Derry is the UK City of Culture 2013

I've always been teased by friends for my endless bragging about my hometown but tonight,at 725pm, I was probably the most proud I have ever been of being from the city known as Derry, Londonderry, Stroke City (courtesy of Gerry Anderson) and now the first UK City of Culture 2013.

I was in the Guildhall when it was announced that Derry had won. The rumours had been flying around all day, but I had braced myself not to believe anything until I heard the announcement. In fact, I was so keyed up about the whole thing that as I heard it being said everything went into slow motion. I walked into the semi darkness of the Guildhall's main hall, into a throng of people all looking in the same direction towards the giant tv screens on the stage. The roar that had just gone up on hearing the news was one of pure joy. The first person I saw was Pauline Ross, the director of the Playhouse. It was almost like she was in a mystical trance, arms in the air, openly crying and when I asked her for her immediate reaction, ( I was on air with Arts Extra), she said "I can hardly feel my legs". Pauline is one of the cultural journey men and women who have invested their all into Derry. Her reaction summed up to me the palpable feeling of raw undiluted joy mixed with vindication, the sense that here was a recognition of what the city had done and what it can become.

As I was leaving the Guildhall around 830 this evening, I saw many young people milling around outside, standing chatting, oblivous to the rain coming down. I realised that while I was celebrating the moment it was only after disappointments in the past. I was a junior arts administrator putting up posters for Field Day Theatre Company shows in the late 80's early 90's, but the city has no legacy of Field Day having been there. Or when I was working on IMPACT 92, the year long arts festival in the city that didn't quite live up to its expectations in 1993. 

 These kids don't know this, so the step change has already happened, the longed for "sea-change
on the far side of revenge" as Seamus Heaney said in "The Cure at Troy". Words from his play are quoted on the first page of the bid document, the same words which, in 1990, I heard said on the same stage of the Guildhall that tonight said City of Culture.
The teenagers outside the Guildhall are the sea change. It didn't take a City of Culture title to appreciate it. But it's good to get the chance to show what can happen now.