Spotlight on what makes St Helens Borough special key to UK Town of Culture bid
The story of St Helens Borough will be the focus of a year of events that chart the borough's industrious past and impressive living heritage, its community of hard-working people who are grounded, gritty and full of heart and a place of huge potential which is reaching for greatness again.
Article date: 23 March 2026
This all blends together for St Helens Borough's bid for UK Town of Culture 2028, which is a nationwide competition which could bring in more than £3 million in investment for a wide range of cultural events focused around the three themes of the bid submission - pioneers, pride and progress.
Councillor Anthony Burns, Council Leader, said: "St Helens Borough has a strong and unique identity that we are really proud of and a fantastic cultural community that we believe can deliver an exciting and varied year of activities that focus on opening up arts to all our residents. There will be strong competition to bid for the first UK Town of Culture, but we believe that it's a chance for us to put our borough in the spotlight."
The three themes represent the things that make St Helens Borough the place it is:
· Pioneers focuses on the growth of the town from four small parishes to a burning hub of the industrial revolution and world leaders in a variety of industries.
· Pride focuses on the deep-rooted working-class pride residents have, linked to our industrial past, our legendary people and our world-class rugby team.
· Progress focuses on looking forward to a bright future with the borough home to cutting edge technology in glass and AI and a revitalised place through our extensive regeneration.
Councillor Sue Murphy Cabinet Member for Localities, Culture and Heritage, added: "Our proposed programme will celebrate the story of our borough and will be developed with the fantastic and diverse community cultural groups and organisations we have across the borough. It will have a real St Helens heart at its core that reflects our themes. There will be a number of opportunities for us throughout the process to help fund our application and we want residents to get behind our bid and back our borough."
The council will submit an initial expression of interest, then the strongest bids will progress to a shortlist, with each shortlisted town receiving £60,000 to help deliver their full bids for the competition.
Three finalists - one small, one medium, one large town - will be chosen. The winner will be crowned UK Town of Culture 2028 and receive a £3 million prize. The two runners-up will each receive £250,000 to deliver elements of their bid.