Creative city

Norfolk & Norwich Festival. Established in 1772, Britain’s second oldest arts festival takes place every May, and encompasses classical music, jazz, folk, theatre, comedy, street entertainment, poetry and educational projects. The festival attracts world-class performers from all over the world.
Alongside the main Festival, a growing Fringe Festival completes the picture.
The FAN (Film Arts Norwich) film animation festival is rapidly gaining a world-wide reputation for high quality animation and is now in its third year.
Becoming a regular annual event, The King Street Festival is a community based weekend with local performers and craftspeople and is also the focus of BBC Music Live.
The Big CFG is an annual three day popular music festival held in Chapelfield Gardens, central in the City, hosting national and international bands and is a showcase for local talent.

Norwich’s Theatre Royal is one of Britain’s most successful regional theatres, succeeding without subsidy in bringing drama, comedy, ballet and opera to the City, including regular visits by Glyndebourne and the RSC.
Norwich Playhouse is a lovely, intimate 300 seat theatre attracting smaller productions, as well as hosting an annual comedy festival.
The Maddermarket is the UK’s best-known amateur theatre venue — which also attracts big name stars such as Stephen Berkoff, Timothy West and Prunella Scales.
The City’s fourth theatrical venue is unique — housed in a converted church, the Norwich Puppet Theatre delights children and adults alike with its own and visiting productions.
Another annual institution is the outdoor theatre season of Theatre in the Parks, organised by Norwich City Council, and taking drama into beautiful and unusual locations around the City.

The Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, housed in a stunning Norman Foster-designed building on the University campus, houses an unparalleled collection of visual art, from ancient Peruvian sculpture right through to 20^th Century masterpieces by Bacon and Giacometti. It also hosts several world-class visiting shows each year.
Refurbished and re-opened in 2001, Norwich Castle Museum houses the world’s biggest collection of pictures from the Norwich School of artists. The Castle also hosts visiting exhibitions, some mounted in a unique collaboration with the Tate.
Open Studios, organised by the Norfolk & Norwich Festival, sees nearly 200 artists around Norfolk opening up their studios to the public for a three week period. Many artists hold workshops, and thousands of people use this opportunity to explore the wide variety of art being produced n the County.
Norfolk has always been a centre for visual art, and there are many smaller galleries throughout the County, too numerous to list.. The internationally renowned exhibition EAST is in its tenth successful year in the Norwich Gallery at the Norwich School of Art and Design.
The village of Bergh Apton has become well-known for its annual sculpture trail where sculptures are exhibited in gardens throughout the village.

The University of East Anglia is undisputedly the country’s leading centre for creative writing. Many prize-winning authors have graduated from its creative writing course, including Kazuo Ishiguro and Rose Tremain. The course was for many years led by the late Malcolm Bradbury, and the University is currently home to Poet Laureate Andrew Motion.
The University’s Creative Writing Festival attracts a huge number of leading authors. In 2001, the list has included Jonathan Miller, Melvyn Bragg, John Mortimer, Clive James and Paul McCartney.
Housed in the amazing Forum building in the centre of Norwich, the new Millennium Library, opened in 2001, has brought the very latest in library design and technology to the City, ensuring that residents and visitors alike have quick and easy access to hundreds of thousands of volumes.

Norfolk is home to the Britten Sinfonia series of concerts, presented both in the Norwich’s imposing St Andrew’s Hall, and also at venues across the County.
Founded in 2001, Norwich is home to the professional Chamber Orchestra Anglia.
UEA’s Students Union runs two major venues for live music: the LCR, on the campus, attracts some of the country’s top bands, while the City-centre Waterfront venue is more intimate, and presents smaller bands, both national and local.
Norwich Arts Centre promotes and eclectic mix of jazz, folk and world music, as well as comedy.

Norwich Arts Centre promotes and eclectic mix of jazz, folk and world music, as well as comedy and theatre, visual arts, exhibitions, multi-media and photography courses.
The King of Hearts is a small arts centre run by the King of Hearts Trust in a renovated medieval merchant's house. It has a café, a private collection of art, exhibition space, meeting rooms, and holds chamber and classical music events.

Whilst it is no longer true that Norwich has a pub for every day of the year, it still has an astonishing mix of hostelries, and the County has kept up the tradition of small, local breweries, including Woodfordes, Wolf and Chalk Hill Brewery.
Café culture has arrived in the City big-time, again with a mixture of nationally- and locally-owned businesses all thriving.
With its wealth of fresh, local ingredients, it is hardly surprising that Norfolk is a mecca for food lovers. Norwich boasts a wide variety of restaurants, catering for every possible taste.
From intimate basement venues to cavernous modern clubs, recent developments have seen a huge growth in the clubbing scene in the City. On Fridays and Saturdays tens of thousands of people enjoy the vibrant club scene in Norwich.
Norwich has 27 cinema screens, including the region’s leading arthouse cinema, Cinema City.

Norwich is the region’s broadcasting centre, hosting both BBC East and Anglia TV. Around these two has grown a coterie of small, independent production houses. BBC Radio Norfolk is one of the country’s most successful local BBC stations, while several commercial radio stations serve the County.
Norfolk is a popular location for Hollywood and TV directors. Many films and TV dramas have been shot here, and the region has its own Screen Commission to encourage and help such ventures.
The first newspaper outside London was founded in Norwich in 1758. The Norwich Post became the Eastern Daily Press, which together with its sister title the Evening News, form two of the major titles owned by Eastern Counties Newspapers Group, which has become one of the UK’s major media players, owning dozens of titles across England and Scotland.

A large and loyal fan base enjoys First Division football at Norwich City’s Carrow Road ground, right in the heart of the City. Whilst the team have never quite reached the heights of European glory they enjoyed in 1993, this year has seen a resurgence in fortunes, with a return to the top flight a real possibility this season.
Opened in 2000, the Sportspark at UEA is the best University sports facility in the UK, with one of only eight Olympic sized swimming pools in the country, as well as state-of-the-art gym and sports facilities.
On the north side of the City, the Norwich Sport Village has both fun and competition swimming pools, as well as two huge sports halls, which regularly play host to British championships in sports such as badminton and boxing.
An explosion of new sports clubs and gyms in the city over the past two years is a reflection of greatly increased participation in sport by Norwich residents.