Peterborough is also a notably young city. A significant proportion of its population is under 25, bringing energy, diversity and a future-facing character to its cultural life. Recent education-led visioning with students and staff across the city has reinforced this picture, highlighting strong pride in the city’s diversity and heritage, a desire for more visible and regular cultural activity, and the importance of informal and shared spaces such as parks, green areas and community hubs in everyday cultural life.

This reflects a city that is not seeking to invent a cultural identity for a bid, but to give coherence, visibility and momentum to work already underway. Peterborough has begun to align long-term cultural strategy with neighbourhood participation, partnership working and a clearer understanding of culture’s role in wellbeing, pride and belonging. Initiatives such as This Is Peterborough demonstrate a shift away from one-off events towards year-round cultural activation, enabling communities to shape and share their own narratives as part of a wider story of the city.

This moment matters for Peterborough because several long-term strands are now converging. Significant investment in infrastructure and regeneration is reshaping parts of the city and renewing confidence in its future. At the same time, sustained work on place narrative, neighbourhood identity and cultural participation has begun to change how residents see their city and how they see their role within it. Civic leadership is aligned around culture as a driver of pride, wellbeing and belonging, with clear accountability and cross-sector commitment in place. A young, highly diverse population is expressing a strong desire for more visible, shared cultural life, while communities across the city are increasingly confident in shaping and sharing their own stories. UK City of Culture 2029 arrives at a point where ambition, readiness and public mood are aligned, creating a rare opportunity to accelerate change that is already underway rather than attempting to impose it from scratch.

The timing of this bid is deliberate. Peterborough is at a point of alignment, with established delivery partnerships, growing youth infrastructure, investment through the Levelling Up Fund and a civic ambition to become a more child-friendly city. UK City of Culture 2029 is framed not as an endpoint, but as an accelerator and an opportunity to test, strengthen and scale an approach already in motion.

Peterborough is submitting an Expression of Interest from a position of growing maturity. Not because the city’s cultural journey is complete, but because it understands how culture works locally and how it can deliver lasting benefit. The neighbourhood-led, youth-shaped and wellbeing-focused approach being developed in Peterborough reflects challenges shared by many UK towns and cities, and offers learning with relevance beyond the city itself.

The UK City of Culture programme is a national initiative run by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, designed to use culture as a catalyst for long-term change. It invites cities to present a clear cultural vision that reflects local identity, engages communities and delivers lasting social, economic and creative impact beyond a single year of activity.

Peterborough is entering the competition because this is a pivotal moment for the city. Shaped by heritage, industry and migration, Peterborough has a rich and diverse cultural life that is not always visible or recognised.

Our Expression of Interest is a statement of intent to tell a more confident, inclusive story about the city, to place culture at the heart of neighbourhoods as well as civic life, and to use this opportunity to build pride, participation and long-term benefit for everyone who calls Peterborough home.

Peterborough is a city shaped by movement, making and everyday creativity. Its identity has been formed through centuries of change, from ancient landscapes and waterways to industrial heritage, and through successive waves of migration that have created one of the UK’s most diverse contemporary cities. Culture in Peterborough is not confined to institutions or venues. It is lived daily in neighbourhoods, faith spaces, community halls, streets, parks and shared public places.

What makes Peterborough distinctive is not a single cultural narrative, but its ability to hold many narratives at once while still creating a shared sense of place. Culture is shaped locally, often informally, and embedded in everyday life and the natural environment. The relationship between people, place and landscape is central to how culture is experienced and expressed across the city.

Peterborough is also a notably young city. A significant proportion of its population is under 25, bringing energy, diversity and a future-facing character to its cultural life. Recent education-led visioning with students and staff across the city has reinforced this picture, highlighting strong pride in the city’s diversity and heritage, a desire for more visible and regular cultural activity, and the importance of informal and shared spaces such as parks, green areas and community hubs in everyday cultural life.

This reflects a city that is not seeking to invent a cultural identity for a bid, but to give coherence, visibility and momentum to work already underway. Peterborough has begun to align long-term cultural strategy with neighbourhood participation, partnership working and a clearer understanding of culture’s role in wellbeing, pride and belonging. Initiatives such as This Is Peterborough demonstrate a shift away from one-off events towards year-round cultural activation, enabling communities to shape and share their own narratives as part of a wider story of the city.

This moment matters for Peterborough because several long-term strands are now converging. Significant investment in infrastructure and regeneration is reshaping parts of the city and renewing confidence in its future. At the same time, sustained work on place narrative, neighbourhood identity and cultural participation has begun to change how residents see their city and how they see their role within it. Civic leadership is aligned around culture as a driver of pride, wellbeing and belonging, with clear accountability and cross-sector commitment in place. A young, highly diverse population is expressing a strong desire for more visible, shared cultural life, while communities across the city are increasingly confident in shaping and sharing their own stories. UK City of Culture 2029 arrives at a point where ambition, readiness and public mood are aligned, creating a rare opportunity to accelerate change that is already underway rather than attempting to impose it from scratch.

The timing of this bid is deliberate. Peterborough is at a point of alignment, with established delivery partnerships, growing youth infrastructure, investment through the Levelling Up Fund and a civic ambition to become a more child-friendly city. UK City of Culture 2029 is framed not as an endpoint, but as an accelerator and an opportunity to test, strengthen and scale an approach already in motion.

Peterborough is submitting an Expression of Interest from a position of growing maturity. Not because the city’s cultural journey is complete, but because it understands how culture works locally and how it can deliver lasting benefit. The neighbourhood-led, youth-shaped and wellbeing-focused approach being developed in Peterborough reflects challenges shared by many UK towns and cities, and offers learning with relevance beyond the city itself.