The York Narrative

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Culture and heritage is central to The York Narrative. You are our 2000 year story, and the public face of our creative, dynamic and inclusive future. When you tell stories through your programmes, exhibitions, festivals, collections and events, you are helping residents and visitors to engage with the many and varied aspects of York, encouraging them to find out more about how they can play their part in progressing a thriving and sustainable future.

Whether you’re a museum or gallery, a festival, an artist, a theatre company, a local choir, historian, poet or dance troupe, The York Narrative will help you solidify your message to audiences and communicate a modern, relevant and engaging story of York. It will help you win awards, attract investment, project our contemporary image around the world, attract the type of visitors who want to connect with and be stimulated by your events, recruit volunteers – and do it in a way which benefits from joined-up thinking and common purpose. By working together, York will stand out from the competition and become clearly associated with the values it stands for.

“We firmly believe in the core values established and will be adopting them into our programming so they shape everything we do as a cultural charity. We are excited by the focus and direction York Narrative has given us and look forward to working collaboratively to help shape the future image of this fantastic city.”

York Museums Trust

“The only Guild of Media Arts in the UK, we are delighted to have played a part in describing York’s story – it has also provided us with an opportunity to re-tell our own and be at the hub of York’s creative innovation ecosystem, a keystone of York’s future.”

Guild of Media Arts

Key Facts

The scale and vibrancy of York’s contemporary cultural scene, venues, festivals, exhibitions and events help it stand out amongst UK heritage cities:

York is home to over 60 professional arts and heritage organisations, 400 cultural and creative industries, 25 museum sites & galleries, and 25 regular festivals.

York’s historic architecture contributes to it winning many national and international heritage and tourism awards – from one of the top 3 walled-cities in the world (CNN Travel) to the most beautiful city to photograph (CEWE).

York is 1 of only 14 cities worldwide with UNESCO City of Media Arts designation.

York was recognised as the most “culturally vibrant” city in the UK and seventh best in Europe for medium size cities in the Cultural and Creative Cities monitor, EU report 2019.

There are aspirations to double the size of York’s creative economy to £329.6m by 2025, and increase engagement with the arts to 75%.

York performs well in visitor satisfaction surveys in all things heritage and culture – scoring significantly higher than GB average in all questions inquiring about visitors experience of the local arts, culture, and heritage offer.

Looking at national attraction visitor numbers, many of York’s attractions are of national, and regional significance.

The £50m redevelopment programme at The National Railway Museum will secure its position as a leading museum and visitor attraction, keeping York’s rail-tech story up-to-date and making a major cultural contribution to York Central.

Case Study: York Guild of Media Arts

In 2014 was awarded UNESCO City of Media Arts. The Guild builds on York’s ancient business networking tradition and applies it afresh to the city’s fast growing media arts sector for economic, social and cultural benefit.

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The Narrative Toolkit

Whether you want to recruit volunteers, develop exhibitions and events or deliver well-being programmes in the community, the toolkit is designed to help you adopt The York Narrative with a framework for implementation, how-to guidelines for each stage and downloadable resources for you to adapt and use in your organisation.

View the toolkit