It’s 2017 and Hull’s big year is finally here. It all started with a huge fireworks display from two barges in the Estuary, which we watched from the top of a hill on the south bank having now repatriated myself as a “yellow-belly”. The opening week has been marked by “Made in Hull” – a series of light projection exhibits around the City Centre, focused on Queen Victoria Square where the crowds are immersed by projections on the City Hall, Feren’s Art Gallery and the Maritime Museum.

The first video here shows a brief snippet of the light show on Hull’s The Deep aquarium, standing where the Hull’s eponymous river flows into the Humber Estuary.

This next video shows the Hull Blitz segment from the main display in Queen Victoria Square. It’s difficult to convey the power of this piece, the chilling hush that descends over the crowd as the word “war” is repeated, the noise and the atmosphere of the search lights ahead. It’s only a small measure of what the terror of living in the most bombed city outside of London must have been like.

Made in Hull has been utterly superb and a very fitting start to 2017 – if it continues like this we’re in for a fantastic City of Culture year.

WE ARE HULL