What is a UNESCO City of Literature?
Launched by UNESCO in 2004, the Creative Cities Network was established to promote cooperation among cities that place creativity and cultural industries at the heart of their development plans.
Why Norwich?
Norwich has been a literary city for over 900 years: a place of ideas where the power of words has changed lives, promoted parliamentary democracy, fomented revolution, fought for the abolition of slavery and transformed literature.
900 years of stories
Creative activity has always sprung from native roots and Norwich famously follows its own instincts. But this cultural wellspring has been fed over nine centuries by an influx of outsiders who have brought in new ideas, new technologies and new talent.
The City of Literature weekend
Since 2013, National Centre for Writing has worked together with Norfolk & Norwich Festival to programme a ‘City of Literature’ strand of books, words and ideas into their annual programme.
Projects
Explore creative projects and collaborations which seek to share and celebrate Norwich’s literary past, present and future. This includes Walking Norwich, our real and imagined walks around the city.
Explore Norwich
Discover the people, events, organisations and independent businesses that make Norwich the ideal place for writers to live, think and dream.
Norwich exemplifies the crucial role played by Cities of Literature in community well-being, growth, and sustainability.
Norwich is a fine city. None finer. If there is another city in the United Kingdom with a school of painters named after it, a matchless modern art gallery, a university with a reputation for literary excellence which can boast Booker Prize-winning alumni, one of the grandest Romanesque cathedrals in the world, and an extraordinary new state-of-the-art library then I have yet to hear of it.
Discover more from NCW
Carousel images:
Kumkum Malhotra at the City of Literature strand of Norfolk & Norwich Festival © Thom Law
Hanya Yanagihara at UEA Live © Joanna Millington
View of Norwich from Mousehold Heath © VisitNorwich