PORT TALBOT: Town shortlisted for UK Town of Culture — with £3m and a Welsh rival standing in the way

Port Talbot and the Afan Valley have been shortlisted for the first ever UK Town of Culture, beating close to 400 rival bids to make a list of 15.

The town now receives £60,000 to develop a full bid, and will compete for up to £3m to run a six-month cultural programme in 2028.

The competition, run by the UK Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport, is the town-sized counterpart to the City of Culture title held by Derry, Hull, Coventry and Bradford.

Port Talbot is in the medium-town bracket — alongside Corby, Great Yarmouth, Leith, and Pontypridd.

That last name matters. Only one town from each category will go through as a finalist, meaning the two Welsh bids on the shortlist are competing directly against one another.

The overall winner takes the £3m and the title. The two other category finalists receive £250,000 each.

Neath Port Talbot Council said the bid aims to tell the story of an area with “a powerful industrial heritage, a nationally recognised creative legacy and a strong community arts and culture scene”.

The creative legacy needs little introduction — this is the town they call Little Hollywood. Richard Burton was born in Pontrhydyfen, in the Afan Valley at the heart of the bid, and Sir Anthony Hopkins grew up in Margam. Rob Brydon was raised in Baglan.

And then there is Michael Sheen — who in 2011 came home to stage The Passion with National Theatre Wales: a 72-hour play performed across the town’s streets, seafront and shopping centre over Easter weekend, with a cast of more than a thousand local people and Sheen as its central figure. It remains one of the most celebrated pieces of theatre Wales has produced — and the clearest proof of the “strong community arts scene” the bid describes.

Even Banksy has played his part. Season’s Greetings, the mural that appeared on a Taibach garage in 2018 — a child catching what looked like snow, revealed as ash from a burning skip — put the town’s uneasy marriage of culture and industry on front pages around the world, before the artwork was eventually moved out of the town.

The industrial heritage is more complicated. The council’s bid, in its own words, “comes at a time of significant change for the area” — the language it has settled on for the end of virgin steelmaking at Tata Steel‘s Port Talbot works, and the thousands of jobs that went with it.

The bid, the council said, offers a chance to “celebrate local pride, creativity and resilience, while helping to build a positive future narrative”.

Cllr Cen Phillips, the council’s cabinet member for nature, tourism and wellbeing, said being shortlisted from hundreds of applications was a significant achievement. “It shows the strength of the story this area has to tell,” he said.

The next stage, he said, would be shaped by local people, artists, community groups and cultural organisations. “The strongest bid will be one that reflects the pride, creativity and ambition of the communities it represents.”

Bids are judged on three themes: Your Story, Culture for Everyone, and Making It Happen.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said the volume of entries showed “how proud people are of their towns”, and congratulated the 15 on making the list.

The chair of the independent judging panel, the television writer and producer Phil Redmond, said the response had come “quite literally from all four corners of the UK”, and that he looked forward to visiting the shortlisted towns.

The Wales Office said Port Talbot was “renowned for producing some of the greatest actors in the country, all of whom have been inspired by the industrial heritage of the area”.

The council said it hoped the process would raise the profile of culture across the county borough, “supporting local pride and encouraging more people to get involved in arts, heritage and cultural activity”.

Council leader Cllr Steve Hunt said the bid was about more than a title. “It is about celebrating who we are, recognising the strength and resilience of our communities, and creating new opportunities for culture, creativity and local pride to flourish,” he said.

He urged residents to get behind the bid “and help us show why Port Talbot and the Afan Valley deserve to be named UK Town of Culture 2028”.

Full bids will be assessed by the independent panel, with the winner announced early next year.