Y21: Culture-led Regeneration In Twenty-first Century UK City Regions

This paper is concerned with regions of cities, or ‘City-Regions’ and the capacity of culture as a mechanism of social development in the twenty-first century. It focusses on a case study research project ‘Yorkshire 21’ (Y21), funded by Leeds Beckett University, UK. This interdisciplinary project united academic researchers with local communities to enable small-scale, culture-led community regeneration projects in Yorkshire. It was born out of the university’s mission to engage with and contribute to the well-being of the region, and to increase public engagement with academic research by establishing a conversation between scholars and members of the public. Following the exemplar of a series of creative writing community history workshops held as part of the project, the article examines a small- scale study of culture-led regeneration in a specific City-Region of the United Kingdom. Critically exploring community-led regeneration as a strategy based on recovery and valorization of local culture, the article proposes the centrality of community contributions to culture-led regeneration projects in contemporary UK City-Regions.