Royal Leamington Spa enters UK Town of Culture 2028

 

Leamington Spa Is Bidding to Become a UK Town of Culture 🎉

Exciting news for Leamington Spa: the town is officially preparing a bid to become a UK Town of Culture.

Launched by the government, the 2028 UK Town of Culture competition is the first of its kind and is all about celebrating the unique cultural life, creativity and identity of towns across the country. Alongside the prestigious title, the winning town will receive significant government funding to help deliver a year-long cultural programme.

Leamington Spa will be entering the competition in the medium town category. Applications are open until 31 March, with a shortlist expected to be announced later in the spring.

The process happens in stages. Towns that make it onto the shortlist will receive £60,000 to help develop their final bids. From there, three finalists will be chosen – one from each town size category. The overall winners will receive £3 million, while the two runners-up will each be awarded £250,000 to bring parts of their cultural programmes to life.

The Mayor of Leamington Spa, Cllr Ruggy Singh, shared his enthusiasm for the bid, highlighting the town’s thriving arts scene, diverse communities, beautiful parks and rich history. He also stressed that this bid is about looking at Leamington Spa from fresh perspectives — and that it can’t happen without local people.

To help shape the bid, residents, creatives, organisations and anyone who loves Leamington Spa are invited to get involved from the very beginning. A series of informal drop-in sessions will be taking place across town in February, offering a chance to find out more about the Town of Culture bid and share ideas.

Drop-in session dates:

• Lillington Community Centre, 3 Mason Avenue, CV32 7QE
  Wednesday 11 February, 5–8pm

• The Sydni Centre, Cottage Square, CV31 1PT
  Monday 16 February, 5–8pm

• Town Hall, Parade
  Tuesday 17 February, 5–8pm

Everyone is welcome to pop along, whether you have a fully formed idea, a spark of inspiration, or you’re just curious to learn more.

There’s also an online survey available for anyone who’d like to support the bid but can’t attend in person.

Together, this is a chance to showcase what makes Leamington Spa special, and to imagine what our cultural future could look like.

A painting at the gallery has it's first showing!

Friday Focus review by Membership Secretary, Flag.

 

 No. 1 Kenilworth Road, Leamington Spa. Painted by Joseph Parsons (1932)

   

At the Friday Focus on 30th January 2025, we were able to see a painting from the collection that's not been seen in public before.

The talk given by the Leamington Literary Society was extremely interesting and featured lots of books and their writers who had lived in or passed through Leamington.

The image in one of the books turned out to be a painting that the gallery had in store, and we were all delighted to be able to see it. The building hidden in the distance behind the trees is the Town Hall. The connection was the poem by John Betjeman called Death in Leamington. The painting has been used to illustrate the poem. It was among his earliest published works in the early 1930s, long before his appointment as Poet Laureate in 1972.

 

Here's a link to the poem which we can't quote because it's still in copyright. 

 

The poem tells the story of a busy nurse who discovers that her employer, living in an impressive house in Leamington Spa, has passed away. A passionate advocate for historic buildings, Betjeman uses the setting to explore mortality alongside architectural decline. He draws attention to details such as “large round plate-glass windows,” “flaking stucco,” and “yellow Italianate arches,” linking these features to the “grey, decaying face” of the dead woman.

 

Through precise observation and rich imagery, from the placement of furniture to the sound of falling plaster, Betjeman creates a vivid and haunting atmosphere. I especially liked the line about the lonely crochet, lying patiently unstirred, and the fingers that would have work'd it being dead as the spoken word.
 
Many of his poems were rooted in real locations rather than abstract ideas, which helps explain his fascination with Leamington Spa. Its elegant Regency terraces and crescents would have appealed to someone so deeply committed to preservation. Betjeman was actively involved in organisations such as the SPAB, the Victorian Society, and the Georgian Group.

Today, his legacy is perhaps most visibly celebrated by the statue welcoming travellers at St Pancras Station in London — a grand neo-Gothic landmark that he famously helped to save from demolition in the 1960s.

Oh, and he went to enormous lengths to save the pier at Clevedon which is always worth a visit if you're heading south west!  

 

Sadly, not a lot is known about the artist or his works, and further research so far has been unsuccessful.