The programme will feature a wide variety of art forms that will entertain visitors to the city during the visit of the Tall Ships, between Wednesday, July 11 and Saturday, July 14. Actors, musicians and dancers from across the UK and beyond will entertain people in event zones across the city in a programme funded by National Lottery through Arts Council England. Local artists will also be given a platform to perform.

Sunderland City Council’s Head of Events, Victoria French said: “The Tall Ships Races Sunderland 2018 gives the city an unmissable opportunity to host a wide variety of open-air performances to complement the magnificent vessels we will be welcoming to Sunderland. Thanks to support from Arts Council England we are able to present some fantastic national and international performances. Featuring music, dance and circus artists and culminating in an epic, large scale performance from Cirque Bijou on Friday night.”

Cirque Bijou, renowned for their spectacular and inspirational shows, will be delivering a dazzling performance as part of the festivities on Friday, July 13, when they will walk across the Wear. Artistic Director of Cirque Bijou, Billy Alwen, said: “The show we are making for The Tall Ships Races Sunderland will be one of the highlights of our year. We are bringing some of the finest wire walkers in Europe together with a local ensemble of singers and dancers to produce a unique show telling stories of Sunderland’s connection to the sea. It will be on a scale rarely seen in this country.”

Local artists Emma Bloomfield, Sophie Lisa Beresford, Penella Bee and Thomas Potts will perform throughout the event as part of the ‘Wearside Emerging’ project. Programme Producer for The Tall Ships Races Sunderland 2018, Helen Green, also said “We are delighted that, as part of the wider Tall Ships Cultural Programme, we are able to offer opportunities to local artists to take part in the festival. We have offered commissions to four Sunderland artists who will pop up in areas around the event zones. They range from breath taking trapeze performance to street dance, music to strolling theatre – and expect a surprise here and there.”

Further details of the exciting programme which also includes international performers as well as many from throughout the UK will be released nearer to the event.

Helen Green, who was appointed Director of The Fire Station last year having previously been Creative Director at Arts Centre Washington, has moved into the role of Sunderland Culture’s new Head of Performance.

Formally launched earlier this week (April 2) by Sunderland Council, the University of Sunderland and the MAC Trust, Sunderland Culture will strategically lead cultural venues, including The Fire Station, owned by its partners and develop and deliver large-scale cultural projects. It has National Portfolio Organisation status, which means it receives regular funding from Arts Council England.

Helen is the organisation’s third appointment after Keith Merrin was confirmed Sunderland Culture’s Chief Executive and Rebecca Ball its Creative Director.

“It’s an exciting role, a totally new challenge and a great opportunity at an important time in Sunderland’s cultural development,” explained Helen. “I’ll be responsible for the strategic overview of performing arts across the city at Sunderland Culture’s venues, including The Fire Station and Arts Centre Washington (ACW),” she added.

Manchester-born Helen started her career in the arts working on West End hit Starlight Express after studying an English degree in Birmingham. She went on to become General Manager at the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain in London before leading an arts venue in Edinburgh. She moved to the northeast in 2001 when she was appointed General Manager at Theatre Sans Frontieres in Hexham, before becoming Creative Director at ACW.

Helen was given the role of Director of The Fire Station early last year and as well as fulfilling that role has more recently been working on producing and delivering an arts and culture programme for the visit of the Tall Ships in July.

“My focus at the moment is on delivering the best possible programme to thrill local and national audiences coming to Sunderland to enjoy the spectacle of the Tall Ships. But I’m starting to think about programming exciting, challenging and appropriate performances for Sunderland Culture’s venues. I’d also like to build on the success of Sunderland Stages by looking to programme performances into places you wouldn’t normally associate with the arts,” said Helen.

“I also have ambitions to find the resources needed to commission work in the city, so we can not only bring the very best artists and performers into Sunderland, but we can also develop and promote local artistic talent. I think developing, encouraging and allowing local talent to grow will be a big part of my role,” she explained.

Work on the new 450-seater auditorium adjacent to The Fire Station is due to start later this year, with curtain up on the opening night being late next year or early 2020.

“I’m already contributing to planning for the opening season of the auditorium – it’ll be something special. Taking a broader view, I want to provide opportunities for the city’s wide range of community performing arts groups and I also see developing new audiences as a real priority.

“We need to make sure that performances appeal to both the heart and the head, intellectually and emotionally, that they make people think and feel. And of course, the performances must be for everyone in the city, appealing to all of our diverse communities. Hopefully, if we do that, and are giving platforms to local, national and international artists and performers, the audiences will follow.”

Keith Merrin welcomed Helen into her new role: “Helen’s appointment is another step forward – her knowledge and experience in a range of senior roles in the arts and culture sector will be an asset to Sunderland Culture, and she’ll bring an energy and dynamism to the important area of performance.”

Friday 23rd March 2018 was an historic day for Sunderland and a pivotal one for the city’s cultural sector as we unveiled the next chapter of Sunderland’s cultural transformation and launched the cultural programme Twenty Four Seven.

Twenty Four Seven is an ambitious seven-year, £60m project that will take the city up to 2024. It will improve the city’s cultural profile and reputation, strengthen the city’s creative economy and increase the number of Wearsiders taking part in arts and culture. It has been built from the excitement, drive and imagination of everybody who took part in the City of Culture consultations and will incorporate the bid’s themes of Light, Friendship and Inventiveness. It will deliver much of what was in our bid plan.

