AN ambitious £60m programme to transform the cultural life of Sunderland will be launched to build on the momentum of Wearside’s City of Culture bid – on the same day the city’s new home for contemporary visual art will be opened.

Sunderland Culture, the new company set up last year to strategically lead major cultural venues in the city, will unveil Sunderland Twenty Four Seven, a seven-year, £60m project to improve the city’s cultural profile and reputation on tomorrow. Twenty Four Seven will also strengthen the city’s creative economy and increase the number of Wearsiders taking part in arts and culture. The project will run through to 2024.

At the same time, Sunderland Culture will officially re-open the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art in its new 3,000sq ft space within National Glass Centre, part of the University of Sunderland. A major exhibition, Material Sight, from award-winning artist Fiona Crisp, will be the gallery’s opening exhibition.

“Friday will be a historic day for Sunderland and a pivotal one for the city’s cultural sector. The launch of Sunderland Twenty Four Seven, an inspired but deliverable seven-year programme of cultural activity that will take us to 2024, will confirm the city’s ambition and intent,” explained Keith Merrin, Chief Executive of Sunderland Culture, which will next week formally become an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation.

“We already have £40m of the £60m needed to deliver Twenty Four Seven in the pipeline and we’re very confident of raising the remaining £20m. Building on the excitement, drive and imagination of our City of Culture bid, Twenty Four Seven will deliver much of what was in our bid plan,” he added.

“It will incorporate the bid’s themes of Light, Friendship and Inventiveness and will help add to the growing sense of cultural confidence in the city, particularly among young people.

“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 unite the two cities of Durham and Sunderland.

“And on Friday, as well as launching Twenty Four Seven, we’ll be officially reopening the NGCA at National Glass Centre.”

In its new home within National Glass Centre, the NGCA will bring new audiences to contemporary art. 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.

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

At the same time as Crisp’s Material Sight exhibition will open the NGCA, another new international exhibition will open in the National Glass Centre’s main gallery. Young Glass 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.