Rob Kingdom, project director of Hull: Yorkshire’s Maritime City.
The Hull: Yorkshire’s Maritime City project will see the extensive redevelopment of the city’s historic maritime assets, supporting Hull’s goal to become a world-class visitor destination. Project director Rob Kingdom explains what it will mean for the city.
Building on the success as UK City of Culture 2017, we’re working with Hull Culture and Leisure on the Hull: Yorkshire’s Maritime City (Hull YMC) scheme, a large-scale heritage-led regeneration project that will reclaim, protect and share every element of Hull’s maritime past, present and future.
The project will see the development of three important sites and the spaces between them: the Hull Maritime Museum, Dock Office Chambers and the North End Shipyard, and the conservation of two historic vessels, the Arctic Corsair and Spurn Lightship.
It goes without saying that funding the project is a key to development. Our council has given the project £10 million of funding and we’re currently working on a £15 million Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant funding application.
HLF has already allocated £1.37 million for development and if successful, the remaining £13.6 million grant will be released in autumn and permissions to start work will be granted.
As well as working extensively on the bid, we’re also developing some exciting ideas with industry experts to ensure we develop an attraction capable contributing to the plans to make Hull a world-class visitor destination.
They include:
- Improved facilities with stories and artefacts shared in different ways, increased display space and better access, including lifts, changing facilities and more toilets
- The opening up of parts of the Maritime Museum never opened to the public to reveal some incredible architecture for the first time
- Dock Office Chambers will be repurposed as a dedicated storage for the reserve collection
- The North End Shipyard, a hidden gem behind Hull College with 400 years of shipbuilding history, will become the Arctic Corsair’s permanent home with a new orientation centre
- A walk along the southern end of Queens Gardens will be reinvigorated with to reintroduce the rich maritime story of this former dock and link the two main sites
- Encouraging people to get involved through volunteering, training and employment opportunities as well as learning programmes for schools and communities
One of the exhibits at the Hull Maritime Museum.
We’re carrying out an extensive consultation programme to help with our plans. We want people to be part of this exciting project so over the coming months we’ll be travelling across the city to share our plans with everyone. We’ll be showing some of the exciting artist impressions and people can have their say about how they’d like to see some of the exhibitions displayed such as by touch, written, digitalised or interactive.
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