The announcement came on the same day as Sunderland Culture officially re-opened the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art in its new 3,000sq ft space within National Glass Centre.The new gallery has been created with the support of University of Sunderland, Arts Council England and Sunderland City Council, and in its first 18 months it will celebrate British artists whose work has been created on continental Europe, bringing new audiences to contemporary art.

For the first exhibition, Fiona Crisp has been working with the Laboratori Nazionale del Gran Sasso in Italy to investigate the way in which we imagine the frontiers of fundamental science

Keith Merrin, Chief Executive of Sunderland Culture, said: “There’s never been a more exciting time to be involved in the arts on Wearside. Sunderland Culture recently secured £1.25m from the Great Place Scheme, and days ago we were awarded £745,000 in Arts Council England’s final round of Ambition for Excellence funding. This grant will deliver Believe in Me: Cathedrals to Creative Cities, a world-class visual arts project that will celebrate Wearside and unite the two cities of Durham and Sunderland.”

At the same time as Crisp’s Material Sight exhibition opened the NGCA, another new exhibition opened in the National Glass Centre’s main gallery. Young Artists is an exhibition created in collaboration with the Danish Gallery, Glasmuseet Ebeltoft, presenting the finest examples of work by international, early career artists working in glass. Both exhibitions are free to the public.

Sunderland has made it to the final five in the hotly-contested competition and will now battle it out against other shortlisted cities, Coventry, Paisley, Stoke-On-Trent and Swansea. The bid, which was submitted at the end of April, was assessed by judges from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and they announced [this morning], that the city had made it to the final stage.

The team is now working on Sunderland’s second stage bid, which will be submitted in September, before the overall winner is announced in December.

Rebecca Ball, director of Sunderland 2021, said: “This is fantastic news for the city and we couldn’t have done it without the support from the people of Sunderland and the North East. It is down to their support and hard work that we have made it this far.”

She added: “It is a huge achievement to get to this stage of what has been an extremely competitive process. We are delighted to have come this far, but we don’t have time to be complacent; we are very much in it to win it and there is much to be done to prepare for the next stage of the competition.

“We wish all of the other shortlisted places the very best of luck as they develop their bids over the next few months.  The first stage bid submission was the culmination of months and months of hard work, so every single place that has thrown their hat in the ring deserves credit.”

The UK City of Culture title is designed to use culture as a catalyst for economic and social regeneration and to raise the profile of arts and creativity. It also helps cities develop a broader arts and culture sector, as well as attract increased business investment and boost tourism.

Winning City of Culture status could deliver a multi-million-pound boost to Sunderland. This year has seen 2017’s UK City of Culture Hull see £1billion in investment since winning the title in 2013. It is estimated Hull’s economy will see a £60million rise in this year alone.

Councillor Paul Watson, leader of Sunderland City Council, said: “Sunderland has a unique energy and ambition, making it the perfect contender for UK City of Culture. From the New Wear Crossing, to the Vaux site development; from the regeneration of our seafront to the repurposing of buildings like the old Fire Station to prepare it for a new future, the city is undergoing unprecedented change, and this investment in infrastructure will be perfectly underpinned by a year of cultural celebration. Regardless of whether we win or lose, we have gained so much from this process.”

If Sunderland was to win, the benefits would last long beyond 2021, creating jobs and tourism opportunities throughout the area.

Shirley Atkinson, the University of Sunderland’s vice-chancellor, added: “The competition has the power to absolutely transform Sunderland’s destiny.  It will change the future for the city and the people who live and work here as well as those who visit.  A win for Sunderland would be a win for the whole of the North East.”

Paul Callaghan of the MAC Trust said: “Confidence in Sunderland has never been higher.  As a city, we are brimming with a pride and passion that runs in our veins.  Like so many people from Sunderland, I am immensely proud of our city and I do think we have a great chance of bringing this accolade to Sunderland in 2021.

“Reaching the final of this competition is absolutely incredible, and is huge testament to the Sunderland 2021 team, all of those who have worked alongside them to develop the first-stage bid, and most importantly, to the people of Sunderland and the North East, whose enthusiasm has shone through since we announced our intention to go for this title.

“We’ll need more of the same to ensure we are front of mind when the judges come to select a winning city, so we’ll celebrate that we have been shortlisted today, and the hard work will begin again tomorrow.”

Sunderland declared its intention to bid in the early part of 2016. The bid was written by a team from Sunderland, Music, Arts and Culture (MAC) Trust, the University of Sunderland and Sunderland City Council, who have since formally come together as Sunderland Culture, a company set up to oversee the bid, run major city attractions and deliver large-scale cultural projects in the city.  It will also raise the profile of the city’s arts provision and manage programming for the city’s cultural sector.

Keith Merrin, chief executive of Sunderland Culture said: “Making it this far in such a tough competition gives our city renewed confidence, and I think we can be incredibly proud of what we have achieved.

“We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, but winning this title would put Sunderland firmly in the cultural spotlight, kick-starting a period of growth and creating a calendar of exciting cultural and artistic events, the Sunderland 2021 team is going to be working really hard as we prepare for the final stage submission in September.”