Stirling's bid to be crowned UK City of Culture 2025 cost more than £50,000

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Stirling’s attempt to be crowned the UK City of Culture 2025 cost more than £50,000 overall.The city launched its bid to claim the highly sought after crown in August last year.At that time, we told how the city was among 20 places from across the UK to have put in a bid for the competition run by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in collaboration with the devolved administrations.The winner, to be declared this year, will take on the baton from Coventry as the 2021 UK City of Culture which so far has attracted over £100 million in capital investment to support cultural projects.Stirling made the longlist of candidates, but the bid failed to make the shortlist, announced in March this year.The sum spent on the city’s bid for the top culture crown totalled £50,422.15, according to figures obtained by the Stirling Observer via a Freedom of Information (FoI) request.A grant of £40,000 was received making the cost to the public purse £10,422.When asked what the costs associated with the bid were, the council revealed that the top three expenses incurred was £21,334 spent on “Bid Project Management”, £11,850 on marketing and communications and £4,950 on the bid launch.Click here for more news and sport from the Stirling area.In addition, £4,925 was spent on “community engagement workshops”, with a further £4,571 spent on the official bid document design and edit.Photography and videography associated with the bid saw a further £1,600 spent.The two lowest expenses paid out as part of the bid were for advertising (£652.60) and UK City Bid induction meeting costs (£539.55) – bringing the total cost to £50,422.15.The council added that a grant was received from DCMS totalling £40,000.A Stirling Council