Culture
The University of East Anglia on the outskirts of Norwich is, contrary to popular belief, not one of the so-called plate glass universities. The UEA (founded 1963), along with Sussex University, were both founded before the Robbins Report. UEA adopted the city's motto of independence Do different and is especially well-known for its creative writing programme; established by Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson, and whose graduates include Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan. The university campus is the home of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts which houses a number of important art collections in many media. It is also well known for staging exhibitions of work on a wide range of diverse themes. The city also has a long-established (since 1845) art college, the Norwich University College of the Arts (formerly Norwich School of Art and Design), which is situated in the city centre. Additionally, the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital on the city's periphery at Colney was opened in 2001.
The Forum, designed by Michael Hopkins and Partners and opened in 2002 is a building designed to house the Millennium Library, a replacement for the Norwich Central Library building which burned down in 1994, and the regional headquarters and television centre for BBC East. The building provides a venue for exhibitions, concerts and events, although the city still lacks a dedicated concert venue.
The Millennium Library contains the 2nd Air Division Memorial Library, a collection of material about American culture and the American relationship with East Anglia, especially the role of the United States Air Force on UK air bases throughout the Second World War and Cold War. Much of the collection was lost in the 1994 fire, but the collection has been restored by contributions from many veterans of the war, both European and American.
Recent attempts to shed the backwater image of Norwich and market it as a popular tourist destination, as well as a centre for science, commerce, culture and the arts, have included the refurbishment of the Norwich Castle Museum and the opening of the Forum. The proposed new slogan for Norwich, England's Other City, has been the subject of much discussion and controversy—and it remains to be seen whether it will be finally adopted. A number of signs at the approaches to the city still display the traditional phrase—"Norwich—a fine city".
As part of ambitious aims to promote Norwich's heritage internationally, Norwich 12 has been launched—a collection of listed buildings in Norwich. The group consists of: Norwich Castle, Norwich Cathedral, The Great Hospital, The Halls – St Andrew's and Blackfriars', The Guildhall, Dragon Hall, The Assembly House, St James Mill, St John the Baptist RC Cathedral, Surrey House, City Hall and The Forum.
In February 2010, it was announced that Norwich was among four finalists for the prestigious title of UK City of Culture (a new designation), in 2013. However, on 15 July 2010, the city of Londonderry was pronounced the winner.
In May 2012 it was announced that Norwich would become England's first UNESCO City of Literature.
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“What culture lacks is the taste for anonymous, innumerable germination. Culture is smitten with counting and measuring; it feels out of place and uncomfortable with the innumerable; its efforts tend, on the contrary, to limit the numbers in all domains; it tries to count on its fingers.”
—Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985)
“... we’ve allowed a youth-centered culture to leave us so estranged from our future selves that, when asked about the years beyond fifty, sixty, or seventy—all part of the average human life span providing we can escape hunger, violence, and other epidemics—many people can see only a blank screen, or one on which they project fear of disease and democracy.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)