth, Cornwall

St Ives might seem the most obvious choice to represent Cornwall, but the north coast city has been compromised by overtourism, greedily trading on its reputation as a 20th-century artistic haven. Ironically, this prevents most contemporary artists from being able to work there. In addition, St Ives’s creative identity was largely imposed on it by outsiders, with the exception of Peter Lanyon and Alfred Wallis.

No, better than the cobblestone town of Falmouth, marked throughout cultural history by the sun-dappled, laid-back expressionism of the 19th-century painter Henry Scott Tuke, and the first ever applied arts society, which is still going strong today. It was the center of the Corniche wrestling scene. More modern sporting duels include the annual Wizarding of Worms tournaments. Today, it has festivals celebrating sea shanties, oysters, beer and boats, as well as the indie music festival Wonderfall, covering many of the port city’s select venues – chief among them Cornish Bank, which organizes the festival. Since opening in 2020, Cornish Bank has put Cornwall back on the touring map as well as growing local culture such as Celtic nightclub Klub Nos Lowen and much needed exotic events.

There are several anarchist theater companies including Miracle and Near-ta, the art school is still going strong, and in the Beerwolf bookstore you can drink cheap beer and buy cheap books (a self-perpetuating combination). The many free parks are lush spaces, and in the face of nightclub closures across the country, the unglorious sticky carpets of the first club (sadly not owned by Steve “Phil Mitchell” McFadden, so persistent local rumor has it) turn 60 next year. Additionally, you can spot Aphex Twin in the tavern. What more could you want? Laura Snaps

(Abergavenny in Monmouthshire).

My hometown now for nearly a decade, Abergavenny – Aber to many of us – is where the radical charm of the Welsh borders meets the power of the Welsh valleys. We have what is believed to be the world’s only surviving wooden Jesse – a colossal 15th-century religious figure carved from an oak tree, in St Mary’s Abbey – and a 17th-century secret Catholic chapel at Plas Gunter Palace. Our town educated the pioneering working-class academic and novelist Raymond Williams, and our women played an integral role in the joint peace marches in Greenham.

There have been recent explosions in culture here as well. Alongside our popular food festival, arts organization Peak Cymru has been funding and supporting up-and-coming artists (literally) at its train station headquarters, while talks and exhibitions have lit up the Art Shop & Chapel. Forward-thinking independent booksellers Book-ish, the Abergavenny Writing Festival and the Abergavenny Arts Festival celebrate and encourage local creativity, while Black Mountain Jazz runs Jazz Katz, a fantastic monthly improv group for young people, as well as hosting concerts. The recently renovated Borough Theater and Melville Center also stand out for their potential as venues. Add one of the UK’s oldest amateur symphony orchestras and an award-winning brass band, and there’s a border town story worth telling here. Jude Rogers

Folkestone, Kent

Folkestone is the UK’s best and largest open-air art gallery, with 91 works of art spread across the town, many with views across the canal. The best of these is the dialogue with this body of water: Yoko Ono broadcasting “Peace on Earth” toward France in Morse code from a lighthouse-like lamp; Christian Boltanski’s The Whispers plays recordings of messages to and from World War I soldiers in low volume as you sit on a bench overlooking the sea.

The artworks, along with more that come and go with the triennial Folkestone Arts Festival, have been commissioned by Creative Folkestone, which has also bought over 90 town center buildings to provide affordable spaces for creatives. As with any arts-led renewal, there is a certain amount of paternalism. But this was a less monotonous scheme than in Bilbao, Spain, or indeed Margate around the Kent coast, where galleries were grouped like honeycomb blobs for seasoned tourists to wander through and then fly away. Folkestone folk music is also promoted through festivals like Compass, nights like IYKYK and venues like Speedway, and there are festivals for everything from documentaries to South Asian music culture. Art and creativity are closely woven into Folkestone, rather than just covering up one part of it. Ben Beaumont Thomas

Portobello, Edinburgh

Twenty years ago, when I moved to Edinburgh, people went to Portie for the beach, the pistachio green railings and the faded Victorian atmosphere. The two-mile stretch of golden sand, combined with the bitter wind blowing off the North Sea, was ripe for a prom stroll. Now, like herring gulls to delicate little fish, we come for culture. To Portobello Books, one of Scotland’s best independent bookshops, whose legendary events program last year alone included Ocean Vuong, Jacqueline Wilson and Kate de Waal. To the newly refurbished historic town hall, which continues to develop its events program – Nicola Sturgeon recently chaired there.

The Council Library is fantastic and comes every October during the Portobello Book Festival. Last year, I took my daughter to the annual Porti Art Walk, where residents open their homes to showcase the work of contemporary artists, which is as strange and delightful as it sounds. Porty Pride grows year on year to become a popular community festival to rival Edinburgh and Glasgow’s Pride Festivals. Climate-focused community action is strong in Porti, and often aligns with its thriving art and food scenes. If none of this is your jam, there is always a tolerant line of wild swimmers, mostly middle-aged women at the end of their rope, bobbing year-round in the sea, which in Porti is a culture of its own. Chitra Ramaswamy

(Halifax, West Yorkshire).

A few years ago, BBC Radio 6 Music dubbed Halifax “the Shoreditch of the North” after the unexpected transformation of the former mill town into a trendy haven that rivals the east London hotspot. Although residents are upset by this comparison, the city has a huge cultural imprint. An 18th-century cloth hall, the Piece Hall, has been transformed into a world-class outdoor venue hosting the likes of Paul Weller and Boygenius, while a 19th-century former carpet manufacturing complex, Dean Clough, now hosts a theater and one of the UK’s largest private art galleries.

The music scene has recently added to the Orielles’ dreamy indie repertoire an impressive lineage that stretches from thrash metallers Paradise Lost to Dubstar’s Sarah Blackwood; Grayston Unity have emerged as a mainstay for the northern grassroots, while a warm-up show by the reunited Stone Roses here a few years ago had the Victoria Theater balcony literally bouncing.

More recently, the town’s Victorian architecture and the picturesque Calder Valley landscape painted by Turner and immortalized by Ted Hughes have provided locations for several television series, including Shane Meadows’ The Gallows Pole, Huddersfield-born Sally Wainwright’s smash Happy Valley, Gentleman Jack and (obviously) Halifax’s Last Tango. The Piece Hall was blown up in the Marvel miniseries Secret Invasion…but thankfully, it was only done fictionally. Dave Simpson