Welcome to my home - Hull the city of culture 2017

Just a pre warning but this post will not be a normal beauty or fashion post and if you are not from England you probably will not understand. Also this post you would not probably expect from a normal 16 year old girl like myself . However it is on a topic that my family and myself have discussed many a time. I live in the North of England extremely close to a city called Kingston upon Hull, close enough to tell people that, that is where I live.

* This is Hulls City of culture bid video which was successful* 

This year we won the City of culture 2017 which will hopefully be a huge boast to our economy and raise our status as a historic town rich in culture. My grandma is a very proud person along with my dad. Therefore I grew up with stories of Hulls fisher men and stories of the bombings on Hull during WW2 making it the third most bombed city after London with People killed 1,200, 3,000 people injured  and 152,000 people being made homeless, this sadly being forgotten by many others. This also means every summer my mum would pack me and my brother up and send us to my grandmas to be taken round all 7 free museums, including the William Wilberforce museum dedicated to the man from Hull who helped abolish slavery.

The pictures at the beginning of this post were all taken by myself at last years 'freedom festival' which takes place every year. Also shown in the video, its a time were the whole city comes together to celebrate our diversity and embrace it. The pictures also show Hull fair which people come from miles around to enjoy one of the biggest fairs in Europe.

The following views are not just my own but I share with the rest of my family as its always seems to be  my Dads favourite topic to talk about. Hull has gained a lot of bad press in the past and still does now, just in 2003 we was the 'proud' winners of crap towns. An award given to us by people who probably haven't even visited Hull and if so had only seen the parts that needed some attention. But it is extremely easy to look at a certain part of a city and think all of it is 'crap'. Yes we have some council estates but who is to say the people who live on them are not amazing hard working people. Also doesnt Leeds, Bristol and London all have estates to? Every city has its problems so why only focus on ours when Hull is full of History, culture, shops and entertainment from the deep, hull truck/ new theatre and many festivals? It is also extremely easy to type in Hull into Google and be meet by multiple websites saying all the worst possible things about my home. For example the Urban dictionary definition of Hull is :

' sh*thole...a very cold grubby city that despite seeing roadseepers everywhere... never seems to look any cleaner, full of insolent pricks who can not seem to grasp the idea of people being different. see also hell-hole'

After our 2003 'win' of crap towns, less then 10 years later we are not even in the top 50 as well as becoming the 7th top happiest city to live. With East London the most unhappiest, East central London 4th to bottom, north London 7th to bottom and West London taking the 10th bottom position. Therefore I find it hard to understand how many people still have a hatred towards hull stating we are all 'chavs' with 'nothing in-between our ears' as I can assure you now, we are not.  Also I realise im trying to prove my point by making other cities look as bad as they way they talk about Hull making me look like a hypocrite but im simply going off statistics not just personal views.

Growing up I loved Hull, but over all I think my main message from this post is you have to be proud of where you come from. If you are interested in coming to see the greatest we have to offer in 2017 when we are the official city of culture please visit the hull city of culture website. It would be much appreciated.

http://www.hullcc.gov.uk/2017hull#

Thanks for reading 

xx